Aroideae Maximilianae. Die auf der Reise Sr. Majestät des Kaisers Maximilian I. nach Brasilien gesammelten Arongewächse, nach handschriftlichen Aufzeichnungen von H. Schott beschrieben von Dr. J. Peyritsch. Mit einem Titelbilde und 42 Tafeln in Farbendruck. Wien: Druck und Verlag von Carl Gerold's Sohn, 1879.7
It gives me much pleasure, dear Sir Redmond, to present to the grand Public Library, which you mainly created, the magnificent work of Brazilian Aroideae, presented to myself by the grace of the Emperor of Austria. To this princely gift attaches a particular deep and sad interest, as it [is] one of the many precious literary bequests of a Sovereign, celebrated for his patronage and cultivation of science.9
This was one of those happy moments in which a new world, in the fullest sense of the word, opens before one; when one would wish to have a hundred eyes to take in the unknown wonders which are continually unfolding themselves on all sides, when in the midst of delight a feeling of sorrow arises that one cannot grasp everything, cannot preserve everything in remembrance. The mind, alas! can only transiently enjoy the beautiful picture; thus its reflection in written words is but as a faint photograph, founded indeed on truth, but weak and colourless compared with the original.15
Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. by Hannah Arendt; translated by Harry Zohn, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968, p. 63. | |
Franz Joseph I (1830-1916), Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary. | |
Baron Sir Ferdinand von Mueller (1825-96), botanist and Australia's leading scientist of the nineteenth century'. See Regardfully Yours: selected correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, vol. III: 1876-1896, ed. by R.W. Home [et al.], Bern: Peter Lang, 2006, p. 40. Rod Home and Sara Maroske kindly shared with me their vast knowledge of Ferdinand von Mueller and directed me to relevant correspondence. | |
The title page has two inscriptions (in different hands): 'Presented by Baron Ferd. von Mueller, April 19th 1880' and 'Entd. Stock Book, p. 265, May 1880'. | |
Now the State Library of Victoria. | |
Harald Riedl, 'Hermann Wilhelm Schott (1794-1865)', Taxon, vol. 14, no. 7, Sept. 1965, p. 209. | |
Aroideae Maximilianae. The Araceae collected on His Majesty, the Emperor Maximilian I's expedition to Brazil, described by Dr. J. Peyritsch from drawings by H. Schott. With a frontispiece and 42 colour plates. Vienna: Carl Gerold's Son, 1879. | |
Sir Redmond Barry (1813-80), judge, and President of the Trustees of the Public Library and prominent in all aspects of cultural, civic and philanthropic activity in Melbourne from the time he arrived in the colony in 1839 until his death some forty years later. See Ann Galbally, Redmond Barry: an Anglo-Irish Australian, Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 1995. | |
Ferd. von Mueller to His Honor Sir Redmond Barry K.C.M.G., L.L.D., President of the Trustees of the Public Library, 17 April 1880 (transcription provided by the Mueller Correspondence Project, Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne). | |
Ferdinand Maximilian was Franz Joseph I's younger brother; in 1857 he married Maria (Marie) Charlotte (1840-1927), daughter of the Belgian monarch, Leopold I. | |
Much has been written on Maximilian and the Mexican disaster. A wealth of insights can be found in studies of the French painter, Edouard Manet (1832-83) and his works on Maximilian's execution (three large paintings, an oil sketch and a lithograph); see, for example, John Elderfield, Manet and the Execution of Maximilian, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2006. | |
Richard Bentley's introduction to Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico, Recollections of My Life, vol. 1, London: Richard Bentley, 1868, p. iii. | |
On the southern tip of the Istria peninsular. In the nineteenth century, Pula (then Pola) became the Austrian Empire's key naval base. It is now part of Croatia. | |
Recollections of My Life, vol. 2, 1868, p. 283. | |
Recollections of My Life, vol. 3, 1868, p. 97. | |
Heinrich Wawra Ritter von Fernsee (1831-87), physician in the Austrian Navy and botanist. | |
Franz Maly (1823-91), gardener and botanist. | |
Joseph Selleny (1824-75), landscape painter and lithographer. | |
Recollections of My Life, vol. 3, 1868, p. 388. | |
See John Fletcher,'Karl Scherzer and the Visit of the "Novara" to Sydney, 1858', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 71, pt. 3, Dec. 1985, pp. 189-190; John Fletcher, 'The "Novara" in Sydney, November-December 1858: On unlocking a Time-Warp', Australian Library History in Context, ed. by W. Boyd Rayward, Kensington, NSW: School of Librarianship, University of NSW, 1988, pp. 8-9; John Fletcher, 'Joseph Selleny (1824-1875)', The Dictionary of Australian Artists: Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870, ed. by Joan Kerr, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 712-714 (also available on-line at http://www.daao.org.au/main/read/5659); and Michael Organ, '"Osterreich in Australien": Ferdinand von Hochstetter and the Austrian Novara Scientific Expedition, 1858-9', Historical Records of Australian Science, vol. 12, no. 1, June 1998, p. 1. | |
Douglas Botting, Humboldt and the Cosmos, London: Michael Joseph, 1973, p. 260. | |
Ernst Wunschmann, 'Heinrich Wawra Ritter von Fernsee', Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. 41, 1896, pp. 272-276. | |
Richard Blaine McCornack, 'Maximilian's Relations with Brazil', The Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 32, no. 2, May 1952, p. 175. | |
Heinrich Wawra Ritter von Fernsee, Botanische Ergebnisse der Reise Seiner Majestät des Kaisers von Mexico Maximilian I nach Brasilien (1859-60), 2 vols, Vienna: Ceroid, 1866. | |
Johann Josef Peyritsch (1835-89), botanist and physician. | |
Ferd. von Mueller to Sir Redmond Barry, 17 April 1880, op. cit. In this letter Mueller mentioned also – 'in all due modesty' – that he had been among those to whom Schott had dedicated this 'celebrated' work (Schott's dedication had listed 24 distinguished botanists). | |
Harald Riedl, op. cit., p. 210. | |
For an outline of this war, see Geoffrey Wawro, The Austro-Prussian War: Austria's war with Prussia and Italy in 1866, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. | |
Theodor Kotschy (1813-66), botanist and explorer. | |
Siegfried Reissek (1819-71), botanist. | |
Anton Hartinger (1806-90), painter and pioneer in chromolithography. | |
A firm founded and run by Gottlieb Benjamin Reiffenstein (1822-85), painter and lithographer. | |
Eduard Fenzl (1808-79), botanist. | |
August von Jilek (1819-98), physician and lecturer in oceanography at the Austrian Marine Academy in Pola (now Pula, Croatia). | |
Heinrich Gustav Adolf Engler (1844-1930), botanist. | |
Josef Bogner, 'History of Araceae', Aroideana, vol. 20, 1997, p. 41. On the previous page, Bogner had written: 'Modern systematic studies of the Araceae began with the work of the Austrian botanist and gardener Heinrich Wilhelm Schott'. |