Invited lecture at the German School in Rome, Italy

16 June 2023

Fellow’s presentation

at the Center for US-Mexican Studies at the University of California San Diego, USA

18 May 2023.

Lecture and discussion with students of the Deutsche Schule (German School) in Madrid, Spain

Virtual Lecture

Organised by the German Embassy in Madrid and the German General Consulate in Barcelona, Spain

5pm local time

Registration: https://forms.gle/5y1Do1abUs4BJcF19

More information: Wiss-100@madri-auswaertiges-amt.de

BFREE STUDIO

7857 Girard Ave, La Jolla, CA 92037

Please RSVP here:

https://www.bfreestudio.net/events/86/

The Prussian explorer Alexander von Humboldt is prominently featured across the California landscape: Humboldt Bay, Humboldt County. Humboldt Redwoods State Park, and elsewhere. Yet despite his desire to do so. Humboldt never visited California or the region now known as the American West. Nonetheless. California attracted Humboldt's attention as the northern edge of the Spanish Empire and as the western border of the nascent American empire in the nineteenth century. His fascination with the region and his scientific significance help to explain all these cartographic references.

Dr. Sandra Rebok will offer scholarly perspective on Humboldt's abiding and long-term interest in California, as well as California's interest in the famous Prussian.

XXIX Encuentro Humboldt (Humboldt Kolleg)

Asociación Alexander von Humboldt de España

"El papel de la Universidad en el mundo rural" 

Universidad de León (Spain)

 9 September 2022

Ciclo TRANSFER (ciclo de conferencias divulgativas)

Centro de Servicios Universitarios de Avilés

C. la Ferrería, 7, 9, 33402 Avilés, Spain

F2022 French Colonial Historical Society Annual Meeting Charleston

Goethe Institute Chicago

Lecture sponsored by the German General Consulate and the Spanish Consulate in Chicago

Lecture at the German American Heritage Center & Museum in Davenport, Iowa.

Even over two centuries after Alexander von

Humboldt’s celebrated American expedition

(1799-1804), the Prussian naturalist, historian

and humanist is well remembered on both sides

of the Atlantic. While some praise him as the

father of environmentalism, others question his

contribution to the sciences. While some take

him as a colonial explorer, others heroize him

as the ideological leader of the Independence

movement in Spanish America.

Conference:

SOCIETY FOR GERMAN-AMERICAN STUDIES

46TH ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM

“German Americans in Multicultural Societies”

April 21–23, 2022

University of Iowa, Iowa City

Conference at the Max Kade Institut Madison:

Nineteenth-Century Echoes:

German Settlers and Explorers in South America

APRIL 18–20, 2022

Pyle Center Auditorium, 702 Langdon Street, Madison

Numerous German naturalists undertook exploration voyages through South America during the 19th century, in different regions and fields of knowledge. While for some of them it was rather a brief visit to a limited area, others decided to stay for many years carrying out their research and collaborating with the local scholarly community. This paper will give a brief overview on the work of those naturalists and then focus on three of them: the Prussian Alexander von Humboldtand his American expedition (1799-1804), the botanist Eduard Otto and his voyage to Cuba, Venezuela and the United States (1848-1841) and the physician Fritz Müller who emigrated in 1852 to the German community of Blumenau, Santa Catarina, and did his fieldwork over four decades mostly in solitude, but in close collaboration through correspondence with the international scholarly community.

Virtual lecture organized by the

Royal Geographical Society - Hong Kong 

Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in Hong Kong

Time to be announced

Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia

Virtual lecture and book presentation

5pm local time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46NlQb320Bc

During the first days of June 1804, the Prussian explorer Alexander von Humboldt was a guest of president Jefferson in the White House, and took the opportunity to visit also Georgetown, Alexandria and Mount Vernon. This was at the end of his five-year exploration voyage through Spanish America, dedicated to the study of the natural history, for which he had obtained an unprecedented authorization by the Spanish king Carlos IV. The visit also happened right after the Louisiana Purchase and the beginning of a series of exploration voyages into the West, when his expertise was of particular importance for the young nation. 

Dr. Rebok will discuss Humboldt´s early interest for the young nation, the historic background of his visit, the specific goals he pursued and the impact his introduction to the most prominent political and scientific circles in Philadelphia and Washington had on his work.

Office of Historic Alexandria / Alexandria Association

Virtual lecture: 2pm EST

https://apps.alexandriava.gov/Calendar/Detail.aspx?si=33555

Center for German and European Studies and the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies Madison, USA

Virtual lecture:

https://mki.wisc.edu/event/live-virtual-lecture-from-the-spanish-royal-court-to-the-white-house-alexander-von-humboldts-quest-for-knowledge-in-a-world-of-politics/

The year 2019 marked the 250th anniversary the birth of Alexander von Humboldt, the Prussian explorer, naturalist, historian and humanist, whose wide-ranging work continues to influence scientific theories and movements to this day. This lecture discusses Humboldt’s role between the declining Spanish empire and the rising American nation at the time of his visit to the United States in the spring of 1804. It analyzes the delicate balance Humboldt struck between science and politics, focusing on how he made use of the political connections offered by monarchical Spain on the one hand and Jefferson’s cabinet on the other, while the two nations, in turn, used his scientific work for their own strategic purposes. Rather than being caught between the interests of these two nations (and those of others), Humboldt created what can be called an Empire of Knowledge, an elaborate worldwide network through which he circulated information, scientific ideas, and resources.

German Consulate, Atlanta

French Consulate, Atlanta

Explorers Club, United States 

Virtual lecture:

https://explorers.org/events/detail/exploration-beyond-borders-humboldt-and-his-ties-to-france

This lecture provides an overview of Humboldt’s scientific mission, his method, and main achievements, and will explain in which way his exploration voyage was different from other expeditions of time. In particular, she will discuss how Humboldt managed to navigate his scholarly endeavors through the political interests of different powers, not only during his voyage in colonial America, but also in the decades following, while elaborating its results.

Among all the nations Humboldt visited, besides his native Germany, he was closest to France—his second home country—which played a key role in the development of his larger scientific project. This lecture will provide an insight in his manifold connections to this nation, from the moment he received in Paris the long-awaited opportunity to participate in a government exploration voyage, to his life in Napoleon´s France, after his return and his later years, when he undertook diplomatic missions in Paris for the Prussian Court.

Monday, November 16 at 6:00 pm ET live on explorers.org, our YouTube channel, and on our Facebook Live!

Goethe Institute United States (Goethe Pop Up Kansas, Houston and Seattle)

Virtual lecture

https://www.goethe.de/ins/us/en/sta/ppk/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=22007366

In 1804, famed German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) arrived in the United States after a five-year exploration voyage through the Spanish colonies. Here, he became acquainted with the most prominent scholarly and political circles in Philadelphia and Washington. He also met several times with President Jefferson in the new capital and provided the US government with geographical and statistical material that he had taken from the Spanish archives in Madrid and Mexico. After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and diplomatic disputes between the United States and Spain regarding the borders of the acquired territory, Jefferson was much interested in Humboldt’s expertise. The fact that Humboldt did generously pass information to the young nation, as part of the free circulation of knowledge he practiced, yet has also attracted criticism. In her lecture, Dr. Rebok explores the questions of how useful these documents actually were for Jefferson’s vision for the West, why Humboldt felt entitled to freely dispose of this knowledge, and what this means for our modern understanding if science and its role in society. 

Sandra Rebok presents her work on the German biologist Fritz Mueller, who write the first scientific defense of Charles Darwin´s evolutionary theory (1859), by applying Darwin´s theories on his own field of study in Brazil. This work was published in 1864 under the title Für Darwin. She will explain who Mueller was, the research he undertook and the scientific networks he developed, focusing particularly on the close collaboration he developed with Darwin. 

Maison Dora Maar

Menerbes, France

Boston, USA

Goethe Institut

Time and place to be announced

POSTPONED

Instituto Cervantes

31 West Ohio St. Chicago, IL 60654

Organised by the Instituto Cervantes, Goethe Institut and the German Consulate in Chicago

POSTPONED

Center for German and European Studies and the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies Madison, USA

POSTPONED

Goethe House Wisconsin

Milwaukee, USA

POSTPONED

Kansas City Public Library

Plaza Branch/Truman Forum Auditorium

Kansas City, USA

POSTPONED

University of Missouri-Kansas City

POSTPONED

Organized by: Escola Europea de Pensament Lluís Vives, Vicerectorat d'Igualtat, Diversitat i Sostenibilitat y Unitat d’Igualtat 

Aula Magna. Centre Cultural La Nau

Valencia, Spain

Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut and University of Tübingen