The Berlin Geographical Society 1828-1978

Abstract

The history Conditions in Berlin 150 years ago were scarcely favourable for founding a geographical society. Tt was a small town with a petty outlook on life and narrow intellectual horizons. There were naturally learned and highly gifted men in Berlin but they had little interchange of ideas and were isolated from the general public.' (Richthofen, 1928, p. 18). The famous lectures on the universe delivered by Alexander von Humboldt in Berlin in 1827-28 provided the impulse which led to the foundation of the Society in April 1828. A friend and colleague of Humboldt's, the cartographer Heinrich Berghaus, made use of the occasion of a jubilee celebration to call for the founding of a geographical society. Within the year, the Society's regulations were drafted and Carl Ritter, who held the first chair of geography in Germany at the University of Berlin and the War Academy, was elected its first President (Plate II). Up to his death in 1859, he was the leading spirit in the Society. Although people of considerable standing in Berlin became members of the Society, yet in the first decades of its existence it failed to gain general public recognition. Finance was lacking to promote travel and undertake larger projects. Carl Ritter himself complained of this and drew attention to the richer societies in Paris and London which were subsidized and could play their part in exploration. A new phase in the development of the Berlin Geographical Society began in the middle of the nineteenth century under Heinrich Barth. He was able to take part in an English expedition to Africa under J. Richardson and later made other important expeditions, particularly in Central Africa. His reports are amongst the most important travel documents of his period (Barth, 1857-58). Barth, Presi? dent of the Geographical Society from 1863 until his death in 1865, initiated further expeditions to Africa as well as raising financial support for them. Under his influence the Berlin Geographical Society became the focal point of German expeditions (see also Bader (1969; 1978) for mention of other explorers). Celebrated African explorers like Gustav Nachtigal and Hermann von Wissman were numbered among the Society's Presidents. For many years between 1873 and 1905 as the Society's President, Ferdinand von Richthofen, the geomorphologist and explorer of China, greatly enhanced the Society's reputation. He initiated German Polar exploration and, in 1892-93, organized an expedition to Greenland under Erich von Drygalski, who also led