Alexander von Humboldt: How the Most Famous Scientist of the Romantic Age Found the Soul of Nature by Maren Meinhardt

An intellectual history of Humboldt and Romanticism

Alexander von Humboldt has undergone a renaissance of late. Many books on the Prussian scientist and explorer have been published in recent years. Maren Meinhardt’s biography Alexander von Humboldt: How the Most Famous Scientist of the Romantic Age Found the Soul of Nature was released in America in 2019, after being published the previous year in England under the title of A Longing for Wide and Unknown Things. Unlike older biographies that attempted comprehensive cradle-to-grave coverage, such as those by Karl Bruhns (1873) or Helmut de Terra (1955), most recent books on Humboldt tend to emphasize one aspect or period of his career. Andrea Wulf’s The Invention of Nature (2015), for example, focuses on Humboldt’s influence on ecology and environmentalism, while The Passage to Cosmos (2009) by Laura Dassow Walls stresses his impact on American identity and culture. Gerard Helferich’s Humboldt’s Cosmos (2004) is a detailed recounting of the explorer’s expedition to the Americas, while Myron Echenberg’s Humboldt’s Mexico (2017) narrows in on his time in New Spain, and Sandra Rebok’s Humboldt and Jefferson (2014) does the same for his stopover in the United States. Meinhardt’s Alexander von Humboldt is very much an intellectual history of Humboldt. She is interested in how his educational and social experiences shaped the man and formed his views on the natural world. Intellectually, Humboldt combined the best qualities of German Romanticism and the French Enlightenment. While Rebok’s work concentrates on Humboldt as an Enlightenment thinker, Meinhardt highlights Humboldt as a student and exponent of Romanticism. 

The strongest portion of Meinhardt’s book is her examination of Humboldt’s upbringing, education, and early career, prior to the American expedition that made him famous. Many biographers mention the Humboldt brothers’ influential tutor Carl Sigismund Kunth, but few delve into the succession of Alexander’s other tutors and teachers with the level of detail that Meinhardt does. She constantly establishes Humboldt as the center of a web of intellectual intercourse. We not only learn about his friends, but the friends of his friends, and how ideas and influence flowed back and forth among them. Meinhardt also provides commendable coverage of Humboldt’s tenure as a mining inspector and how his dissatisfaction in that field influenced his decision to become a naturalist and explorer.

If you are unfamiliar with Humboldt and his accomplishments, I would not recommend this as your first biography of the man. Wulf and Helferich’s books are more accessible. Meinhardt’s scholarly rigor is admirable, but her writing is not for novices. She doesn’t hold back on her highbrow references to German history and Romantic literature. If what you really want to learn about are Humboldt’s travels and scientific discoveries, you probably don’t need to know about his participation in Jewish salons in Berlin, his friendship with the von Haeften family, or his affinity with the novels of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Those who have read other books on Humboldt, however, will find here many interesting details and anecdotes neglected by other recent biographies. Meinhardt’s book is a relatively brief, condensed, and concise account of Humboldt’s life and career. Even though much of the book is devoted to Humboldt’s time in South America, the expedition narrative feels a bit rushed and cursory. On the other hand, when it comes to Humboldt’s position within the German Romanticist movement and his network of contacts therein, Meinhardt is quite thorough. Her erudite account of Humboldt’s life is a valuable contribution to Humboldt studies.
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