Poeppig, Eduard Friedrich b.July 16, 1798; Plauen, Saxony d.June 17, 1843; Leipzig-Wahren, Saxony
German botanist and explorer in Cuba, Chile, Peru, and Brazil. Poeppig, son of a bankrupt merchant, grew up with relatives in Leipzig and attended the Thomasschule there and the Furstenschule in Grimma.
He studied medicine and natural sciences at the University of Leipzig and was awarded a medical doctorate in 1822. He then left to travel in Cuba where, with the support of the Leipziger Naturforschenden Gesellschaft (Leipzig Society for Natural Studies), he devoted himself to botanical research, while earning his living by practicing as a doctor. In May 1824 he sailed from Cuba to North America, where he spent most of his time in Pennsylvania. In 1825 some 12,000 dried plants that he had collected in Cuba and the United States arrived in Leipzig. On receiving a loan from friends in Leipzig, he was finally able to fulfill a long-held dream of exploring in South America.He sailed from Baltimore in November 1826, traveled around Cape Horn, and landed in Valparaiso in March 1827. In the Rio Aconcagua valley north of the city he built a small hut from which he continued his botanical studies. Even the loss of all his equipment when crossing a raging mountain stream did not dampen his enthusiasm. He climbed to the western Andes through the Aconcagua and Colorado valleys in 1827; he spent the year of 1828 in Talcahuano, Concepcion’s port, from whence he departed for the unexplored hinterland in October. He traveled through the territory of the warlike Arauca and reached the farthest outpost of European settlement, the town of Antuco, where he spent the summer and studied alpine vegetation. On February 17, 1829, he was the first to reach the top of the active volcano Antuco (9,793 ft. ). He sailed from Chile to Peru in May 1829. Poeppig traveled from Callao into the mountains and reached the high mountain mining town of Cerro de Pasco via the Chillon valley.
He spent almost a year in the middle of the jungle at the Rio Huallaga, delighted by the Andean landscape and its tropical vegetation, which he later inimitably described. Traveling by raft along the Rio Huallaga, he reached the Amazon basin and finally reached Para (Belem) on April 22, 1831, via Tabatinga and Egas (Teffe) after much adventurous traveling.In Leipzig, Poeppig qualified to assume a professorship (Habilitatiori) in 1833 with a study of the plants he collected in Chile and in 1834 was appointed associate professor of natural sciences at the university (in 1846 professor of zoology) and director of the new zoological museum. The botanical fruits of his travels were immense, and his collection contained almost 20,000 plants. Poeppig also brought back several hundred stuffed animals, as well as more than 100 large-format drawings of landscapes and plants. Together with the Austrian botanist Stephan Endlicher, he published a scientific analysis of this material in three volumes between 1835 and 1845 (Nova genera ac species plantarum quas in regno chilense peruviano et in terra amazon- ica annisMDCCCXXVIIadMDCCCXXXII legit [New genera and species of plants, collected in the years 1827—1832 in Chile and the Amazonean countries]). Among Poep- pig’s botanical achievements, he was the first to describe 46 genuses and 1,081 species of tropical vegetation, and he introduced South American plants to Europe, the best known being the araucaria (Aracu- caria araucana, monkey puzzle). Nowadays he is recognized as the founding father of epiphyte studies, an important precursor of modern tropical ecology. The herbaria laid out by Poeppig were destroyed by fire in 1943 when the Botanical Department in Leipzig was hit by a bomb, and the zoological collections were dispersed to other locations after 1968.
Of lasting value is Poeppig’s two-volume travel account of his five years in South America, which at times resembled a Robinson Crusoe adventure story (Reise in Chile, Peru und auf dem Amazonenstrome wahrend der Jahre 1827 bis 1832 [Travels in Chile, Peru and along the Amazon from 1827 to 1832], 1835-1836).
This is one of the travel classics of the nineteenth century. Although Poeppig did not make any new discoveries in the narrow sense, the aesthetic style and realistic nature of his travel account make him one of the most important portrayers of South America, and his biographers put him on the same level as Alexander von Humboldt.Heinz Peter Brogiato
See also Brazil; Chile; Humboldt, Alexander von
References and Further Reading
Henze, Dietmar. Enzyklopadie der Entdecker und Erforscher der Erde. Vol IV. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 2000, pp. 145-157.
Morawetz, Wilfried, and Martin Roser, eds. Eduard Friedrich Poeppig 1798—1868. Gelehrter und Naturforscher in Sudamerika anlaβlich seines 200. Geburtstages. Leipzig: Universitat Leipzig, 1998.
Zirnstein, Gottfried. “Poeppig, Eduard Friedrich.” In Neue Deutsche Biographie. Vol. 20. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2001, 572-573.