| Revision as of 17:21, 4 December 2005 editAlx-pl (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users1,007 edits →Forster as a professor: more on the professor days; based on German text; verified with other sources; retained information from the English version← Previous edit | Revision as of 22:26, 4 December 2005 edit undoMolobo (talk | contribs)13,968 editsm restructered information so that it isn't repeated.Next edit → | ||
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| ] and Georg Forster in ], by ], ].]] | ] and Georg Forster in ], by ], ].]] | ||
| :''All peoples of the earth have equal claims to my good will..., and my praise and blame are independent of national prejudice.''{{ref|Forster1}} | :''All peoples of the earth have equal claims to my good will..., and my praise and blame are independent of national prejudice.''{{ref|Forster1}} | ||
| In his opinion all humans have the same abilities with regard to reason, feelings and imagination, but these basic ingredients are used in a different ways and in different environments which gives rise to different cultures and civilisations. According to him it is obvious that the culture on Tierra del Fuego is on a lower level of development than the European culture, but he also admits that the conditions of life there are much more difficult and this gives people very little chances to develop a higher culture.{{ref|SixVarieties}} | In his opinion all humans have the same abilities with regard to reason, feelings and imagination, but these basic ingredients are used in a different ways and in different environments which gives rise to different cultures and civilisations. However his other writings show that such opinions were only towards selected nations he liked. Others which didn't found his sympathy were denied status of being human and described as animals rather then human beings. According to him it is obvious that the culture on Tierra del Fuego is on a lower level of development than the European culture, but he also admits that the conditions of life there are much more difficult and this gives people very little chances to develop a higher culture.{{ref|SixVarieties}} | ||
| Despite his claims and ] background, he despised and insulted Poles as a nation in his private letters. | |||
| For example he compared {{ref|Lawaty}} Poles {{ref|Krause}} to animals ( "''cattle in human form''"{{ref|Booksbooks}}). He also used the term ''"Polnische Wirtschaft"''{{ref|Stasiewski}} in one of his letters in ], a stereotype that became widely used in Germany to pejoratively describe Polish disorganization as compared to German order. Forster's views that other nations are like animals have been later repeated by German national leaders such as Bismarck compering Poles to wolves that one shoots, or Hitler declaring them subhuman. | |||
| The rise of the nationalist ideas at the end of the 18th and in the 19th century resulted in him and his cosmopolitan ideas being nowhere welcome. For Englishmen he was a proud Prussian who started conflicts, for Germans he was too unpatriotic, being able to give away a part of his fatherland to France |
The rise of the nationalist ideas at the end of the 18th and in the 19th century resulted in him and his cosmopolitan ideas being nowhere welcome. For Englishmen he was a proud Prussian who started conflicts, for Germans he was too unpatriotic, being able to give away a part of his fatherland to France, and for French people he was not significant enough politically. | ||
| == Forster's heritage == | == Forster's heritage == | ||
| Line 72: | Line 73: | ||
| After the death of Forster his works were almost completely forgotten, except in professional circles. This was partly due to his involvement in the ]. However, his reception was changing with the changes in politics. | After the death of Forster his works were almost completely forgotten, except in professional circles. This was partly due to his involvement in the ]. However, his reception was changing with the changes in politics. | ||
| In the time of nationalism after the Napoleonic times he was regarded in Germany as a "traitor of the nation", notably among the literats and scientists. This attitude rose even though the philosopher ] wrote about Forster at the beginning of 19th century: "Among all the real writers no one breathes so much the spirit of free progression as Georg Forster“. In the Germany of ] and even more so in the ], his memory was ostracized. The ], in turn, profited from his memory and tried to connect him as a scientist and revolutionary to its tradition. For instance, the GDR research station on ] was given Forster's name on July 1st, 1987. The search for democratic traditions in German history led also to a more diversified picture of him in ]. His reputation as one of first and one of the most outstanding German ] is indisputable. His works testify that he developed ethnology in Germany so that it could stand as a separate branch of science. | In the time of nationalism after the Napoleonic times he was regarded in Germany as a "traitor of the nation", notably among the literats and scientists. This attitude rose even though the philosopher ] wrote about Forster at the beginning of 19th century: "Among all the real writers no one breathes so much the spirit of free progression as Georg Forster“. In the Germany of ] and even more so in the ], his memory was ostracized, despite the fact that his prejudice against Poles found fertile ground in German state. The ], in turn, profited from his memory and tried to connect him as a scientist and revolutionary to its tradition. For instance, the GDR research station on ] was given Forster's name on July 1st, 1987. The search for democratic traditions in German history led also to a more diversified picture of him in ]. His reputation as one of first and one of the most outstanding German ] is indisputable. His works testify that he developed ethnology in Germany so that it could stand as a separate branch of science. | ||
| In ], the standard ] '''G.Forst.''' is applied to ] described by him. | In ], the standard ] '''G.Forst.''' is applied to ] described by him. | ||
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Johann Georg Adam Forster (November 26, 1754 – January 10, 1794) was a German botanical collector, ethnologist, artist, and revolutionary. He took part in James Cook's second expedition to the Pacific.
Biography
Childhood and first journeys
Georg Forster was born in the small village of Mokry Dwór (German Nassenhuben), near Gdańsk (Danzig) in the Polish province of Royal Prussia. He was the first child of Johann Reinhold Forster and Justina Elisabeth (de domo Nicolai). His father was a naturalist, scientist and a lutheran pastor. In 1765, the Russian tsar gave the pastor an assignment to travel in Russia on a research journey and investigate the situation of a German colony at the Volga River. Georg, then ten years old, joined him. They reached the Kirghiz steppe at the lower Volga. The young Forster learned there how to conduct scientific research and how to practise cartography. He also learnt Russian and became fluent in this language. A critical report from the journey was refused by the tsar, so the Forsters did not obtain fair payment for their work and had to move. They chose to settle in England which they did in 1766. The father took up teaching and translation work there. The young Forster, only thirteen years old, published his first book: a translation of Lomonosov's history of Russia, which was well received in scientific circles.
Around the World with Captain Cook
In 1772, his father Johann became a member of The Royal Society. This resulted in his invitation by british admiralty to James Cook's second expedition to the Pacific (1772–75). Georg Forster again joined his father in the expedition. He was appointed as a draughtsman of his father. The task of Forster as a scientist was to work on a scientific report from the journey that was to be published after the return.
They embarked on the board of the HMS Resolution on July 13th, 1772 in Plymouth. The route led first to the South Atlantic then through the Indian Ocean and antarctic waters in South Pacific to the island of Polynesia and finally around the Cape Horn to reach England, where the expedition arrived on July 30th, 1775. During the three years long travel the explorers visited New Zealand, the Tonga islands, New Caledonia, Tahiti, the Marquesas Islands and the Easter Island. They went as much to the south as nobody before them. The journey disproved conclusively the theory which said that there is a big, habitable continent in the south, although the ships did not reach Antarctica.
Georg Forster took up first, mostly as a draughtsman, the studies of the world of animals and the world of vegetation in the southern seas. This research was done under the supervision of his father. However he had also his own interests which led to completely independent exploration in the fields of comparative geography and ethnology. He quickly learned the languages of the Polynesia islands. His reports on people of Polynesia are approved even today, as they show Forster's endavours to describe the habitants of southern islands with empathy, sympathy and to great extent without western christian prejudices. Conversely, he even tries to idealise the 'noble wild people'. Forster, with this kind of attitude, was much ahead of the other ethnologists of his times.
Forster's descriptions, in contrast with other accounts like the ones of Louis Antoine de Bougainville who initiated with his reports from a journey to Tahiti a few years before the noncritical, idealistic southern seas romanticism, perceived the societies of the south Pacific islands as much diversified. He described various social structures and religions he encountered on Society Islands, Easter Island and in Tonga or New Zealand. On the basis of the description he was proving that the diversity is a result of different living conditions of people there. At the same time he also observed that the languages on these to much extent scattered islands are quite similar. Here is what he wrote about the habitants of the Nomuka islands that lay near Tonga:
- Their languages, vehicles, weapons, home furniture, cloths, tatoos, type of beard lopping; in short all of their being matched perfectly with what we had already seen studying tribes on Tonga. We could not only (...) find any kind of subordination which was very apparent among Tonga tribes and recognisable in their respect to the king that reached even extreme forms of servitude.
The ethnographical items that were collected by Georg and Reinhold Forster are currently presented as Cook-Forster-Sammlung (Cook-Forster-Collection) in Sammlung für Völkerkunde in Göttingen.
The journey was very fruitful scientifically. However, the relations between Forsters and Captain Cook and his officers were problematic. This was a result of both the Prussian pride of the Forsters and their justifiable feeling of independence on one hand, and Cook's need to warrant an orderly course of the journey on the other hand.
A founder of the modern travel literature
These conflicts continued after the journey when the problem of who should write the official account of the travel arised. Lord Sandwich, although willing to pay the promised money for the final account, was dissatisfied with Senior Forster's English and tried to establish an editor over him. However, this was interpreted by Forster as a censorship and he refused all compromises in this direction. As a result of that the official account was to be written by Cook and Forsters were deprived of the right to compile the account and they did not get their payment for the work. During the negotiations, young Forster decided to release an unofficial account of the travel. In 1777, a book A Voyage round the World in His Britannic Majesty's Sloop Resolution, Commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the Years, 1772, 3, 4, and 5 (from which the expression a voyage round the world stems) was published. This report was the first account of the second Cook's voyage (it occurred six weeks before the official relation) and was intended for the wide public. The English version and his own translation to German which was published in 1778-80 earned the young author a real fame. Poet Christoph Martin Wieland praised the book as the most important book of his time and it still today remains one of the most important journey descriptions that were ever written. The book had also significant impact on German literature, culture and science. For instance Alexander von Humboldt was under its great influence and it inspired many ethnologists at the later date.
Forster composed a well polished German prose. When he presented scientific facts he did not forget to make the book interesting. His work distinguished itself from conventional travel literature, because he did not present only bare data, but instead he demonstrated coherent, colourful and reliable ethnographical facts which were the result of observations took by a person who participated in the events. He also quite often interrupted the description to enrich it with philosophical remarks concerning the observed objects and situations.
His main point of focus was always on people he encountered, their behaviour, their customs, habits, religions and forms of social organisation. In A Voyage round the World he even presented texts of songs sang by people of Polynesia. The book is even today one of the most imprtant sources concerning the societies of the southern seas, especially as the book comes from the times before the European influence started to be significant there.
Both Forsters published also travel descriptions to the South Sea in the Magazin von merkwürdigen neuen Reisebeschreibungen ("Magazine of notable new travel accounts") in Berlin; and Georg, a translation of "A Voyage to the South Sea, by Lieutenant William Bligh, London 1792" in 1791 and 1793. The innovative descriptions of those travels were the basis for many books and films, like Mutiny on the Bounty.
Forster as a professor
The publication of A Voyage round the World gave Forster scientific distinctions around the Europe. Respectable Royal Society nominated him as its member although he was not even 23 years old. He was granted similar titles from Academies ranging from Berlin to Madrid. These achievements did not give him money though. In 1778 he went to Germany to take a position of a Natural History professor in Kassel. He met Therese Heyne, a daughter of a professor of classical philology, there. Later, she became one of the first free female writers in Germany. Forster married her in 1785 and they had three children, but the marriage was not happy. Since the Kassel times he exchanged actively letters with important Enlightenment followers including Lichtenberg, Lessing, Herder, Wieland and Goethe.
On initiative of the Polish Komisja Edukacji Narodowej, Forster became Professor of Natural History at Wilno University in 1784. Despite his notable scientific record he was not accepted well in Wilno. His famous speech on natural history from 1785 went unnoticed and was not printed before 1843. He broke the contract 6 years short of its completion, after Catherine II of Russia gave him an offer to take part in a journey around the world for a high honorarium and a position of a professor in Saint Petersburg. This resulted in a conflict between Forster and Jędrzej Śniadecki. However, the Russian proposal was withdrawn and Forster left Wilno. He settled then in Mainz where he worked as librarian of the University of Mainz.
He published regurarly essays on the scientific and discovery travels of his times, for instance he wrote about the third Cook's travel to the South Pacific in which he did not attend himself, and about Bounty expedition. Forster was in contact with the initiator of the Bounty travel, participant of the first Cook's travel, private scholar Sir Joseph Banks, since his London years. In 1790 he made himself another tour of the Rhine with Alexander von Humboldt. This resulted in a book Ansichten von Niederrhein, von Brabant, Flandern, Holland, England und Frankreich.
Another field of his interest was indology. He translated, using a Latin version provided by Sir William Jones, the Sanskrit play Shakuntala which strongly influenced Herder and triggered German interest in the culture of India. One of the main goals of his failed travel under the subsidy of Catherine II was to reach India.
Forster and the French Revolution
Forster was a co-founder and the vice chairman of the Mainz Jacobin club in 1792 and was an active participant in the founding of the Mainz Republic, the first democratic state in Germany. He later became vice president of the provisory administration and a member of the Rhenish-German National Convent, the parliament of the Mainz Republic. He also worked as a newspaper editor, and wrote in his first article:
- The freedom of the press finally reigns within these walls where the printing press was invented.
Forster was sent to Paris as representative of the Mainz Republic and applied for Mainz to become part of the French Republic. This was granted, but had no effect, since Mainz was conquered by Prussian and Austrian troops in 1793, and the old order was restored.
Forster was expelled from Germany as a traitor and died in Paris in January 1794, from pneumonia.
Forster and nations
Forster had Scottish roots and was born in Polish Royal Prussia. He worked in Russia, England, Poland and in several German countries of his times. Finally, he finished his life in France. He worked in different milieu and travelled a lot from his young age on. This together with the scientific upbringing based on the principles of the Enlightenment, in his view gave him a cosmopolitan perspective on different ethnic and national communities:
- All peoples of the earth have equal claims to my good will..., and my praise and blame are independent of national prejudice.
In his opinion all humans have the same abilities with regard to reason, feelings and imagination, but these basic ingredients are used in a different ways and in different environments which gives rise to different cultures and civilisations. However his other writings show that such opinions were only towards selected nations he liked. Others which didn't found his sympathy were denied status of being human and described as animals rather then human beings. According to him it is obvious that the culture on Tierra del Fuego is on a lower level of development than the European culture, but he also admits that the conditions of life there are much more difficult and this gives people very little chances to develop a higher culture.
Despite his claims and Enlightenment background, he despised and insulted Poles as a nation in his private letters. For example he compared Poles to animals ( "cattle in human form"). He also used the term "Polnische Wirtschaft" in one of his letters in 1784, a stereotype that became widely used in Germany to pejoratively describe Polish disorganization as compared to German order. Forster's views that other nations are like animals have been later repeated by German national leaders such as Bismarck compering Poles to wolves that one shoots, or Hitler declaring them subhuman. The rise of the nationalist ideas at the end of the 18th and in the 19th century resulted in him and his cosmopolitan ideas being nowhere welcome. For Englishmen he was a proud Prussian who started conflicts, for Germans he was too unpatriotic, being able to give away a part of his fatherland to France, and for French people he was not significant enough politically.
Forster's heritage
After the death of Forster his works were almost completely forgotten, except in professional circles. This was partly due to his involvement in the French revolution. However, his reception was changing with the changes in politics.
In the time of nationalism after the Napoleonic times he was regarded in Germany as a "traitor of the nation", notably among the literats and scientists. This attitude rose even though the philosopher Friedrich Schlegel wrote about Forster at the beginning of 19th century: "Among all the real writers no one breathes so much the spirit of free progression as Georg Forster“. In the Germany of Wilhelm II and even more so in the Third Reich, his memory was ostracized, despite the fact that his prejudice against Poles found fertile ground in German state. The GDR, in turn, profited from his memory and tried to connect him as a scientist and revolutionary to its tradition. For instance, the GDR research station on Antarctica was given Forster's name on July 1st, 1987. The search for democratic traditions in German history led also to a more diversified picture of him in West Germany. His reputation as one of first and one of the most outstanding German ethnologist is indisputable. His works testify that he developed ethnology in Germany so that it could stand as a separate branch of science.
In Botanics, the standard botanical author abbreviation G.Forst. is applied to plants described by him.
Bibliography
- A Voyage round the World in His Britannic Majesty's Sloop Resolution, Commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the Years, 1772, 3, 4, and 5 (1777)
- Journal of travels in Poland (August-November, 1784), The Warsaw Voice, 1990 31 8-9
- Dissertatio botanico-medica de plantis esculentis insularum oceani Australis (1785)
- Essays on the moral and natural geography, natural history and phylosophy (1789-1797)
- Views of the Lower Rhine, Brabant, Flanders (three volumes, 1791-1794)
- Letters (posthumous compilation of his correspondence, 1828)
References
Lawaty, Andreas, „Polnische Wirtschaft“ und „deutsche Ordnung“: Nachbarbilder und ihr Eigenleben, in: Der Fremde, Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu Aspekten von Fremdheit, Hg. Bernhard Oestreich, Peter Lang Verlag 2003, p. 156–166.
Bömelburg, Hans-Jürgen, Georg Forster und das negative deutsche Polenbild. Ein Kosmopolit als Architekt von nationalen Feindbildern?, in: Mainzer Geschichtsblätter 8 (1993), p. 79-90.
Forster, Johann Georg, Georg Forsters Werke, 11, 13-14.
Pauline Kleingeld, Six Varieties of Cosmopolitanism in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany, in Journal of the History of Ideas, 1999
Krause, Hans-Thomas, Georg Forster und Polen. In: Georg Forster (1754-1794). Ein Leben für den wissenschaftlichen und politischen Fortschritt, in: Wissenschaftliche Beiträge der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg T 42, Beiträge zur Universitätsgeschichte). Halle/S. 1981, p. 79-85.
Stasiewski, Bernhard, "Polnische Wirtschaft" und Johann Georg Forster, eine wortgeschichtliche Studie., in: Deutsche Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift im Wartheland 2 (1941), H. 3/4, p. 207-216.
Books books (accessed on September 1st, 2005). In the review of: "Czarna legenda Polski: Obraz Polski i Polaków w Prusach 1772-1815" (The black legend of Poland: the image of Poland and Poles in Prussia between 1772-1815), by Dariusz Łukasiewicz. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk, 1995. Vol. 51 of the history and social sciences series (English and German summaries). ISBN 8370631487.