Andrea Wulf

Die ZEIT: Interview Andrea Wulf

And here is an interview (in German) in DIE ZEIT about Humboldt and President Steinmeier's trip to Columbia and Ecuador ... following Humboldt's footsteps all the way to his hut on Antisana.

President Steinmeier, Humboldt and the German equivalent of Air Force 1

I’ve just returned from the most insane trip of my life. I was part of the delegation that accompanied Germany’s president Frank–Walter Steinmeier to Colombia and Ecuador last week. The purpose of the trip was to follow Humboldt’s footsteps. We raced, almost as restless as Humboldt, in 6 days from Berlin to Cartagena, Bogotá, Quito, Galapagos Islands, back to Quito, Guayaquil and Berlin.

If someone had told me eight years ago – when I sat on my own in archives and libraries researching “The Invention of Nature” – that Germany’s president would be giving a long speech in 2019 about Humboldt’s relevance for today’s environmental and climate change debates, I would have never believed it. Nor that in the same week the presidents of Ecuador and Colombia would quote Humboldt (several times) as well as Angela Merkel who referred to him at the Munich Security Conference. For years I’ve been banging on about Humboldt’s importance today – a scientist who dared to put emotions and imagination into science. I can’t remember how often I have ended my talks and interviews with the sentiment that we need to put the sense of wonder for nature back into environmental debates because we also need an emotional appeal for the protection of our planet. And there I was, listening to Steinmeier’s speech last week … and he said exactly that. A politician actually said: ‘We will only protect what we love’.

Humboldt’s prescient environmental views but also his global thinking and his critical views of nationalism, slavery, colonial rule and his writings against the oppression of indigenous people make him universally appealing in today’s climate of alt–right populist movements and climate change deniers like Donald Trump. In his speech Steinmeier underlined that the environment is not bound by national borders and that we have a responsibility for nature … let’s hope that this will translate into environmental policies.

Review The Bookseller: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt

The first review for our forth coming graphic novel 'The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt" in The Bookseller:

“Glorious … Humboldt would have loved to have written it” ... what a fantastic beginning.