Adalbert von Chamisso

(Louis Charles Adélaïde de Chamisso de Boncourt)

30.1.1781 Boncourt, France - 21.8.1838 Berlin, Prussia.

The family Chamisso, of old French nobility, fled from their castle in Champagne during the French revolution and settled in Prussia. Adalbert made a career in the military services of Prussia - although with little love for this occupation. He developed a deep interest in natural history, decided to become a naturalist and studied botany in Berlin. 1815-1818 he took part in a Russian polar expedition (1). Afterwards, he obtained an employment at the Berlin botanical gardens, where he continued his scientific and literary work. Adalbert Chamisso died 1838, only one year after his much loved wife Antoine Piaste. 

Together with Eysenhardt (2), Adalbert Chamisso co-authored a  number of marine invertebrates, including some hydrozoans, of which certainly the well known Liriope tetraphylla (Chamisso & Eysenhardt, 1821) is the most prominent. 

Adalbert Chamisso is actually much better known (3), at least in  German speaking cultures, for his novella "Peter Schlemihl’s Remarkable Story," the wonderful tale of a man who sells his shadow to the devil for a bottomless purse. This trade brings wealth to Peter Schlemihl, but also exclusion from society and he ends in dispair. To end his ordeal, the demon offers him a second deal: his shadow against his soul. But Peter declines, although it means that he looses the woman he loves. With the aid of a pair of magic boots he is wandering the world searching for peace of mind; he finds it as a naturalist, and not in endless wealth. But his magic boots can’t bring him everywhere, he regrets not being able to visit the Pacific islands, notably the coral islands (in his language "zoophyte islands") . So even his magic tools, do not enable him to get the ultimate knowledge.

The admirable story of Peter Schlemihl certainly reflects the life and struggles of the naturalist A. Chamisso himself.

1)Kotzebue (1821) Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Beering's Straits for the purpose of exploring a North-East passage, undertaken in the years 1815-18. London. (note: also Carl Wilhelm Eysenhardt and Johan Friedrich Gustav von Eschscholtz, took part in this expedition, both are also authors of hydrozoan species)

2) Carl Wilhelm Eysenhardt, 1794-1825, Prussian physician and botanist, professor at Königsberg (now Kalingrad, Russia).

3) A. Chamisso also discovered the "alternations of generations" in the Thaliacea (salps). An island in the Bering Straits was also named after A. Chamisso. His poetic cycle "Frauenliebe und Leben" (1830) was set to music by R. Schumann.

Reference

Chamisso, A. v., & Eysenhardt, C. G. 1821. De animalibus quibusdam e classe vermium Linneana ... Nova Acta Phy.-Medd. Acad. Leopold Carol. 10(2): 345-374, plates 24-33.