Martius, Carl Friedrich Philipp von b.April 17, 1794; Erlangen, Bavaria d. December 13, 1868; Munich, Bavaria
German explorer who collected plants and animals in Brazil and is considered one of the most important nineteenth-century explorers of the Amazon and the founder of Brazilian ethnology.
His family came from Italy and migrated to German-speaking lands via Hungary. Martius entered the University at Erlangen to study medicine at the age of sixteen. At the age of twenty, he received his doctoral degree in medicine. In 1816 he was appointed an assistant at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich. In the same year he was asked to embarkon a large-scale Austrian expedition to Brazil, together with the Bavarian physician Johann Baptist Spix (1781—1826). This Austrian expedition was occasioned by the new Austrian interest in South America that arose after Princess Leopoldine (1797-1826), the daughter of Emperor Francis I, in 1817 married the Portuguese crown prince, Dom Pedro. Dom Pedro declared Brazil an independent state in 1822 and assumed the position of emperor of Brazil. Fourteen explorers, physicians, and painters were invited to join this expedition. However, after their arrival in Brazil, conflicts broke out among the explorers over the goals and objectives of this enterprise. In the end, the expedition split up. Johann Christian Mikan and his team returned to Europe in 1818 with about 700 drawings and paintings, as well as extensive zoological, botanical, and mineralogical collections. Johann Emanuel Pohl remained in Brazil until 1821 and returned with two Botokude natives to Austria. The last to return from this expedition was Johann Nat- terer (1836) who had collected over 12,000 birds and nearly 33,000 insects.
The two Bavarians, Martius and Spix, left Rio de Janeiro at the end of1817. Traveling via the Sierra do Mar, both explorers arrived in Sao Paulo in early 1818. Throughout 1818 they remained in Minas Geraes and the province of Bahia, where they explored the territories of the Coroado, Coropo, and Curi tribes.
In 1819 Martius and Spix embarked on their second large expedition into the provinces of Pernambuco and Maranhao. Both fell ill with malaria and only slowly recovered in the provincial capitol of Sao Luiz. In August 1819 both went on their third expedition to explore the Amazon. West of Manaus, both took separate paths—Spix followed the Amazon to Tabatinga on the Colombian border, and Martius traveled by boat on the Rio Japura. Reunited, Mar- tius and Spix returned from Manaus in March 1820 and arrived back in Munich on December 8, 1820. They brought four natives of Brazil and extensive collections of flora and fauna with them. These collections, which were donated to the Ethnological Museum of Munich in 1867, included uncountable numbers of minerals, 86 mammals, 350 birds, 130 amphibians, 116 fish, 2,700 insects, and 6,500 different plants.Spix died in 1826, but Martius went on to receive high praise and many awards for his achievements. In 1826 he was appointed professor of botany at the University of Munich. Six years later, in 1832, he became the director of the Botanical Gardens in Munich and of its botanical collections. He published the account of his and Spix’s travel in Reise in Brasilien 1817-1820 (Travel in Brazil, 1817-1820), which included three volumes of text and one volume of tables (1823-1831). His reputation as an authority in the field of botany is due to the publication of three important projects: Nova genera et species plantarum, quas in itinere per Brasiliam annis 1817—1820 suspecto collegit et descripsit (New genera and species of plants, which were collected and investigated through Brazil in the years 1817-1820, published between 1824 and 1832 in three volumes with 300 colored drawings); His- toria naturalis palmarum (Natural History of Palm Trees), which was published between 1823 and 1850 in three volumes; and the 40-volume Flora brasiliensis (The Flora of Brazil), which he initiated. More than sixty-five scientists worked on this encyclopedia before it was finished in 1906.
In addition, Martius wrote several books about the languages and ethnology of Brazil. In 1863 his Glossaria linguarum brasiliensium (Glossary of the Languages of Brazil) and in 1867 his Zur Ethnographie Amerika’s zumal Brasiliens (On the Ethnography of America, Especially Brazil) appeared.
Heinz Peter Brogiato
See also Brazil: Natterer, Johann Baptist References and Further Reading Buchler, Anne, Rolf Schumacher, and Stephan Kellner. Die Nachlasse von Martius, Liebig und den Brudern Schlagintweit in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1990.
Helbig, Jorg W, and E. J. Fittkau, eds.
Brasilianische Reise 1817—1820. Carl Friedrich von Martius zum 200. Geburtstag. Munich: Hirmer,1994.
Schmelz, Bernd. Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794—1868). Hamburg: Selbstverlag, 2000.
200Jahre Carl Friedrich Philipp Martius. Staden-Jahrbuch (Sao Paulo) vol. 42 (1994): 1-216.
Zerries, Otto. Unter Indianern Brasiliens. Sammlung Spix und Martius 1817—1820. Innsbruck: Pinguin, 1980.