The Invention of Nature

IN BERLIN, IN the year after the publication of Cosmos’s second volume, Humboldt’s precarious balancing act between his liberal political views and his duties at the Prussian court was getting increasingly difficult. It became almost impossible when, in spring 1848, Europe erupted into unrest. After decades of reactionary politics, a wave of revolutions swept across the continent.

When economic decline and the suppression of political gatherings sparked violent protests in Paris, a terrified King Louis Philippe abdicated on 26 February, and escaped to Britain. Two days later, the French declared the Second Republic and within weeks more revolutions rippled through Italy, Denmark, Hungary and Belgium, among others. In Vienna the conservative Chancellor of State, Prince von Metternich, tried and failed to control uprisings in which students and the working classes had joined forces. On 13 March Metternich resigned and he too fled to London. Two days later the Austrian emperor, Ferdinand I, promised his people a constitution. Rulers across Europe panicked.

As newspapers reported the revolts in Europe that spring, Prussians read the articles aloud to each other in Berlin’s coffee houses. In Munich, Cologne, Leipzig, Weimar and dozens of other German cities and states people rose against their rulers. They were demanding a united Germany, a national parliament and a constitution. In March the King of Bavaria abdicated and the Grand Duke of Baden bowed to the demands of his people and promised freedom of the press and a parliament. In Berlin protesters rallied too, calling for reforms, but the Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, was not willing to give up that easily and readied his troops. When 20,000 people gathered to listen to rousing speeches, the king ordered his soldiers to march through the streets of Berlin and to guard his castle.

Prussia’s liberals had long been disappointed by their new king. Humboldt, like so many others, had hoped that Friedrich Wilhelm IV’s accession would have heralded the end of absolutism. In early 1841, during the first months of the new king’s reign, Humboldt had told a friend that he was an enlightened ruler who ‘only had to get rid of a few medieval beliefs’, but he had been wrong. Two years later Humboldt had confessed to the same friend that Friedrich Wilhelm IV ‘does just what he likes’. He adored architecture and all he seemed to care about were schemes for new magnificent buildings, grand parks and great collections of art. When it came to ‘earthly matters’ such as foreign policies, the Prussian people or the economy, he ‘hardly gives them a thought,’ Humboldt complained.

When the king had opened the first ever Prussian parliament in Berlin in April 1847, hopes for reform had been dashed immediately. As people called for a constitution, Friedrich Wilhelm IV had left no doubt that he would never agree. In his opening speech, he had told the delegates that a king ruled by divine right, and never by popular will. Prussia was not going to be a constitutional monarchy. Two months later parliament was dissolved; nothing had been achieved.

In spring 1848, and inspired by the revolutions across Europe, the Prussian people had finally had enough. On 18 March, the revolutionaries in Berlin rolled barrels into the streets, and piled up boxes, planks and bricks to build barricades. They dug up cobblestones and carried them on to the roofs, preparing themselves for a fight. As day turned into evening, the battle began. Stones and tiles were hurled from the rooftops and the first gunshots ricocheted through the streets. Humboldt was at home in his flat in Oranienburger Straße and as the sound of the soldiers’ drums echoed across the city he, like many others, didn’t sleep. Women brought food, wine and coffee to the revolutionaries as the fighting continued throughout the night. Several hundred men died but the king’s troops failed to gain control. That night, Friedrich Wilhelm IV collapsed on a chair and moaned, ‘Oh Lord, oh Lord, have you abandoned me completely?’

Humboldt believed that reforms were essential but disliked rioting mobs and brutal police intervention – he had envisaged an earlier, slower and therefore more peaceful change. Like many other liberals, he longed to see a united Germany but hoped it would be governed by consent and parliament, rather than by blood and fear. Now, as hundreds died in the streets of Berlin, the seventy-eight-year-old Humboldt found himself caught between the lines.