Ida Pfeiffer

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Ida Pfeiffer, lithograph by Adolf Dauthage , 1855

Ida Pfeiffer , b. Reyer (born October 14, 1797 in Vienna ; † October 27, 1858 ibid) was an Austrian globetrotter who was the first European woman to cross the interior of the island of Borneo . After the difficult years of her youth and marriage, she spent the third stage of her life as a world traveler and successful travel writer. As a woman in the Biedermeier period, she was a highly regarded exception. On her extensive voyages she covered a total of 240,000 km at sea and 32,000 km on four continents. She wrote 13 books about it, which have been translated into seven languages.

Childhood and youth

Ida Reyer was born as the third child of a wealthy merchant family in Vienna. Until she was nine years old, when her father Aloys Reyer died, she received the same strict upbringing as her five brothers. Educational goals were courage, determination, frugality, and resistance to pain. Meals were simple, often scarce. Even the smallest wishes of the children often remained unfulfilled. The father promised in jest that he would later train Ida as an officer. She made the unusual role model her own, dressed like her brothers, took part in their games, was sporty and enterprising. Dolls had no appeal to her. Even as a child she loved reading travel reports and dreamed of taking part in expeditions and seeing distant countries.

After the death of the father, the mother tried to reverse the previous male-oriented upbringing of the daughter. At first, she refused to wear the clothes she had previously worn. As a reaction, Ida became critically ill and was finally allowed to dress up to the age of 13 on medical advice as before, but did not change her behavior afterwards, again in girl's clothes. Looking back, she judged: "... how ridiculous I must look in the long clothes when I was still running and jumping and behaving like a wild boy in everything!" To avoid the usual female activities such as playing the piano or training in handicrafts, she cut her fingers or burned her hand.

A new situation arose after a tutor for Ida was hired in 1810. She trusted him, he gradually convinced her to accept her role as a girl. In her own words: "I even learned various feminine skills such as sewing, knitting and cooking ... I owe it to him that over the course of three to four years I fully came to understand the duties of my gender ...". And finally they both fell in love. Even after the end of his employment, the teacher stayed in the family home, and in 1814 he proposed to Ida. The mother refused to agree because she did not see him as a good enough match. She forbade her daughter to have any further contact with the applicant.

Marriage and raising children

Ida, for her part, turned down a number of marriage proposals. In order to escape the broken relationship with her mother, however, in 1820 she consented to a marriage of convenience with a widower 24 years her senior, the well-off lawyer Mark Anton Pfeiffer from Lemberg . Pfeiffer soon ran into financial difficulties - he had won a lawsuit against corrupt officials, made many enemies and lost the usual assignments from public offices. After he had to close his law firm in Lviv as a result, he looked for work opportunities in Galicia , Vienna and Switzerland , mostly in vain. These circumstances did not allow a normal married life together. The couple lived separately - he in Lemberg, she in Vienna - but never divorced. Ida took over the upbringing of their two sons, for a long time under oppressive living conditions. In her autobiography she describes this time: “... now I often hardly knew where ... (I) should get that little bit of money just to buy what I needed most. I did all the housework, I was cold and hungry, I worked in secret for money, I gave lessons in drawing and music, and despite my best efforts, there were often days when I had little more to offer my poor children than dry bread for lunch . "

The inheritance after the death of her mother in 1837 freed Ida Pfeiffer from pressing worries and enabled her to raise her sons according to her own ideas. When they were both adults and established in their professions, she finally saw the opportunity to pursue her passion for travel and adventure. While visiting family in Trieste , she saw the sea for the first time and, as she later wrote, awoke in her "an almost unmanageable desire to travel". She had used much of the inherited wealth for her husband, who died in 1838, and for the upbringing of her children, so her financial resources were very limited. But she was used to thrift and, most importantly, determined to achieve her goal.

The travels

Palestine and Egypt (1842)

Binding of The Story of Ida Pfeiffer and her Travels in many Lands , 1879

On March 22, 1842, at the age of 44, Ida Pfeiffer left Vienna on her first big trip. She pretended that she only wanted to visit a friend in Constantinople , something that seemed extremely risky to friends and relatives. Their real goal, however, was Palestine and the neighboring countries, a politically troubled area that was also not free from outbreaks of the plague. The journey went over the Danube and the Black Sea to Constantinople, Beirut , Jerusalem , the Dead Sea , Damascus , Baalbek and Alexandria to Cairo ; from there after a camel ride through the desert to the isthmus of Suez back to Vienna, with stays in Sicily , Naples , Rome and Florence . She returned home in December 1842. Friends and a publisher persuaded her to publish her travel diary. It appeared anonymously in 1843 under the title Journey of a Viennese woman in the Holy Land and was a great success with the public because of the simple, catchy style and the credibility of its descriptions. It was not until 1856, with the fourth edition, that Ida Pfeiffer declared herself an author. The income made it possible for her to finance further trips.

Iceland, Norway, Sweden (1845)

In preparation for future trips, Ida Pfeiffer acquired knowledge of natural history, including the basics of professional animal and plant preparation . She learned English and Danish and the basics about photography, which as a daguerreotype was still in its infancy. The journey to the north began in April 1845 and led via Prague , Leipzig , Hamburg and Kiel to Copenhagen and from there to Iceland . Accompanied by a local guide, Ida Pfeiffer visited sulfur springs and geysers , grottos and volcanoes on strenuous excursions . Since she had imagined Iceland as "the real Arcadia " , as the perfect idyll of country life, she was disappointed with what she had experienced. After a hard crossing on a sailing ship, she arrived back in Copenhagen, traveled on to Christiania, today's Oslo , and from there took a tour in a horse-drawn carriage, which she drove herself. In Stockholm she was presented to the Swedish queen. She was back in Vienna in October 1845. The following year, Die Reise nach den Scandinavischen Nord ( Journey to the Scandinavian North) was published in two volumes .

First trip around the world (1846–1848)

The Story of Ida Pfeiffer… , 1879. Illustration (Madras / India)
The Story of Ida Pfeiffer… , 1879. Illustration (Cape Horn)
Ida Pfeiffer in a traveling costume

Ida Pfeiffer set out on this trip in May 1846, arriving in Rio de Janeiro via Hamburg . In Brazil , she narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. In February 1847 she made the dreaded ship passage through the stormy waters around Cape Horn to Valparaíso in Chile . Via Tahiti , where she was received by the Queen, she reached Macau , then Hong Kong and Canton . In these places the appearance of a white woman was such an extraordinary event that she found herself in constant distress. Via Singapore it went on to Ceylon , from there after long excursions at the end of October 1847 to southern India . The main stops on her journey through the Indian subcontinent were Calcutta , Benares and Bombay . She found acceptance in the homes of rich and distinguished Indians, took part in a tiger hunt, but also traveled long distances on ox carts. In April 1848 she traveled on to Mesopotamia and Persia , she visited Baghdad , accompanied caravans through the desert, saw the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh , and was threatened by robbers. The British consul in Tabriz , who knew the country, was deeply impressed by the audacity of their undertakings. We went home via Armenia , Georgia , Odessa , Constantinople and Athens . She arrived in Vienna in November 1848, shortly after Prince von Windisch-Graetz had put down the October uprising there and thus ended the revolution of 1848 in Austria . The records of this trip, A Women's Journey Around the World , appeared in three volumes in 1850.

Second world tour (1851–1855)

At first, Ida Pfeiffer wanted to finally retire at the age of 54 - but gave up this resolution and left Vienna again in May 1851 to travel to South Africa via London . In Cape Town , she wondered whether the interior of Africa and then Australia should be her next destinations, but then crossed the Indian Ocean towards Singapore. From there she explored the island diversity of Dutch India, today's Indonesia , with the main islands of Borneo , Java and Sumatra . In particular, her way through the interior of Borneo, which she was the first to cross white, later became a model for other explorers. In Sumatra in 1852 she was the first white man to venture to join the Batak , who had a reputation for being ogre.

After visiting the Sunda Islands and the Moluccas , she sailed across the Pacific and arrived in California in September 1853 . Here, in the final stages of the great California gold rush , she visited some of the gold rush towns. Then she turned south to Ecuador and Peru . A revolution forced them to change the planned itinerary. Instead of going over the Andes to Brazil, she drove back to Ecuador, crossed the Cordilleras and at the end of May 1854 reached North America again via Panama . In New Orleans she saw the slave markets, initially traveling north on the Mississippi - including to Chicago , the Great Lakes and Niagara Falls . After stays in New York and Boston , she set foot on European soil again in London in November 1854. In 1856 she had the four volumes of her travelogue published: My second trip around the world .

After her return she was so popular that readers of the fashion magazine Die Wiener Elegante urgently asked for a picture of the world travelers. The paper then published a slightly idealized depiction of Ida Pfeiffer in "Reise-Costumes" and with a butterfly net.

Mauritius and Madagascar (1856-1858)

Pfeiffer, shortly after her return from Madagascar, 1856

The destination of the next trip, which began in May 1856, was to be Australia - the only continent that Ida Pfeiffer had not yet visited. After stops in Berlin, Amsterdam and London, she boarded a ship to Mauritius in Rotterdam . She stayed there for several months and in April 1857 traveled on to Madagascar . Despite the generally xenophobic attitude of Queen Ranavalona , the traveler was given the opportunity to visit the interior, the capital Antananarivo and there also the Queen. However, when domestic political unrest broke out, she was accused of espionage, imprisoned and expelled along with five other Europeans. Feverish and escorted by soldiers, she had to cross swampy and malaria-infested areas for 53 days on the way to the coast . In September 1857 she was back in Mauritius, survived several episodes of illness and planned to travel to Australia. After falling ill again in February 1858, she was forced to return to Europe and reached her hometown via London and Berlin in September 1858. She died in Vienna on the night of October 27-28, 1858, of the long-term effects of malaria, which she had been infected with years earlier in Sumatra. The two volumes of The Journey to Madagascar were edited posthumously by her son Oscar in 1861.

Writings and collections

Ida Pfeiffer's books became popular as entertainment reading for the upper middle class. They allowed their author to finance new trips each time. Since their records were no longer critically edited before publication, they did not always withstand scientific claims. Nevertheless, they were also of interest to ethnologists , with reservations . The cultural peculiarities of foreign peoples, forms of conjugal cohabitation and inheritance arrangements, the appearance of living spaces, houses and settlements, the ritual processes at weddings and funerals were described. The traveler described, sometimes with very subjective assessments, the appearance of the people she met and dealt in detail with the contrasts between “savages”, meaning the indigenous people, and “civilized”, the representatives of the colonial powers . As a woman, she found access to many places that would have been closed to male travelers. This is one of the reasons why she was able to enrich the knowledge of her time with new geographical and ethnological facts, despite her inadequate academic qualifications.

On the trip to Palestine, Ida Pfeiffer had already begun with great ambition to collect natural produce under often difficult circumstances . It brought back a total of several thousand plants, beetles, butterflies, crabs, fish, birds, small mammals and minerals, but also objects of ethnographic and cultural-historical interest. She offered these finds to European museums for sale. B. They ended up in the holdings of the Natural History Museum and the Museum of Ethnology . Several of the animals that had collected they are named after her, including a native of Borneo shrimp (Palaemon idae), a Stabheuschreckenart (Myronides pfeifferae), a sea slug (Vaginula idae) and Wasserfroschart from Madagascar (Rana idae).

Public reputation

Grave of Ida Pfeiffer

By disseminating her travel reports, Ida Pfeiffer became known to the general public as well as to international experts. During a stay in Berlin she met Alexander von Humboldt , "... he received me extremely friendly, and my travels not only seemed to interest him, he was so amazed that he exclaimed several times:" You have achieved incredible things. "... by Baroness Bettina Arnim I was not warmly received less ... Compositeur Mayerbeer and Neapolitan Muskau settled in my list ... " Humboldt gave her an invitation to the Prussian court of King Frederick William IV. she received in 1856 the" Gold medal for Science and Art". Together with the geographer Carl Ritter , Humboldt worked to ensure that the “Berlin Ethnographic Society” made Ida Pfeiffer the first woman to be made an honorary member. The French Geographical Society also accepted them as an honorary member. In London, the statutes of the Geographical Society there prohibited membership of a woman, but there she was celebrated in a different way.

Her undertakings and her presence in public, which was completely unusual for a woman at the time, were also the cause of critical voices. It appeared caricatures and lampoons, the media has been considerable debate about them and their role. 34 years after her death, Ida Pfeiffer, whose grave was originally in the Sankt Marxer Friedhof , was given a grave of honor in the Vienna Central Cemetery (Group 0, Row 1, Number 12) after the Vienna Association for Advanced Women's Education decided in favor of it had started. The chairman of the Imperial and Royal Geographical Society called her in 1897 "... even today undisputedly the most important world traveler". After that, it was forgotten for around 100 years. In the meantime, her life and travels have been picked up on radio and documentary films, her travel books have been reprinted, and the texts have been recognized in literary and ethnological treatises.

The 50 schilling banknote from the 1995/1997 series would have been dedicated to Ida Pfeiffer . Because of the introduction of the euro, only the 500 and 1000 Schilling notes were issued from this series.

In 2008 the Ida-Pfeiffer-Weg in Vienna- Landstrasse (3rd district) was named after her.

personal description

Contemporaries described Ida Pfeiffer as a small, slender person with a slightly hunched posture, with slow, controlled movements. She was in robust health and was unusually persistent. She judged soberly and, if necessary, made quick decisions. She was so cautious in personal dealings that more detailed knowledge was required to find her adventurous journeys credible. Although she spent many years of her life in the most unconventional way, she had absolutely conventional views about the real role of women in society . On occasional interlocutors, she appeared "like an able housewife who had never got beyond her domestic affairs".

Works

Original editions:

New editions with changed titles:

literature

Web links

Commons : Ida Pfeiffer  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Ida Pfeiffer  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The source for this quote and all of the following is a work on "Identity and Perception in Ida von Hahn-Hahn and Ida Pfeiffer" ( Memento from April 28, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Journey to Madagascar: together with a biography of the author , Volume 1, Vienna 1861 ( digitized)
  3. ↑ Image of the planned banknote with Pfeiffer's portrait ( memento from January 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) at Ron Wise's Banknoteworld: Austria: Unissued Proof Notes ( memento from January 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Table of contents online ,
    cover picture online .
  5. ↑ Excerpts online .
  6. ↑ Full text online (PDF; 906 kB) , accessed on March 30, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Pfeiffer, Ida
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reyer, Ida (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian explorer and writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1797
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH October 27, 1858
Place of death Vienna