Ein Spaziergang um die Welt von Alexander Freiherrn von Hübner (Amerika, Japan, China)

Title

Ein Spaziergang um die Welt von Alexander Freiherrn von Hübner (Amerika, Japan, China)

Book shows on page 459 with 317 wood engravings, partly in the text (including 88 full-page views of, for example, Queenstown, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Yedo, Osaka, Nagasaki, Shanghai, Peking, Hong Kong, Macao, etc. Nos. 4/6/10 are missing), and a portrait of the author. The journey from America through Japan to China with a German description. 1 title page, preface, 3 pages of index, I. America, II. Japan, III. China. It was published by Heinrich Schmidt & Carl Günther in Leipzig. Pages 1-10 and 57 are loose, with missing pages 11-16.

c. 1882

Artist

Hübner (1811-1892)

Historical Description

A travelogue or travel description is the (literary) account of a traveller's observations and experiences. Such descriptions vary greatly in content and value, depending on the purpose of the particular journey. They are often richly illustrated. The oldest travel accounts are those of Scylax of Coryanda and Pytheas of Massilia. The travel literature of antiquity was sparse, and even from the early Middle Ages only a few works of this kind survive, such as the accounts of the Vikings' journeys to the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and Vinland (present-day North America). In contrast, there is a whole series of travel works in the Jewish and Arabic literature of the Middle Ages, such as those of the Arabs Ibn Battūta, Ibn Fadlan, al-Bīrūnī, Ibn Dschubair, the Jews Benjamin of Tudela, Meshullam da Volterra and others. They are important sources for knowledge of the conditions in these countries at that time. Since the invention of printing, travel literature soon experienced an enormous boom after the discovery of America and the expeditions of the Portuguese to the Indian Ocean, combined with the revival of science in general, opened up new and vast areas for research. Collections of travel works, such as those by Johannes Huttich and Simon Grynaeus (1532), Giovan Battista Ramusio (1550 ) and Richard Hakluyt (1598), were therefore already published in the 16th century. In the middle of the 17th century, travel accounts received a new boost from the boom in trade, especially by the English. By the end of the 19th century, travelogues by scientifically educated travellers were available in the languages of almost all "civilised" peoples about almost all parts of the world. Some travelogues achieved "world literary significance and at the same time the highest source rank". Some of the reports written in foreign languages by non-German explorers were made accessible to the German public in translations. Among the Germans who stood out with their travel reports, Georg Forster and Alexander von Humboldt were of particular importance; for the knowledge of America, the works of Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied were significant. For Africa, the reports of Hornemann and Barth and many more. Especially for Egypt Lepsius and Klunzinger, for China the five-volume work by Richthofen, based on journeys in the years 1862-1872 to the inner provinces, which at that time hardly any Europeans had seen. In addition to scholarly travel literature, another type of travel literature developed towards the end of the 19th century with the improvement of means of transport, oriented towards the better-known countries of the world and preferably dealing with the beauties of nature, social and political conditions or focusing on the personal experiences, reflections and feelings of the traveller, and thus more or less belletristic nature. Fictional travelogues are a borderline case of travel description: the so-called Robinsonades and the scientifically influenced travel descriptions such as those by Jules Verne.