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Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense. / From 1827 to 1858. With extracts from Varnhagen's diaries, and letters of Varnhagen and others to Humboldt cover

Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense. / From 1827 to 1858. With extracts from Varnhagen's diaries, and letters of Varnhagen and others to Humboldt

Chapter 47: 45. HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.
By Alexander von Humboldt
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Essays, Letters & SpeechesGerman LiteratureHistory - Modern (1750+)

About This Book

A curated correspondence collects letters from Alexander von Humboldt to his friend and confidant Varnhagen von Ense, supplemented by diary excerpts and letters from other contemporaries. The missives blend personal friendship with professional exchange, discussing scientific observations, lectures, manuscripts, travels, and reactions to peers and events. Editorial apparatus preserves original phrasing and provides contextual notes and extracts that illuminate relationships and chronology. The selection highlights the writer’s methods of observation, precise descriptive habits, and modes of intellectual collaboration. Together the documents form a compact portrait of an engaged scholar whose private reflections and public endeavors intersect across a wide range of topics.

45.
HUMBOLDT TO VARNHAGEN.

Saturday, April 11th, 1840.

The Crown-Prince would like very much to see that interesting letter of Prince Metternich to you. Could not you send it to me before half-past seven o’clock to-night, my dear friend?

A. Ht.

In regard to the said letter, Varnhagen says in his diary, under date of April 2d, 1840: “When returning home, found a letter from Prince Metternich—a long one, under his own hand. He declares my picture of the Congress of Vienna to be a perfectly faithful one, a few points excepted, which ought to be corrected. He himself corrects, in detail, the description of the effect of the news at Vienna, that Napoleon had left Elba. It is a letter of historical value.”

Under date of the 5th of the same month, Varnhagen mentions again the Metternich letter. “In the afternoon,” he says, “Humboldt called. He had heard of the letter from Wittgenstein, who had spoken of it to Count Orloff and others, as a most remarkable production. Humboldt also was astonished and delighted. He showed me a letter which Prince Metternich had addressed him, as to the position of several naturalists at Vienna, and the presidency of the Archæological Society at Rome. Humboldt tells me of dark tendencies of the Westphalian nobility, which the Crown-Prince favors. They think of establishing a great Catholic seminary for young noblemen—a proper nursery for Jesuits.” On Humboldt’s remarking that the Crown-Prince, perhaps, out of absence of mind, had not reflected on the important consequence of the King’s illness, Minister von Rochow made the following reply: “Oh, certainly he has thought of it! And he has prepared various things, which he means then to propose. But to his views and commands in ecclesiastical matters I should be highly opposed.”