Editing Adelbert von Chamisso (section)

== Life ==
The son of Louis Marie, Count of [[:de:Chamisso (Adelsgeschlecht)|Chamisso]], by his marriage to Anne Marie Gargam, Chamisso began life as Louis Charles Adélaïde de Chamissot at the ''[[château]]'' of [[Boncourt, Aisne|Boncourt]] at [[Sivry-Ante|Ante]], in [[Champagne (historical province)|Champagne]], France, the ancestral seat of his family.<ref name="EB1911">{{EB1911|inline=1|wstitle=Chamisso, Adelbert von|volume=5|pages=825–826}}</ref>  His name appears in several forms, one of the most common being ''Ludolf Karl Adelbert von Chamisso.''<ref name="pichi-sermolli1996">Rodolfo E.G. Pichi Sermolli. 1996. ''Authors of Scientific Names in Pteridophyta''. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. {{ISBN|978-0-947643-90-4}}</ref>

In 1790, the [[French Revolution]] drove his parents out of France with their seven children, and they went successively to [[Liège]], [[the Hague]], [[Würzburg]], and [[Bayreuth]], and possibly [[Hamburg]],<!--where he reportedly met both a younger boy in [[Johann August Wilhelm Neander]] and another younger boy in [[Karl August Varnhagen von Ense]]--> before settling in [[Berlin]]. There, in 1796, the young Chamisso was fortunate in obtaining the post of page-in-waiting to the queen of [[Kingdom of Prussia|Prussia]], and in 1798 he entered a Prussian infantry regiment as an [[Ensign (rank)|ensign]] to train for a career as an army officer.{{Citation needed|date=May 2023}}

[[File:Chamisso-tomb.JPG|thumb|Chamisso's tomb in Berlin]]
Shortly thereafter, thanks to the [[Peace of Tilsit]], his family was able to return to France, but Chamisso remained in Prussia and continued his military career. He had little formal education, although he is a noted alumnus of the French Highschool of Berlin ([[Französisches Gymnasium Berlin|Französisches Gymnasium]]), that has existed since 1689 for the express purpose of accommodating the children of exiled French nobles. While in the [[Prussia]]n military service in [[Berlin]] he assiduously studied [[natural science]] for three years. In collaboration with [[Karl August Varnhagen von Ense|Varnhagen von Ense]], in 1803 he founded the ''Berliner Musenalmanach'', the publication in which his first verses appeared. The enterprise was a failure, and, interrupted by the Napoleonic wars, it came to an end in 1806. It brought him, however, to the notice of many of the literary celebrities of the day and established his reputation as a rising poet.<ref name="EB1911"/>

Chamisso had become a lieutenant in 1801, and in 1805 he accompanied his regiment to [[Hamelin]], where he shared in the humiliation of the town's capitulation the next year. Placed on [[parole]], he went to France, but both his parents were dead; returning to Berlin in the autumn of 1807, he obtained his release from the Prussian service early the following year. Homeless and without a profession, disillusioned and despondent, Chamisso lived in Berlin until 1810, when through the services of an old friend of the family he was offered a professorship at the ''lycée'' at [[Napoléonville]] in the [[Vendée]].<ref name="EB1911"/>

He set out to take up the post, but instead joined the circle of [[Madame de Staël]], and followed her in her [[exile]] to [[Coppet]] in [[Switzerland]], where, devoting himself to [[botany|botanical research]], he remained nearly two years. In 1812 he returned to Berlin, where he continued his scientific studies. In the summer of the eventful year, 1813, he wrote the prose narrative ''[[Peter Schlemihl]], the man who sold his shadow''. This, the most famous of all his works, has been translated into most [[Europe]]an languages ([[English language|English]] by [[William Howitt]]). It was written partly to divert his own thoughts and partly to amuse the children of his friend [[Julius Eduard Hitzig]].<ref name="EB1911"/>

In 1815, Chamisso was appointed botanist to the [[Russia]]n ship ''[[Rurik expedition|Rurik]]'',<ref>{{cite book |last=Daum |first=Andreas W.|authorlink=Andreas Daum |editor-last=Berghoff |editor-first=Hartmut |title=Explorations and Entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I |publisher=Berghahn Books |date=2019 |pages=79–102 |chapter=German Naturalists in the Pacific around 1800: Entanglement, Autonomy, and a Transnational Culture of Expertise }}</ref> fitted out at the expense of Count [[Nikolay Rumyantsev]], which [[Otto von Kotzebue]] (son of [[August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue|August von Kotzebue]]) commanded on a scientific voyage round the world.<ref name="EB1911"/> He collected at the [[Cape of Good Hope]] in January 1818 in the company of [[Georg Ludwig Engelhard Krebs|Krebs]], [[Mund and Maire]].<ref>''"Botanical Exploration of Southern Africa"'' - Gunn & Codd (1981)</ref> His [[diary]] of the expedition (''Tagebuch'', 1821) is a fascinating account of the expedition to the [[Pacific Ocean]] and the [[Bering Sea]]. During this trip Chamisso described a number of new species found in what is now the San Francisco Bay Area. Several of these, including the [[California poppy]], ''Eschscholzia californica'', were named after his friend [[Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz]], the Rurik's [[entomology|entomologist]]. In return, Eschscholtz named a variety of plants, including the genus ''[[Camissonia]]'', after Chamisso. On his return in 1818 he was made custodian of the botanical gardens in Berlin, and was elected a member of the [[Prussian Academy of Sciences | Academy of Sciences]], and in 1819 he married his friend Hitzig's foster daughter Antonie Piaste (1800–1837). He became a leading member of [[the Serapion Brethren]], a literary circle around E. T. A. Hoffmann.

In 1827, partly for the purpose of rebutting the charges brought against him by Kotzebue, he published ''Views and Remarks on a Voyage of Discovery'', and ''Description of a Voyage Round the World''. Both works display great accuracy and industry. His last scientific labor was a tract on the [[Hawaiian language]]. Chamisso's travels and scientific researches restrained for a while the full development of his poetical talent, and it was not until his forty-eighth year that he turned back to literature. In 1829, in collaboration with [[Gustav Schwab]], and from 1832 in conjunction with [[Franz von Gaudy]], he brought out the ''Deutscher Musenalmanach'', in which his later poems were mainly published.<ref name="EB1911"/>

Chamisso died in Berlin at the age of 57. His grave is preserved in the [[Protestant]] ''Friedhof III'' (Cemetery No. 3 of the congregations of [[Jerusalem's Church]] and the [[Deutscher Dom|New Church]]) in [[Kreuzberg|Berlin-Kreuzberg]], to the south of the [[Hallesches Tor (Berlin U-Bahn)|Hallesches Tor]].

Chamisso collected numerous zoological and botanical specimens as well as occasional human bones.<ref>[[Matthias Glaubrecht]], [[Nils Seethaler]], Barbara Teßmann, & Katrin Koel-Abt, 2013. The potential of biohistory: Re-discovering Adelbert von Chamisso’s skull of an Aleut collected during the “Rurik” Expedition 1815–1818, in: ''Alaska. Zoosystematics and Evolution'' 89 (2): 317–336.</ref> His collections are in the care of a number of European museums.