Die Bedeutung der Umkreisquellen für Alexander von Humboldts südamerikanische Reise

Article in German, Abstracts in English, German and Spanish. Contrary to popular opinion, Alexander von Humboldt had little time to make in-depth preparations and acquire thorough knowledge about his most important destination, the Spanish colonies in Central and South America. So he could study most of the travelogues written by his predecessors only after returning home. Humboldt’s belated study of literary sources, combined with the question how he made use of the huge amount of facts he found during many years’ work and at the same time succeeded in being acknowledged as an outstanding researcher, are of great importance for our understanding the significance of background information in Humboldt’s work. As it seems necessary as well as promising to enquire into Humboldt’s sources in detail, this article presents within the “Humboldt Digital Library” research project a preliminary investigation of the different sources Humboldt used for describing a limited section of his South America journey: the Orinoco river system