Grigori Ivanovitch Langsdorff
Encyclopedia
Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff, Baron de Langsdorff (b. Wöllstein
, Germany
, April 8, 1774; d. Freiburg, Germany, June 9, 1852) was a Prussia
n aristocrat
, politician
and naturalist
. He lived in Russia
and was better known by his Russian name, Grigori (Gregory) Ivanovitch. He was a member and correspondent of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences and a respected physician
, graduated in medicine and natural history at the University of Göttingen, Germany.
Langsdorff first participated as naturalist and physician in the great Russian scientific circumnavigation
expedition commanded by Ivan Fedorovich Kruzenshtern, from 1803 to 1805. He left the expedition in Kamchatka
to explore the Aleutians, Kodiak
and Sitka; and returned from San Francisco by ship to Siberia
and thence to Saint Petersburg
by land, arriving in 1808.
In 1813 Langsdorff was nominated consul
general of Russia in Rio de Janeiro
, Brazil
. He acquired a farm (named "Mandioca", or manioc) in the north of Rio and collected plants, animals and minerals. He hosted and entertained foreign naturalists and scientists, such as Johann Baptist von Spix
(1781-1826) and Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius
(1794-1868), and explored the flora, fauna and geography of the province of Minas Gerais
with French naturalist Augustin Saint-Hilaire
from 1813 to 1820. A recent study found that Langsdorff has 1,500 descendants in Brazil, among them the most famous is Luma de Oliveira
, a Brazilian carnival queen
.
and to the Academy of Sciences to lead an ambitious exploratory and scientific expedition from São Paulo
to Pará
, in the Amazon
, via a fluvial route. In March 1822, he returned to Rio in the company of scientists Édouard Ménétries
(1802-1861), Ludwig Riedel
(1761-1861), Christian Hasse and Nester Gaverilovitch Rubtsov (1799-1874), who would take care of zoological, botanical, astronomical and cartographical observations during the expedition. With the aim of illustrating and documenting his findings, the Baron hired painters Hércules Florence
, Johann Moritz Rugendas
and Adrien Taunay. The inventor of the bicycle Karl von Drais
was also a participant in the expedition.
After extensive preparations, the Langsdorff Expedition departed with 40 people and 7 boats from Porto Feliz
, by the Tietê river
on June 22, 1826 and reached Cuiabá
, in Mato Grosso
on January 30, 1827. The expedition was then divided into two groups: the first one, with Langsdorff and Florence, was able to reach Santarém on the Amazon River
on July 1, 1828, with enormous difficulties and suffering. Most of the members of the expedition became ill with tropical fevers (most probably yellow fever
), including the Baron de Langsdorff. As a consequence of the febrile attacks, he became insane at the Juruena River
on May 1828. Adrien Taunay died by drowning
in the Guaporé River
and Rugendas abandoned the expedition before its fluvial phase. Therefore only Florence remained during the whole expedition. The expedition was joined again in Belém
and returned by ship to Rio de Janeiro, arriving on March 13, 1829, almost three years and 6,000 km after its departure.
Huge scientific collections were deposited into Kunstkamera
and later formed basis for South American collections of Russian museums. However, the rich scientific records of the expedition, comprising many descriptions and discoveries in zoology
, botany
, mineralogy
, medicine
, linguistics
and ethnography
, that were sent to Saint Petersburg
by the expedition, were not published and were lost in the archives for a century. They were found again by Soviet
researchers in funds of the USSR Academy of Sciences archive in 1930. Due to the travel's hardships, Langsdorff team was unable to collect many biological specimens or study them in detail, so most of their account is geographic and ethnographic, being particularly interesting on the many indigenous people of Brazil they met, many of which became extinct. Today, a large part of the material has been recovered and is in the Ethographic Museum, the Zoological Museum and in the repositories of the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg.
Langsdorff returned to Europe shortly thereafter, in 1830, and died in Freiburg
, Germany
, of typhus
, in 1852.
, featuring Adriana Florence, a grand-grand-granddaughter of Hércules Florence living in Campinas
, Brazil, has been made by the Discovery Channel
and retraces part of the expedition's itinerary. It also visited St. Petersburg's Langsdorff museum collections. The director was Mauricio Dias.
Wöllstein
Wöllstein is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.- Location :...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, April 8, 1774; d. Freiburg, Germany, June 9, 1852) was a Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
n aristocrat
Aristocracy (class)
The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...
, politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
and naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
. He lived in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and was better known by his Russian name, Grigori (Gregory) Ivanovitch. He was a member and correspondent of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences and a respected physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
, graduated in medicine and natural history at the University of Göttingen, Germany.
Langsdorff first participated as naturalist and physician in the great Russian scientific circumnavigation
Circumnavigation
Circumnavigation – literally, "navigation of a circumference" – refers to travelling all the way around an island, a continent, or the entire planet Earth.- Global circumnavigation :...
expedition commanded by Ivan Fedorovich Kruzenshtern, from 1803 to 1805. He left the expedition in Kamchatka
Kamchatka Peninsula
The Kamchatka Peninsula is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of . It lies between the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Sea of Okhotsk to the west...
to explore the Aleutians, Kodiak
Kodiak, Alaska
Kodiak is one of 7 communities and the main city on Kodiak Island, Kodiak Island Borough, in the U.S. state of Alaska. All commercial transportation between the entire island and the outside world goes through this city either via ferryboat or airline...
and Sitka; and returned from San Francisco by ship to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
and thence to Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
by land, arriving in 1808.
In 1813 Langsdorff was nominated consul
Consul
Consul was the highest elected office of the Roman Republic and an appointive office under the Empire. The title was also used in other city states and also revived in modern states, notably in the First French Republic...
general of Russia in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. He acquired a farm (named "Mandioca", or manioc) in the north of Rio and collected plants, animals and minerals. He hosted and entertained foreign naturalists and scientists, such as Johann Baptist von Spix
Johann Baptist von Spix
Dr. Johann Baptist Ritter von Spix was a German naturalist.Spix was born in Höchstadt, Middle Franconia, as the seventh of eleven children. His boyhood home is the site of the Spix Museum , opened to the public in 2004...
(1781-1826) and Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius
Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius
Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius was a German botanist and explorer.Martius was born at Erlangen, where he graduated M.D. in 1814, publishing as his thesis a critical catalogue of plants in the botanic garden of the university...
(1794-1868), and explored the flora, fauna and geography of the province of Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais is one of the 26 states of Brazil, of which it is the second most populous, the third richest, and the fourth largest in area. Minas Gerais is the Brazilian state with the largest number of Presidents of Brazil, the current one, Dilma Rousseff, being one of them. The capital is the...
with French naturalist Augustin Saint-Hilaire
Augustin Saint-Hilaire
Augustin François César Prouvençal de Saint-Hilaire , French botanist and traveler, was born at Orléans, France, on 4 October 1779. He began to publish memoirs on botanical subjects at an early age...
from 1813 to 1820. A recent study found that Langsdorff has 1,500 descendants in Brazil, among them the most famous is Luma de Oliveira
Luma de Oliveira
Luma de Oliveira is a former model, actress and Brazilian carnival queen. She was Madrinha da Bateria for a number of samba schools up until 2005, before returning to the role for the famous Portela school in 2009.-Early life:Luma was born in the hospital of Cantagalo, in the...
, a Brazilian carnival queen
Brazilian Carnival
The Carnival of Brazil is an annual festival held forty-six days before Easter. On certain days of Lent, Roman Catholics and some other Christians traditionally abstained from the consumption of meat and poultry, hence the term "carnival," from carnelevare, "to remove meat." Carnival celebrations...
.
The Langsdorff Expedition
In 1821 he proposed to the Tsar Alexander IAlexander I of Russia
Alexander I of Russia , served as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825 and the first Russian King of Poland from 1815 to 1825. He was also the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania....
and to the Academy of Sciences to lead an ambitious exploratory and scientific expedition from São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
to Pará
Pará
Pará is a state in the north of Brazil. It borders the Brazilian states of Amapá, Maranhão, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Amazonas and Roraima. To the northwest it also borders Guyana and Suriname, and to the northeast it borders the Atlantic Ocean. The capital is Belém.Pará is the most populous state...
, in the Amazon
Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon Rainforest , also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin of South America...
, via a fluvial route. In March 1822, he returned to Rio in the company of scientists Édouard Ménétries
Édouard Ménétries
Édouard Ménétries was a French entomologist, zoologist, and herpetologist.Ménétries was born in Paris, and became a student of Georges Cuvier and Pierre André Latreille. On their recommendation he was chosen as the zoologist on a Russian expedition to Brazil in 1822, led by Baron von Langsdorff...
(1802-1861), Ludwig Riedel
Ludwig Riedel
Ludwig Riedel was a German botanist.Riedel came to Brazil in 1811, invited to participate in the expedition organized by the German-Russian physician, naturalist, ethnographer and explorer Baron von Langsdorff...
(1761-1861), Christian Hasse and Nester Gaverilovitch Rubtsov (1799-1874), who would take care of zoological, botanical, astronomical and cartographical observations during the expedition. With the aim of illustrating and documenting his findings, the Baron hired painters Hércules Florence
Hércules Florence
Antoine Hercule Romuald Florence was a French-Brazilian painter and inventor, known as the isolate inventor of photography in Brazil, three years before Daguerre , using the matrix negative/positive, still in use...
, Johann Moritz Rugendas
Johann Moritz Rugendas
Johann Moritz Rugendas , was a German painter, famous for his works depicting landscapes and ethnographic subjects in several countries in the Americas, in the first half of the 19th century....
and Adrien Taunay. The inventor of the bicycle Karl von Drais
Karl Drais
Karl Drais was a German inventor and invented the Laufmaschine , also later called the velocipede, draisine or "draisienne" , also nicknamed the dandy horse. This incorporated the two-wheeler principle that is basic to the bicycle and motorcycle and was the beginning of mechanized personal...
was also a participant in the expedition.
After extensive preparations, the Langsdorff Expedition departed with 40 people and 7 boats from Porto Feliz
Porto Feliz
Porto Feliz is a municipality in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. As of 2004, The population was 49,915, the density was 89.5/km², the area is 557.98 km², and the elevation is 523 m...
, by the Tietê river
Tietê River
The Tietê River is a Brazilian river in the state of São Paulo.The source is in Salesópolis in the Serra do Mar, at 1,120 m altitude...
on June 22, 1826 and reached Cuiabá
Cuiabá
Under the Koppen climate classification, Cuiaba features a tropical wet and dry climate. Cuiabá is famous for its searing heat, although temperatures in winter can arrive sporadically at 10 degrees, indeed atypical, caused by cold fronts coming from the south, and that may only last one or two...
, in Mato Grosso
Mato Grosso
Mato Grosso is one of the states of Brazil, the third largest in area, located in the western part of the country.Neighboring states are Rondônia, Amazonas, Pará, Tocantins, Goiás and Mato Grosso do Sul. It also borders Bolivia to the southwest...
on January 30, 1827. The expedition was then divided into two groups: the first one, with Langsdorff and Florence, was able to reach Santarém on the Amazon River
Amazon River
The Amazon of South America is the second longest river in the world and by far the largest by waterflow with an average discharge greater than the next seven largest rivers combined...
on July 1, 1828, with enormous difficulties and suffering. Most of the members of the expedition became ill with tropical fevers (most probably yellow fever
Yellow fever
Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....
), including the Baron de Langsdorff. As a consequence of the febrile attacks, he became insane at the Juruena River
Juruena River
The Juruena River is a 1240 km long river in west-central Brazil, in the state of Mato Grosso. For the last 190 km of its lower part the river becomes the border between the states Mato Grosso and Amazonas...
on May 1828. Adrien Taunay died by drowning
Drowning
Drowning is death from asphyxia due to suffocation caused by water entering the lungs and preventing the absorption of oxygen leading to cerebral hypoxia....
in the Guaporé River
Guaporé River
Rio Guaporé is the name of a river in western Brazil along the Bolivian border. Its Bolivian name is Río Iténez.The river has its source in the Brazilian Mato Grosso circa 150 km northeast of Pontes e Lacerda. From this town on it flows in a westerly direction for about 120 km, where at...
and Rugendas abandoned the expedition before its fluvial phase. Therefore only Florence remained during the whole expedition. The expedition was joined again in Belém
Belém
Belém is a Brazilian city, the capital and largest city of state of Pará, in the country's north region. It is the entrance gate to the Amazon with a busy port, airport and bus/coach station...
and returned by ship to Rio de Janeiro, arriving on March 13, 1829, almost three years and 6,000 km after its departure.
Huge scientific collections were deposited into Kunstkamera
Kunstkamera
The Kunstkamera was the first museum in Russia. Established by Peter the Great and completed in 1727, the Kunstkammer Building hosts the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, with a collection of almost 2,000,000 items...
and later formed basis for South American collections of Russian museums. However, the rich scientific records of the expedition, comprising many descriptions and discoveries in zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
, botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
, mineralogy
Mineralogy
Mineralogy is the study of chemistry, crystal structure, and physical properties of minerals. Specific studies within mineralogy include the processes of mineral origin and formation, classification of minerals, their geographical distribution, as well as their utilization.-History:Early writing...
, medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
, linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
and ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
, that were sent to Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
by the expedition, were not published and were lost in the archives for a century. They were found again by Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
researchers in funds of the USSR Academy of Sciences archive in 1930. Due to the travel's hardships, Langsdorff team was unable to collect many biological specimens or study them in detail, so most of their account is geographic and ethnographic, being particularly interesting on the many indigenous people of Brazil they met, many of which became extinct. Today, a large part of the material has been recovered and is in the Ethographic Museum, the Zoological Museum and in the repositories of the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg.
Langsdorff returned to Europe shortly thereafter, in 1830, and died in Freiburg
Freiburg
Freiburg im Breisgau is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. In the extreme south-west of the country, it straddles the Dreisam river, at the foot of the Schlossberg. Historically, the city has acted as the hub of the Breisgau region on the western edge of the Black Forest in the Upper Rhine Plain...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, of typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
, in 1852.
Media
A film documentaryDocumentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
, featuring Adriana Florence, a grand-grand-granddaughter of Hércules Florence living in Campinas
Campinas
Campinas is a city and municipality located in the coastal interior of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. is the administrative center of the meso-region of the same name, with 3,783,597 inhabitants as of the 2010 Census, consisting of 49 cities....
, Brazil, has been made by the Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
and retraces part of the expedition's itinerary. It also visited St. Petersburg's Langsdorff museum collections. The director was Mauricio Dias.
External links
- Indians in Brazil. In Portuguese.
- Tras las Huellas de la Expedición Langsdorff. Discovery Channel in Spanish.
- Great Russian Voyages