Konzepte von Physiognomie und Rasse bei Martius

This article analyzes the concept of race and ethnographic description used by the bavarian botanist Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius in his publications on Brazil. Principally Blumenbach’s and Meiners’ racial theories and the concept of physiognomy are applied to explain Martius’ strategies to describe and classify the indigenous people he came across during his voyage to Brazil