The Invention of Nature

On Ischia Haeckel became acquainted with a German poet and painter, Hermann Allmers. For a week the two men wandered across the island, sketching, hiking, swimming and talking. They enjoyed each other’s company so much that they decided to travel together for a while. When they returned to Naples, they climbed Vesuvius and then sailed to Capri, another small island in the Bay of Naples where Haeckel hoped to see nature as an ‘interconnected whole’.

Haeckel packed an easel and watercolours and for good measure also his instruments and notebooks, but within a week of arriving in Capri he had embraced a new bohemian lifestyle. He was living his dreams, he admitted to Anna who was patiently waiting for her fiancé in Berlin. The microscope stayed in its box. Instead Haeckel was painting. He didn’t want to be a ‘microscoping worm’, he told Anna – how could he when nature in all its glory was calling him: ‘Outside! Outside!’ Only an ‘ossified scholar’ would be able to resist. Ever since Haeckel had read Humboldt’s Views of Nature as a boy, he had dreamed of this kind of ‘half wild life in nature’. Here on Capri, he was finally seeing the ‘delightful glory of the macro-cosmos’, he wrote to Anna. All he needed was a ‘faithful paintbrush’. He wanted to dedicate his life to this poetic world of light and colours. The crisis that Humboldt’s death had triggered was turning into a fully-fledged transformation.

His parents received similar letters, although with less emphasis on the wild aspects of his new life. Instead Haeckel told them about his possible future as an artist. He reminded them that Humboldt had written about the bond between art and science. With his artistic talent – to which, he assured his parents, other painters in Capri attested – and his botanical knowledge he believed that he was in a unique position to take up the gauntlet that Humboldt had thrown down. After all, landscape painting had been one of ‘Humboldt’s favourite interests’. Haeckel now announced that he wanted to be a painter who ‘strode with his paintbrush through all zones from the Arctic Ocean to the Equator’.

Back in Berlin, Haeckel’s father was not too pleased about these developments and dispatched a stern letter. For years he had watched his son’s fluctuating plans. He was not a rich man, he now reminded Haeckel, and ‘can’t have you travelling all over the world for years’. Why did his son always have to take everything to extremes – working, swimming, climbing, but also dreaming, hoping and doubting? ‘You must now cultivate your real job,’ Haeckel senior continued, not leaving any doubt where he saw his son’s future.

It was again Haeckel’s love for Anna that made him realize that his dream would have to remain a dream. In order to marry her, he would become a ‘tame’ professor instead of exploring the world with a paintbrush. In mid-September, a little more than four months after Humboldt’s death, Haeckel packed his bags and instruments to travel to Messina in Sicily to concentrate on his scientific work – but the weeks in Capri had changed him for ever. When the Sicilian fishermen brought buckets filled with seawater and alive with thousands of minute organisms, Haeckel saw them as a zoologist and as an artist. As he carefully placed drops of water under his microscope, new marvels revealed themselves. These tiny marine invertebrates looked like ‘delicate works of art’, he thought, made of colourful cut glass or gems. Instead of dreading the days behind the microscope, he was gripped by these ‘sea wonders’.

Every day he swam at dawn, when the sun lacquered the water surface red and nature glowed in its ‘most exquisite brilliance’, he wrote home. After the swim, he went to the fish market to pick up his daily seawater delivery but by 8 a.m. he was in his room where he worked until 5 p.m. After a quick meal followed by a brisk walk along the beach, he was back at his desk at 7.30 p.m. writing notes until midnight. The hard work paid off. By December, three months after his arrival in Sicily, Haeckel was certain that he had found the scientific project that would make his career: they were called radiolarians.

These minuscule single-celled marine organisms were about 1/1,000 of an inch and visible only under the microscope. Once magnified, the radiolarians revealed their stunning structure. Their exquisite mineral skeletons exhibited a complex pattern of symmetry, often with ray-like projections that gave them a floating appearance. Week after week, Haeckel identified new species and even new families. By early February he had discovered over sixty previously unknown species. Then, on 10 February 1860, the morning catch alone brought twelve new ones. He fell on his knees in front of his microscope, he wrote to Anna, and bowed to the benevolent sea gods and nymphs to thank them for their generous gifts.