Background

Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen was born on May 5, 1833, in Carlsruhe, Prussia (now Poland) to Karl Richthofen and Ferdinande Richthofen.

Education

After completing his secondary education at the Catholic Gymnasium in Breslau (now Wroclaw), in 1850 he took up the study of geology at the university there and two years later went to the University of Berlin, where he studied Medicine and from which he graduated in 1856.

Career

In 1857 Richthofen joined a party of notable geologists, including C. W. Gumbel, on a geological tour of North Tirol and the Vorarlberg Alps. He was assigned the task of compiling the combined report and continuing the survey. Richthofen produced an admirable exposition of the Triassic succession in those areas. More important for Alpine geology was his independent publication.

In this work, Richthofen successfully elaborated upon the Triassic succession in the South Tirol and the conditions under which it was formed. In opposition to the more catastrophic concepts then prevalent, he attributed most of the changes in the form of the ground and the tectonic disturbances to slow crustal movements. He also attributed the dolomitic masses and some other parts of the Triassic limestones in the southern Alps to reef-building corals upon a slowly subsiding seafloor.

Richthofen, with the aid of the Austrian Imperial Geological Institute, extended his research to the trachytic mountain ranges of the Carpathians, particularly in Transylvania. In 1860 he served as a geologist with a Prussian government mission to Southeast Asia and the Far East, where his travels included an overland journey from Bangkok to Moulmein. But little came of this mission - most of his notes and collected materials were lost. In June 1862 he left for California and stayed there for the next six years, working as a journalist for German newspapers to which he reported on the mineral wealth and gold strikes (including the Comstock Lode).

In the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, he recognized a definite sequence of igneous rocks - from propylite to trachyte and basalt - that was later confirmed by American geologists. In September 1868, four years after the Taiping Rebellion, he was able to realize his chief ambition and visit China. His trip was financed first by the Bank of California and later by the Chamber of Commerce of Shanghai in return for reports in English on the economic resources of the areas he visited. By May 1872 he had made seven long journeys and had traversed every province of the Chinese Empire, except Kansu and Yunnan. His reports, published as Letters on China (Shanghai, 1870-1872), gave the first indications of the importance of the Shantung coalfield and emphasized the commercial potential of Tsingtao, a port later occupied by the Germans.

In 1872 Richthofen returned to Germany and spent the next thirty-three years mainly in writing and lecturing on China and promoting the study of geography in German universities. His written accounts of China, under the liberal patronage of the government, were planned on a monumental scale; but they progressed slowly because of his numerous academic commitments. He was president of the Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde in Berlin from 1873 until his death. In 1875 he was elected professor of geology at the University of Bonn but delayed assuming the duties for four years while he compiled the first and part of a second volume on China.

In 1883 Richthofen received the chair of geography at Leipzig; his inaugural address was “Aufgaben und Methoden der heutigen Geographic.” In 1886 he was persuaded to return to Berlin as a professor of geography, and he held this post until he died suddenly of a stroke. In his later years, he almost completed the establishment of the Museum fur Meereskunde at the University of Berlin (it was finished by his successor, Albrecht Penck) and acted as rector of the university in 1903, when he delivered a notable address entitled “Triebkrafte und Richtungen der Erdkunde im neunzehnten Jahrhundert.”

Richthofen’s chief contributions were to Alpine stratigraphy; the geology and geography of China; geomorphology; and geographical methodology. The first volume of his monumental China: Ergebnisse eigener Reisen unddarauf gegriindeter Studien appeared in 1877. It dealt largely with the morphology and geology of Inner Asia and China and their influence on the movements of peoples. The next parts, published between 1882 and 1885, discussed North China and were based mainly on Richthofen’s field observations and collections. They included special analyses by August Schenk of the fossil floras and an atlas of twenty-seven hypsographical and twenty-seven geological maps compiled largely from fieldwork and instrumental (aneroid) measurements.

Richthofen concluded that the planes of unconformity in the rock series in China were due to marine abrasion on a subsiding landmass. He also described the masses of loess, which he attributed to subaerial deposition by wind, except in some localities where a “lake loess” indicated an association with water. When Richthofen died, the volume on southern China and the second part of the atlas were unfinished; but the text was completed from his copious notes by Ernst Tiessen and the maps were completed by Max Croll. These works were published in 1912 at the expense of the Prussian Kulturministerium. Tiessen also edited a full summary of the original notebooks, with a selection of the many admirable field sketches of people and landscapes, in Ferdinand von Richthofen's Tagebiiclier aus China.

In 1875 he contributed a paper on geology to G. von Neumayer's Anleitung zu Wissenschaftlichen Beobachtungen auf Reisen.

In 1886 he published a greatly enlarged version of this paper under the somewhat too comprehensive title Fiihrer fur Forschungsreisende. The first part of this guide deals with the techniques of field location and observation. The second part discusses at length the interrelationships of geology and surface forms, with considerable detail given to the physical processes involved. The final part contains accounts of soils, rocks, and mountain structures and classifies the main kinds of landforms (Bodenplastik) according to the process or dominant process in their formation. Thus the genetic aspect predominates, and external forms are used as sub-classificatory indices only where unavoidable. The text is illustrated by more than 100 small line blocks and in its classification of material and approach was the first truly successful compilation of genetic geomorphology. It immediately became the standard work in Germany for the systematic treatment of landforms and strongly influenced Albrecht Penck’s Morphologie der Erdoberflache.

Besides his large additions to the factual knowledge of China and elsewhere, Richthofen made outstanding contributions to geographical methodology and to the advancement of geography as an autonomous science. From about 1875 he devoted most of his time to geographical matters and took an interest in all branches of the discipline, although his geological training led him to emphasize the influence of the nature of the land surface upon its inhabitants. Richthofen believed that geography was concerned with the causal interrelationships of all formations and phenomena related to the surface of the earth (that is, Erdoberflachenkunde, rather than the more comprehensive Erdkunde, or earth science). It was a science based on field observations and measurements and was always concerned with the assembly of spatial distributions upon a physical background. The method of geographical investigation, however, varied with the scale of the project and aim of the prospector. There were two main fields of geography: special and general. Special geography was descriptive and synthetic and itself fell into two categories: chorography and chorology.

Chorography comprised the encyclopaedic registering, within the confines of any area (Erdrawn), of the systematic assembly of the phenomena and features belonging to the six realms of nature: land, water, atmosphere, plants, animals, and man. The analysis was not required except to divide the whole or the bigger areas into smaller components or unit areas. Chorology, although descriptive, went beyond chorography because it tried to explain the areal distribution of phenomena by studying their causal and dynamic (spatial) relationships.

Richthofen is generally regarded by geologists today as a stratigrapher who became the “Prince of Forschungsreisende." Geographers and geomorphologists rightly acclaim him as one of the greatest forces in the modern development of their disciplines. Many of his students and followers held important chairs in geography in central Europe until the mid-1930’s.

Achievements

• Ferdinand von Richthofen is considered to be one of the most outstanding geographers of the nineteenth century. He set standards for research in China, he introduced new methods of investigation, he founded an influential school of geography and successfully organised academic events of note, and he acted as an advisor in German foreign affairs.
  
  Initially, his research had little to do with value-free geographical investigation but was dedicated to the geological survey of the Chinese coal reserves. It was once he gained a new backer, the Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, that Richthofen began to consider general geographical issues, although his observations clearly revealed the influence of Prussian-German mentality and European culture.
  
  Richthofen's most noted publication was "China". In "China" Richthofen did indeed develop a few important ground-rules for regional geography that continued to be influential far into the twentieth century; however his major contributions to the discipline stem from his second major work. This was the "Führer für Forschungsreisende", a discussion of which provides the third focus of analysis. It is demonstrated that in this work Richthofen decidedly shaped German geomorphological processes of observation and analysis and established geomorphological research practices that differed notably from the American school.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Memoirs Presented to the California Academy of Sciences

    (Volume I)

    1868
  • Fuhrer Fur Forschungsreisende: Anleitung Zu Beobachtungen Uber Gegenstande Der Physischen Geographie Und Geologie 1862
  • Geognostische Beschreibung der Umgegend Von Predazzo, Sanet Cassian Und der Seisser Alpe in Süd-Tyrol 1860
  • China: Ergebnisse Eigener Reisen Un Daruf Gegründeter Studien 1877
  • Aufgaben und Methoden der heutigen Geographie 1883

Views

Richthofen’s geomorphological studies formed part of his geology and the fundamental basis of his geography. The chorological method of special geography led to the second main field of geography - general geography, which dealt primarily with the general study of earthbound phenomena in an abstract or analytical way.

It proceeded from the particular to the general and examined phenomena from four points of view or principles: morphology; material nature; dynamic or spatial interconnections; and development (forces and causes of change).

Each of these principles would provide a distinctive aspect of general geography, while the last, or genetic, the principle would serve to interpret the other three. But Richthofen preferred to apply all four aspects to the study of the six realms of nature. Thereby he brought the analytical approach into a closer relationship with chronological studies and unified the numerous branches of geography within a broad physical framework.

His scheme, however, was obviously two-sided; and while many of his disciples analyzed spatial arrangements of phenomena on a wide scale, others carried out research in-depth on small areas.

Quotations: "Hour after hour he gave up his valuable time to me, and opened volumes from his rich store of information… Baron von Richthofen possesses in a remarkable manner the faculty of gathering up the details presented to his view; putting them together and generalizing on them with rare judgement; forming out of what would be to a lesser genius, but scattered and unintelligible fragments, a uniform, and comprehensive whole… not one hint was given me that did not subsequently prove its value; his kind thoughts for my comfort and amusement were never ceasing, and his refined and cultivated intellect and genial manner rendered the recollections of my stay in the German capital some of the most pleasant of my life."

Membership

Richthofen was a member and served as president of the German Geographical Society for many years.

Connections

In 1879 Ferdinand von Richthofen was married to Irmgard von Richthofen.

Father:

Karl Heinrich Ludwig Richthofen (Baron von Richthofen)

1801-1874

Mother:

Ferdinande Richthofen

Wife:

Irmgard Gertrud Sophie von Richthofen

1853-1910

Brother:

Eugen Diprand Anton Samuel Paul Freiherr von Richthofen (von Richthofen)

1835-1877

Brother:

Karl von Richthofen

1832-1876

Brother:

Lothar Oskar Carl Von Richthofen

born 1832

nephew:

Manfred von Richthofen

associate:

Sven Anders Hedin

19 February 1865 – 26 November 1952, he was one of the most famous students of Richthofen's. During four expeditions to Central Asia, he made the Transhimalaya known in the West and located sources of the Brahmaputra, Indus and Sutlej Rivers. He also mapped lake Lop Nur, and the remains of cities, grave sites and the Great Wall of China in the deserts of the Tarim Basin. In his book Från pol till pol (From Pole to Pole), Hedin describes a journey through Asia and Europe between the late 1880s and the early 1900s. While traveling, Hedin visited Turkey, the Caucasus, Tehran, Iraq, lands of the Kyrgyz people and the Russian Far East, India, China and Japan. The posthumous publication of his Central Asia Atlas marked the conclusion of his life's work

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography Volume 11
  1975