Unbekannte Venezuela-Karten Alexander von Humboldts

Abstract

Article in German, Abstracts in English and German.During his American journey Humboldt was mainly interested in geosciences, as the later published geographical folio atlasses and an enormous number of drawings in his diaries indicate. The following gives three almost unknown examples of how Humboldt enriched the geographical and geological knowledge about Venezuela:1. a profile map of Venezuela’s coast. Only in 1853 Humboldt sent this result of the American journey to the editor Julius Ewald who published it in his important geological journal.2. Humboldt’s manuscript map of the Orinoco, which has not been published until today;3. a geographical map (published in 1812) of the river Casiquiare, which connects the Orinoco and the Rio Negro. Humboldt studied the Casiquiare during his Orinoco boat trip to show this connection (this was of high economic interest at the time) and, furthermore, the bifurcation of the Orinoco (one of the most important geographical results of Humboldt’s American journey).

Keywords

• Alexander von Humboldt
• Ulrike Leitner
• American journey
• Orinoco
• Maps