Ave-Lallemant, Robert Christian Berthold b.July 25, 1812; Lubeck, Holstein d. October 10, 1884; Lubeck
German physician who spent extensive time in Brazil as a doctor and an explorer. Having graduated from medical school at the University of Kiel in 1837, Robert Ave-Lallemant immigrated to Brazil, where he worked as a doctor for nearly seventeen years.
During this time, he quickly advanced to becoming the head of the Yellow Fever Hospital and later was appointed a member of the Highest Health Council of the country. In 1855, Ave- Lallemant returned to Kiel, where he applied for the position of ship’s doctor aboard the Austrian vessel Novara, which was scheduled to embark on the circumnavigation of the globe. Since Alexander von Humboldt supported his application, Ave-Lallemant was chosen as a member of the crew, which left Kiel on April 30,1857. This expedition was under the command of Bernhard Freiherr von Wuller- storf-Urbair and included such eminent explorers as the natural scientist Karl Ritter von Scherzer and the geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter. The scientific goal of this expedition was the exploration of the islands in the Pacific and in the Indian Ocean. However, the Austrian team’s circumnavigation of the world was also to serve their home country’s ambitions to be regarded as a world power. Initially enthusiastic about this endeavor, Ave-Lallemant soon had doubts about his decision to join the Novara. When the ship arrived at Madeira, he filed his request to be relieved. After successfully crossing the Atlantic, Ave-Lallemant left the expedition and returned to Brazil. Early in 1858 he embarked on a research voyage to the southern provinces of Brazil Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catharina, Parana, and Sao Paulo, where he visited the German settlements and observed the social and economic hardships suffered by its colonists. It was on this trip that he found Aime Bonpland, the French botanist and long-lost traveling companion of Alexander von Humboldt, in a primitive shack in Corrientes at the Rio Uruguay.
Bonpland died shortly after on May 4, 1858.After Ave-Lallemant returned to Rio de Janeiro, he turned his attention toward the northeastern portion of the country. He went on to explore the coastal provinces of Bahia, Pernambuco, Alagoas, and Sergipe as well as the Amazon to Tabatinga. In October 1859 he returned to Lubeck, where, in addition to working as a doctor, he began writing. In his two- volume Reise durch Su.d-Brasilien im Jahre 1858 (Travels through South Brazil in
1858, published in 1859) and his two- volume Reise durch Nord-Brasilien im Jahre 1859 (Travels through North Brazil in
1859, published in 1860), Ave-Lallemant descried his exhausting and sometimes lifethreatening explorations in detail.
Heinz Peter Brogiato
See also Humboldt, Alexander von; Von-der- Heydt’sches Reskript
References and Further Reading
Ahlers, Olof. “Ave-Lallemant, Robert
Christian Berthold.” Neue Deutsche Biographie. Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1953, 1: 465-466.
Hantzsch, Viktor. “Ave-Lallemant, Robert Christian Berthold.” Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot, 1902, 46: 144-146.
Henze, Dietmar. Enzyklopadie der Entdecker und Erforscher der Erde. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1978, 1: 116.