FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
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FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
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ADALBERT VON CHAMISSO: POET AND BOTANIST By Carolyn Curtis In 1817, the Romanzov discovery expedition, sent out from imperial Russia, put in at San Francisco Bay. On board were a 36-year-old botanist, novelist, and poet, Adalbert von Chamisso, and his friend, the ship’s young doctor, Johann Friedrich Gustav von Eschscholtz. Their names have passed into the botany of California. Though Chamisso and Eschscholtz spoke German with each other, it was Chamisso’s second language. When he was 8, his aristocratic family left France, driven out by the Revolution, to settle in Berlin, which in those days afforded some political and religious freedom. Chamisso not only mastered German, but as a young man became one of the major lyric poets of the day. Some of his poems are known in their musical settings, such as the touching song cycle "Frauenliebe und Leben" ("A Woman’s Love and Life"), memorably set by Schumann. Chamisso is also known for the novella "Peter Schlemihl’s Remarkable Story," the tale of a man who sells his shadow to the devil for a bottomless purse, but ends up wandering the world searching for peace of mind; he finds it in nature, and not in endless wealth. Eschscholtz was born in present-day Latvia, then part of the German-speaking territories. The tricky spelling of our state flower (Eschscholzia californica) results from the vagaries of transliteration. The family name was originally Escholtz, but relatives who spent time in Russia transliterated it into Russian as Eshcholts, which is pronounced with separate "sh" and "ch" sounds, all written with one letter in Russian. When the name was later transliterated back into German, it became Eschscholtz, the "sh-ch" returning to "sch" but getting doubled in the process. When Chamisso wrote the official description of the California poppy, he spelled Eschscholzia three different ways (orthography not being an exact science in those days). The type specimen, that is, the poppy that Chamisso pressed that day, is still preserved in St. Petersburg. Chamisso’s name also presents some ambiguity: his given name is spelled Adelbert or Adalbert, and he was christened Louis-Charles-Adelaide Chamisso de Boncourt. Chamisso wrote a haunting poem ("Das Schloss Boncourt") about the family castle in the Champagne region, remembering the courtyard, the well, the chapel with its ancestral graves, knowing that it has all vanished and that someone now plows the ground where it stood. The poet blesses the ground and the plowman, takes his lyre, and roams the far reaches of the earth, singing from land to land. Despite this loss and exile from the land of his birth, Chamisso was always on the side of the common people, using his lyric gifts to create poems advocating social reform. When Chamisso joined the Romanzov discovery expedition as a botanist, he was an established man of letters; he had published the story of Peter Schlemihl the year before. However, he had also studied medicine and natural science. After the expedition, Chamisso remained active in science, pursuing investigations into zoology, as well as later becoming curator of the royal botanical collections in Berlin. Another interest, also typical for the Romantic period, was philology: Chamisso became known for his studies of Australasian languages. Chamisso did his best to immortalize his friend Eschscholtz in plant nomenclature, and Eschscholtz returned the favor ten years later. On another voyage of discovery in California, he noted a showy shrub growing near the coast and named it Lupinus chamissonis. Though this lupine is not one of Edgewood’s four species of lupine, two plants in the genus Camissonia grow here: graciliflora (the slender-flowered primrose) and ovata (sun cups). The common name chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum) is also derived from this remarkable visitor’s name. Editor's note added 1/2/2001: Mezzo-soprano and musicologist Dr. Suzanne Summerville informs us that von Chamisso's family was not driven out of France by the Revolution, but in fact settled in Berlin after an older brother got a job there and then found a job for Adelbert at the KPM (Royal Berlin Porcelain Factory) as an apprentice painter. She also prefers the "Adelbert" spelling of his name. Editor's note added 2/6/2002: Margriet Weatherwax has pointed out that despite the superficial similarity, the common name chamise is not derived from Chamisso's name. Instead, it comes from the Spanish word chamizo, meaning half-burned tree. Editor's note added 12/12/2005: Bartell Berg, a doctoral candidate at Washington University at St. Louis, refutes Summerville's correction above, citing that Chamisso's family did indeed flee France during the French Revolution, arriving first in Luttich, and ultimately in Berlin. Berg asserts that the job opportunity in Berlin was not a reason for leaving France, but instead might well have been a reason for settling in Berlin. Editor's note added 4/1/2008: Dr. Suzanne Summerville provides the following clarification regarding Chamisso family's travels that took them from France ultimately to Berlin. The family left France and wandered through Belgium before settling in Wurzburg in 1795 and then in Bayreuth. One son Prudent went to Berlin and he found a job for Adelbert who had been studying art. He painted designs on the KPM porcelain and then became a page for Queen Fredericke. Adelbert was able to get page jobs for two other brothers and then the whole family moved to Berlin. |
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