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Popularizing the World: Karl Andree’s Globus
KIRSTEN BELGUM
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
In April 1836, a young man from Braunschweig wrote to Rudolf Vieweg, one
of the major publishers of that city, to submit the first part of his translation of
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an American text. Knowing it might not be accepted, he concluded his letter
with an invitation: «Sollten Sie einmal wieder ein ausländisches Werk
übertragen lassen,» the letter writer would guarantee, «daß ich es so schnell
und elegant übertragen werde, wie irgend einer in Deutschland; denn ich bin
kein Neuling in solchen Arbeiten» (Andree, Letter). This offer is repre-
sentative of the energy and creativity of Karl Andree (1808 – 75) who, over the
next few decades, would have a notable impact on the type and amount of
knowledge about the world distributed in Germany. The story of Andree and
his successful periodical Globus (published from 1862 to 1910) suggests that
the increase in travel itself was only one factor in the rapid expansion of travel
writing in the nineteenth century.1 The role of translators, editors, publishers,
and the networks of borrowing and recycling that they created were central
to the ways in which travel and travel writing spread across Europe and
presented ever more perspectives on life around the globe.
In recent decades excellent research has been conducted on the significant
increase in the writing, publication, and consumption of texts (both factual
and fictional) about far-flung places in the world in the nineteenth century.
Some of the best scholarship has been dedicated to uncovering dominant
European cultural and racial prejudices that lay at the base of much travel and
travel writing. Mary Louise Pratt’s discussion of Humboldt’s «empty
landscapes» has demonstrated perhaps only one of the more benign examples
of Western blind spots. Suzanne Zantop and Russell Berman have written
compellingly (albeit in different ways) about the power of colonial imagina-
tion in the German tradition, even prior to the development of an organized
colonial movement in Germany. Similarly, and more recently, scholars who
have drawn on articles from the nascent geographical press, including Karl
Andree’s Globus, have focused on the presentation of idyllic and paradisiacal
fantasies about Pacific islanders, on colonial discourses about Africa, and on
the pan-German national ideology regarding «Auslandsdeutsche» (Dür-
beck; Naranch 2005; Naranch 2011). Given Andree’s racialist views this
scholarship makes an important contribution to the study of nineteenth-
century European cultural history.2246 Kirsten Belgum
As significant as these studies are, they do not tell us about the processes by
which these nineteenth-century views of the world were disseminated. Travel
writing deserves attention not only for the «themes» and «attitudes» it
reveals, but also for how it exposes the way in which a new publishing sector
emerged and presented the world to German readers. Uncovering the
publishing practices of one major mediator of works about the world
from this period paints a complicated picture of the various dynamics at
work in the second half of the nineteenth century as travel writing came into
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its own. This article focuses on Andree’s Globus from an institutional rather
than a content-based vantage point. Andree was both a product of and a novel
participant in this development. As a talented and well-connected publicist
who had studied geography, Andree was ideally positioned to present reports
about the world to a large segment of the population. And yet, commercial
pressures on the popular press also played a role in what appeared in print.
The need to attract and keep a loyal readership contributed to the impulse to
sensationalize. The demand for ever-more and ever-new material led to
borrowing from other sources that at times resulted in composite articles,
editing shortcuts, and, in some cases misleading, if not deceptive reporting.
This important aspect of disseminating geographical knowledge, which can
only be accessed through comparative study, is the subject of the present
article.
Globus distinguished itself from existing German geographical periodicals
in being intended for a mainstream readership. As Andree pointed out in the
foreword to the magazine’s first volume, Germany already had valuable
scholarly geographical journals;3 his goal was to popularize knowledge about
the world. Beginning in 1862 Globus appeared in bi-monthly issues, each
thirty-two pages in length. From the first volume, the periodical presented
articles in non-technical, descriptive language that covered all parts of the
world, from China to Brazil, from Oregon to Madagascar. Each issue began
with a set of in-depth articles, from six to twelve pages long and often
serialized. These were followed by shorter notes about curiosities and
cultural or geographical detail. Each issue ended with notes about trade,
transportation, and other statistical information, also from all corners of the
globe. In order to inform a generally educated reader, Andree was convinced
that his periodical should include illustrations: «[B]ildliche Darstellungen
[. . .] sind geeignet, das Natur- und Völkerleben uns sinnlich nahe zu rücken,
sie vermitteln eine klare Anschauung vieler Gegenstände, welche sich
vermöge der Schrift nur andeutungsweise schildern lassen; der Text ergänzt
die Bilder und diese ergänzen jenen» (Globus 1 (1862): iii). Illustrations
would also make the publication more appealing.Popularizing the World: Karl Andree’s Globus 247
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Illustr. 1: Title page of a bi-monthly issue of Globus (1871)248 Kirsten Belgum
Andree’s plan worked. Within a few years, he was pleased to announce not
only that his magazine was thriving, but also that it was being used in schools
as an educational resource.4 Andree’s model did not emerge in a vacuum,
however. In fact, Globus was the product of a perfect storm. This confluence
of forces included the emerging field of geographical study, the rise of the
periodical press, and previous successful and transnational experiments that
combined image and text.
The man at the center of Globus, Karl Theodor Andree, studied geography
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as well as history under leading scholars of the 1820s, including Karl Ritter,
considered one of the founders of scientific geography in Germany, and
Alexander von Humboldt, the noted traveler and naturalist. Andree com-
pleted his dissertation by age 22 in 1830, but due to his participation in the
Burschenschaft movement he was denied the opportunity to write his
habilitation in Tübingen and to pursue an academic career.5 As a result,
his early publications were not scholarly works, but rather adaptations of
foreign books, such as a version of a French work on Poland in 1831, and
translations of works on the United States, including the letters of Achilles
Murat in 1833 and Captain G. Back’s travels in 1836. This experience led
Andree to produce a school textbook on geography, Lehrbuch der allge-
meinen Erdkunde für höhere Gymnasial- und Realklassen, sowie für
Hauslehrer und zum Selbstunterricht (1836). By age 28, married and in
need of a profession and a steadier source of income, Andree turned to
journalism. For a decade he edited daily newspapers first in Mainz, then in
Karlsruhe, Cologne, and Bremen before taking over the Deutsche Reichs-
zeitung back in Braunschweig, published by Rudolf Vieweg.
Andree’s writing and work as editor for various papers exposed him to the
growing industrial enterprise of the Ruhr region and the international trade
center of Bremen, where he returned in the early 1850s to edit two
periodicals: first, Das Westland, Magazin für Kunde amerikanischer Ver-
hältnisse (1852 – 54), and then the Bremer Handelsblatt. These experiences
affected his focus and expanded his network of connections around the world
(R. Andree 6 – 8). These connections would serve him well in his continued
work, alongside his journalistic career, as a prolific disseminator (adaptor,
translator, complier, and editor) of foreign works for German readers.
Andree’s breakthrough came in 1851 when he published Nord-Amerika in
geographischen and geschichtlichen Umrissen. It appeared in serial form and
included material ranging from summaries of recent excavations of mounds
built by early inhabitants of the continent to demographic and business
statistics from various regions of the United States. Nord-Amerika was to a
great extent based on American works that a German lawyer and layPopularizing the World: Karl Andree’s Globus 249
historian in New York, Hermann E. Ludewig, sent to Andree over the years.
It eventually reached a length of over 800 pages and was successful enough to
warrant a second edition within three years. Between 1855 and 1861 Andree
edited five more works on other regions of the world: Mongolia and Tibet,
China, Argentina, Mecca and Medina, and Eastern Africa. His extensive
experience in compiling sources, editing, publishing, and working in the
periodical press would eventually contribute to the creation of Globus, but
his connections to seminal institutions in the field of geography were also
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central to the conceptualization and creation of that periodical.
Beginning in 1853, Andree became a contributing author to and was listed,
along with the major names in the field, as a co-editor of the Zeitschrift für
Allgemeine Erdkunde, the main organ of the Berliner Gesellschaft für
Erdkunde that had been founded by Ritter. By 1862 Andree was a
corresponding member of the Imperial and Royal Geographical Society
in Vienna, of the Nature Society in Wetterau, of a language and literature
society in Brussels, and of the Natural History Society of Buenos Aires. He
was both a consul for the Republic of Chile in the Kingdom of Saxony and an
honorary member of the Royal Economic Society of Saxony in Dresden.6 In
1863 he co-founded the Verein für Erdkunde in Dresden and served as its first
chairman (R. Andree 9). He was also a corresponding member of both the
Historical and the Ethnographic Societies in New York.7
Andree’s ties to German publishing were even more extensive. His
translations and compilations appeared in an impressive array of notable
publishing houses all over Germany. In addition to his work as newspaper
editor, he published works with Cotta in Stuttgart; Schumann, J. J. Weber,
Lorck and Costenoble in Leipzig; Kuntze in Dresden; Schünemann in
Bremen; and Vieweg and Westermann in Braunschweig. His career coincided
with the move of many publishers towards giving travel writing a more
prominent place in their offerings. In addition to the publishers Andree had
worked with by 1860, both the Brockhaus publishing house and the
Bibliographisches Institut in Leipzig had begun publishing extensive series
of travel works. The highly successful encyclopedias of these (and other)
German publishers also included ever larger and more numerous entries on
foreign countries, cities, peoples, and cultural sites. Finally, popular period-
icals that were just being launched in mid-century also were increasingly
devoted to reports from the world outside of Germany.
Globus had an experienced, geographically knowledgeable, and well-
connected editor in Karl Andree, but he was not the magazine’s only strong
suit. In Herrmann J. Meyer of the Bibliographisches Institut, Globus had an
innovative publisher who was dedicated to disseminating knowledge and250 Kirsten Belgum
was open to international experiments. This kind of innovation had begun
with Herrmann’s father Joseph, the publishing firm’s founder. Joseph Meyer
made a lasting name for himself with the successful (52-volume) Conversa-
tions-Lexicon in 1839, a comprehensive competitor to the established
encyclopedias of Brockhaus in Leipzig and Pierer in Altenburg.8
Already in 1833, Meyer had introduced a new kind of work intended to
inform and educate middle-class readers. The work was immodestly entitled
Meyer’s Universum, with the lengthy subtitle Abbildung und Beschreibung
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des Sehenswerthesten und Merkwürdigsten der Natur und Kunst auf der
ganzen Erde. It was predicated on publishing beautiful, but affordable
illustrations of significant sites from around the world in a serial format.
Illustr. 2: Title page of the third volume of Meyer’s Universum
Each issue of Meyer’s Universum presented readers with detailed engravings
of distinctive venues famous for their history, architecture, or natural
wonders. They ranged from Saint Mark’s Square in Venice and the Taj
Mahal to the Chalk Cliffs of Dover and the Island of Madeira. Each image was
accompanied by a short descriptive text. Printed in horizontal octavo format,
these relatively inexpensive serials could also function as early coffee tablePopularizing the World: Karl Andree’s Globus 251
books for middle-class families. Twenty years later, the work was still
appearing in Germany in serialized installments. By the early 1860s the firm
was recycling its greatest hits in book form as well, including a multi-volume
deluxe edition.9
Hoping to capitalize on his success in Germany, in the 1850s Joseph sent
his son Herrmann J. Meyer to New York to produce a version of Meyer’s
Universum for American readers. This project started with a German-
language edition that could borrow directly from the original version. Even
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here, however, there had to be some changes to suit the different national
market. For example, the first issue starts with an American icon: «Das
Monument auf Bunkershill bei Boston.» The accompanying text begins with
the German perspective from the original European edition: «Hierhüben ist
nichts mehr zu hoffen [. . .]. Das neue Leben ist jenseits geboren [. . .]. Seht nur
hin!» (18). It adds, however, an American first-person perspective – the
Yankee, even if imperfect, is the inventor of liberty and a people’s con-
stitution, the positive future of the world – and concludes with a description
of a tour of Boston including an exclamation of American pride: «Bei uns ist
Morgen!» (22).
Just two years later, Herrmann J. Meyer created, in collaboration with
Charles A. Dana (a journalist at the New York Tribune, who would later
become co-editor of The New American Cyclopaedia), an English-language
version of the same work. Like its European and North American German-
language models, it introduced readers to sites from around the world.
Unlike the German-language version published in the United States, how-
ever, it did not presume any knowledge of German among its readers. This
new English-language work also appealed expressly to the patriotic interests
of an American market, beginning with an awe-filled description of Niagara
Falls. The illustration for this entry had also appeared in a German issue, but
now was located prominently at the front of the English-language edition for
American readers. Although this version did not last longer than two years,
the idea of translating material from one national culture to another was a
model that Herrmann J. Meyer would use again a decade later.
Globus, which Meyer launched in 1862, was predicated on the same kind of
transcultural borrowing; it, too, was an experiment in presenting middle-
class readers with extensive visual documentation of the world. Both Meyer
and Andree, whom Meyer recruited as editor, were aware of previous
periodicals that were dedicated to familiarizing German readers with reports
from around the world. One example from the late 1820s was Cotta’s Das
Ausland, yet it had no illustrations. Not only was the Bibliographisches
Institut familiar, through Meyer’s Universum, with the project of publishing252 Kirsten Belgum
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Illustr. 3: «Niagara Falls: Horseshoe Falls» – Illustration from the first volume of the
American English-language edition of Meyer’s Universum
illustrated works; illustration was also becoming more affordable for the
periodical press. The Illustrirte Zeitung, founded by J. J. Weber in Leipzig in
1843, included hundreds of images in each annual volume. These were
devoted to everything from royal portraits to ladies hats, and from notable
German places, such as the Cologne Cathedral, to maps of contemporary
battlefields. A decade later Ernst Keil’s family magazine, Die Gartenlaube,
included several illustrations in each of its weekly issues that were frequently
connected to the serialized fiction and biographical sketches. Globus, by
contrast, deployed illustrations to depict places and peoples from around the
world. But including images in a publication required more than just
affordable printing costs. It necessitated the creation of images in the first
place. Meyer’s coup consisted in gaining the rights to a storehouse of
illustrations from a recently created French periodical devoted to travel, Le
Tour du Monde (founded in 1860). But it was Andree, if we believe his
statement in the foreword to the first volume of Globus, who was determined
to make Globus more serious than its French predecessor.Popularizing the World: Karl Andree’s Globus 253
In that foreword, Andree acknowledged that Meyer had acquired illus-
trations from Le Tour du Monde. What Andree did not mention was that he
and Meyer in fact borrowed text from their French precursor as well. Such
borrowing is not surprising, since the images in any issue of a periodical
should de facto influence, if not determine, the subject of its articles. What is
surprising is the effort Andree took to hide the extent of his reliance on the
written contributions from the French magazine. No doubt this had to do
with his insistence that his journal would be less about travel and more about
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geography and ethnography. Indeed, he suggests that Le Tour du Monde,
whose subtitle was «nouveau journal des voyages,» was insufficiently
rigorous and scientific for the German market. He had advised Herrmann
J. Meyer: «Für Deutschland müssen Sie kein bloßes Journal der Land- und
Seereisen herausgeben» (Globus 1 (1862): iii). An example from Andree’s first
volume, however, illustrates not only the effort he put into obscuring his
reliance on the written works that accompanied the images in the French
periodical. It also demonstrates that this obfuscation led him to produce a
work that was in many ways less scientific and rigorous than a «mere
magazine of land and sea voyages.»
The first issue of Globus begins with an illustration of a man with a long
beard tied to a stake and surrounded by several seated Native Americans, all
inside a tent-like structure. The title of the article to which this image belongs
is «Vor zehn Jahren in Californien und Oregon.» What the article does not
point out, however, and what only a detailed comparison of this issue and an
issue of Le Tour du Monde from a year and a half earlier reveals, is that some of
the events depicted in this article take place neither in California nor in
Oregon. The event portrayed in the first illustration was based on an article
from Le Tour du Monde entitled «Voyages et Aventures du Baron de Wogan»
(Le Tour du Monde 2: 242 – 56). The entire French article is written in the
first-person and recounts Wogan’s travels in the American West from his
arrival in San Francisco and his time prospecting for gold in Grass Valley to
his long trek eastward through Nevada and into Utah. While the article’s
subtitle is «en Californie» and the first four of its eight illustrations depict a
California settlement, miners, and redwoods, the majority of Wogan’s
narrative and the remaining four illustrations describe the deserts and
canyons of Utah and his capture and eventual release by a tribe of Paiute.
Indeed, the image at the head of the Globus article as well as two more detailed
engravings depict encounters that took place on the Green River in what is
present-day eastern Utah (Le Tour du Monde 2: 247), and not, as the article’s
title suggests, California and Oregon.10 To add to the confusion, although all
of the illustrations in the Globus article are from the corresponding piece in254 Kirsten Belgum
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Illustr. 4: Eleventh page of article on Wogan’s travels from Le Tour du Monde (Le Tour du
Monde 2 (1860): 252). The same image occurs on the first page of the first volume
of Globus (Globus 1 (1862): 1).Popularizing the World: Karl Andree’s Globus 255
the French periodical, they appear in the German magazine in a considerably
different order. The first image in Globus, giving the impression that a white
prisoner is about to be killed by natives in California, seems to be placed at the
head of the article due to its sensational content.
In order to make the article seem less like the retelling of one man’s voyage
(which Andree insisted that he wanted to avoid in his journal), Andree made
other changes that not only distort his source material but mostly likely
would have misled his German readers. The Globus article begins with a
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blending of other source materials about the travels of white men in Oregon
in particular and encounters with native peoples as well as flora and fauna
there. By splicing together multiple sources, Andree looses track (inten-
tionally or unwittingly) of the origin of much of his information and
description. Thus, already on page 3 of the Globus article there are direct
quotes from Wogan’s version but not attributed to him, since he and his
travels are not expressly mentioned until the very end of the article, namely
on page 8 (of eleven pages), where it states: «Wir schließen diesen Schilder-
ungen eine andere an, die neulich ein Franzose Wogan, gegeben hat» (Globus
1 (1862): 8). That is to say, Andree puts the words of Wogan into the mouth of
an unrelated narrator and thus incorrectly links it to the story of travelers
who are indeed bound for Oregon, which Wogan was not. This dissembling
also occurs in the retitling of a portrait of Wogan for Globus; instead of being
labeled «Baron Wogan» as it appeared in Le Tour du Monde, Andree captions
it «Ein Jäger in Californien» (Globus 1 (1862): 9).
Other problems that are more fundamentally confusing arise in the
adaptation of select material from the French magazine for the first article
in Globus. For instance, Andree includes an image of «Un canon ou passage
de la Sierra-Wah» from Le Tour du Monde, even though the landscape it
depicts is barely mentioned in the text of the Globus article. This could
certainly have misled German readers who did not have access to a detailed
map of the American West to think that this landscape was located in
California or Oregon. In short, the result of all of these borrowings is a
document that is in fact more unreliable, indeed more fictional, than the travel
writing that Andree wanted to avoid, aiming as he claimed for a higher degree
of scientific writing.
By the 1870s Andree had plenty of sources to produce the various issues of
his magazine. These included summaries and excerpts from diverse travel
works, such as those that had been published in book form in Germany. In
1874 – 75 one prominent example was the recently published work of Dr.
Georg Schweinfurth, a German traveler to Africa. His Im Herzen von Afrika
first appeared in two volumes (of roughly 500 pages each) with Brockhaus in256 Kirsten Belgum
Leipzig in 1874.11 Already in the second half of that same year, Andree was
making use of Schweinfurth’s travels, interactions, and descriptions for
Globus. Schweinfurth’s material played a prominent role in eleven Globus
issues over the next year and a half.12
Three main aspects of this particular instance of borrowing reveal Andree’s
strategies for popularizing the world in his periodical. The first concerns
narrative voice. In adapting a first-person travel narrative for recycling in a
serialized periodical, Andree changed almost all of the prose to a neutral,
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third-person style. Although it meant that the text now sounded more
removed from the personal experience of Schweinfurth, it often consisted of
very similar, at times even verbatim, wording from the original work. The
distance of the Globus narration from the original author’s travel description
was increased by the occasional use of direct quotes from Schweinfurth in the
first person. Yet, again, contrary to Andree’s explicitly stated objective of
creating something «more» than a journal of land and sea travels, this
rewriting of Schweinfurth’s own work only served to mask, and thus distort
the source of Andree’s material, giving the impression that not all of the
material stemmed from Schweinfurth’s own pen.
This shift to third-person narration also allowed Andree (or perhaps an
editorial assistant) to add commentary that was not in the original source. To
be sure, some contextualization was important for the comprehension of
these excerpts in their serialized publication. In addition, the more condensed
version of a longer travel work within the periodical allowed Andree to
emphasize or even sensationalize certain items over and against the original.
Just one example of this is in regards to the practice of cannibalism. Although
Schweinfurth does indeed suggest that the Niam-Niam people are «Anthro-
pophags» or cannibals, in his book he cites others who have seen little to no
cannibalism committed by the Niam-Niam and he also writes, based on his
own observations, that he can name many chieftains who abhor the
consumption of human flesh (235). Furthermore, he only mentions the
phenomenon in one case. By contrast, one of Andree’s Globus entries
mentions cannibalism among the Niam-Niam at least three times. Similarly,
in chapter ten of his book Schweinfurth cites his own (minimal) observations
of humans prepared for consumption by the Monbuttu. The summary in
Globus, however, devotes more space to this (given the length of its excerpts)
and returns again to discussions of other supposedly cannibalistic peoples in
Africa (i. e., the Niam-Niam) in its discussion of the Monbuttu. (Schwein-
furth 284 – 85; Globus 28 (1875): 274 – 75). In other words, the process of
transferring material about the world into a new format, in this case a
periodical, could involve intensification that negatively impacted the accu-Popularizing the World: Karl Andree’s Globus 257
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Illustr. 5: «Dr. Georg Schweinfurth.» Globus 26 (1874): 274258 Kirsten Belgum
racy of the original material. As with the image of a white man tied to a stake in
the American West, the emphasis in Globus on cannibalism played into a
sensationalized view of the world.
The second revealing aspect in Andree’s use of Schweinfurth’s work is the
intensified role of visual material. Schweinfurth’s original work over the
course of two volumes and 1,000 pages includes roughly 125 images total,
most of which take up less than a fourth of a page, and of which only 25 are
full-page plates. For the time, this is a significant number of illustrations. In
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adapting Schweinfurth’s work for Globus, however, Andree includes a much
greater percentage of images per page of written text. For example, the very
first in the series of excerpts from Schweinfurth’s work in Globus contains
three pages of text and three and a half pages of images.13 In this case none of
them comes from Schweinfurth’s book.14 These images, including an
imposing one of the traveler himself in an heroic posture, were most likely
added in order to catch the attention of and attract readers, as the prominent
placement of the first image of Wogan in the United States from Globus’s first
issue in 1862 had likely done.
Some of these same images, however, distort the text considerably through
sensationalized depictions that are not in the original work. Two such
examples are clearly based on Schweinfurth’s narration, but not presented
visually in his text. One shows the interior of a building in which Schwein-
furth met with a prominent older woman, «die alte Schol,» of the Lao people.
In this tableau Schweinfurth appears to present her with one of his many
tokens, in this case a medallion that glows impressively, as does Schweinfurth
himself in an almost otherworldly way. The postures of the various Lao
people suggest awe and reverence for Schweinfurth in a way that is not
described in his narration (Globus 26 (1874): 305 – 07). Indeed, in its original
form, Schweinfurth’s account instead emphasizes his desire to impress this
important woman: «Ich hatte alles zum festlichen Empfange hergerichtet,
um auch bei ihr eine [. . .] vortheilhafte Erinnerung zu hinterlassen» (144). In
addition to creating a dramatized image that misrepresents the original
textual description of the encounter, Globus omits altogether Schweinfurth’s
discussion of repeatedly visiting Schol in her own hut: «Ich besuchte sie
daselbst häufig, um in die Geheimnisse ihrer Milchwirtschaft einzudringen»
(144).
Another image (depicting a mishap between Schweinfurth’s assistant
Mohammed and a water buffalo) was also not in the original book version of
the travels. As with the image of Schweinfurth’s encounter with the old Schol,
it was most likely created and added to the Globus excerpts to amplify an
episode that constitutes only a very minor detail of Schweinfurth’s story. ItsPopularizing the World: Karl Andree’s Globus 259
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Illustr. 6: «Besuch der alten Schol bei Dr. Schweinfurth» Globus 26 (1874): 306260 Kirsten Belgum
size and style result in an emphasis that is quite out of proportion to the other
events and to the visual illustrations in Schweinfurth’s book, which consist
instead of more neutral, descriptive images of livestock he observed, such as
the decidedly undramatic portrayal of a domestic goat. Thus, the inclusion of
additional visual material in Globus articles, and in a manner that differs
considerably from the otherwise sober, scientific, and non-sensational
images of Schweinfurth’s book, only serves to alter the mood and tenor
of the original source text. In other words, more than a decade after Andree
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had professed to pursue a more scholarly and less entertainment-oriented
focus in his German periodical, Globus was still far from being more accurate
and neutral in its depiction of the world.
Third and finally, the serialization of longer travel works in Globus
confronted Andree (and eventually his successors) with a difficult choice: to
present the excerpts in quick succession and in greater length each or to
stretch out the individual contributions across a large number of issues. From
the beginning, Andree chose the latter approach. In the early years in which
he adapted entries from Le Tour du Monde, this often meant that the material
from one or two issues of the French periodical could be rationed out to five
or six issues in Globus. Of course, Andree included other material, but each of
his issues was twice the length (appearing half as frequently) of those of Le
Tour du Monde.
With later excerpts from original travel works (such as Schweinfurth’s with
its 1,000 pages), this would mean that Andree could keep this one tour in
front of his readers across a span of up to eleven issues. More than that, he did
not place these excerpts only in consecutive issues, but rather spread them
over a period of one and a half years. Typically, the other works that appeared
in the same issues as the material from Schweinfurth’s work were also
serialized.15 The result was that frequently Globus ran up to three different
serialized works at one time, albeit staggered in the issues in which they
started. This approach of stretching reports on various regions of the world
into multiple issues, rather than providing a complete report in one or two
issues, allowed Globus, like other periodicals of the time, to self-referentially
recur to its reporting in earlier issues. This amounted to a form of self-
advertising, a way to entice new readers and subscribers as well as to revive or
sustain the interest of its existing readership.
The work and career of Karl Andree, like that of Globus’s first publisher,
the Bibliographisches Institut, revolved around the promotion of knowledge
about the world. Despite Andree’s own immobility in the globalized world
of the mid-nineteenth century, he made an enormous contribution to
disseminating information on distant places and peoples. His involvementPopularizing the World: Karl Andree’s Globus 261
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Image 7: «Mohammed wird von einem Büffel angegriffen» Globus 26 (1874): 290262 Kirsten Belgum
in numerous translations and adaptations of other geographical material long
preceded his work on Globus. This early work and his extensive connections
to other publishers as well as to the periodical press in general certainly
played a central role in the creation and long-term success of Andree’s
geographical magazine. The international experiments of the Bibliogra-
phisches Institut did as well.
What conclusions about the project of disseminating travel writing in the
nineteenth century can we draw from the example of this one magazine?
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First, that in trying to make information about the world (both geographic
and ethnographic) popular, a periodical like Globus had to rely on a broad
network of contemporary sources. It acknowledged some of this debt, but
not all of it. It reshaped some of its source material to suit its needs and
dissembled it at times (in terms of adding, amplifying, and possibly even
distorting) to increase its popular appeal. The use of visuals played a large role
in this. The second conclusion emerges from the first. These examples from
Image 8: «Goat of the Momvoo» Schweinfurth, In the Heart of Africa, vol. 2, 69Popularizing the World: Karl Andree’s Globus 263
Andree’s Globus and his «sources» suggest that we need to read nineteenth-
century travel texts comparatively: both across the boundaries of national
languages (the French Le Tour du Monde) and also across the lines of various
travel genres and text types (Schweinfurth’s travel narrative in book form).
The extent of the magazine’s popularizing strategies, both in terms of how the
texts were altered for a mainstream audience and how the visual images were
deployed, would not be as apparent without such points of comparison.
No one knew better than Andree how many sources, agents, travelers,
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writers, and media were necessary to achieve the means for popularizing the
world in nineteenth-century Germany and for establishing the kind of
success that Globus enjoyed for almost fifty years. But one might also
conclude that no one knew better how much potential there was in the
growing field of geographical and travel writing for manipulation in the
service of a commercial endeavor. Part of the story of Andree’s Globus is the
role that acknowledged and unacknowledged recycling and adaptation
played in the growth of this new field of publishing.
Notes
1 In 1910 Globus was absorbed by Dr. A. Petermanns Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes
geographischer Anstalt. The latter periodical existed (under slightly altered names)
until 2004.
2 Although there is no space here to expand on this important topic, Andree’s views
regarding the cultural superiority of the Germanic peoples call for further study of the
role of geographical scholarship in the service of nationalism and nation-building as
well as of imperialism in the nineteenth century. One quote from his 1851 book on
North America might suffice here to suggest the tenor of much of Andree’s thought:
«Wenn wir uns vergegenwärtigen, wie weit die Canadier französischer Abstammung in
geistiger und materieller Entwicklung hinter der englischen Bevölkerung zurückge-
blieben sind, wenn wir uns daran erinnern, daß dem französischen Volke die Begabung
mangelt, blühende Colonien zu gründen und sie aus sich selber heraus in gedeihlicher
und großartiger Weise zu entwicklen, so können wir es in keiner Weise bedauern, daß
die neue Welt für sie verschlossen wurde» (Andree, Nord-Amerika 491).
3 These were the Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde, founded in 1853 as the journal of
the Berlin Geographical Society, and Dr. A. Petermanns Mittheilungen founded by
August Heinrich Petermann and published by Perthes in Gotha beginning in 1855.
4 In his forewords to volumes 2 and 3 Andree boasts that Globus is being used «auf
Gymnasien sowohl wie auf Real- und höheren Bürgerschulen» (Globus 2 (1862): iii).
5 There are various biographical sketches of Karl Andree, among others one composed
by his son Richard (who also became a geographer) that appeared in the significantly
revised edition of Andree’s Geographie des Welthandels, originally from 1877. Richard
Andree claims that an academic position intended for his father at the prestigious264 Kirsten Belgum
Collegium Carolinum in Braunschweig was refused him for political reasons
(R. Andree 5).
6 This listing is from Andree’s own description of his credentials as he formulated them
in the foreword, written in February 1862, to the first volume of Globus (Globus 1
(1862): iv).
7 Already by the early 1850s Andree was a member of these American societies (Andree,
Nord-Amerika, title page).
8 Unlike Brockhaus’s early editions of his Conversations-Lexikon, Meyer’s Grosses
Conversations-Lexicon (which ultimately reached 52 volumes) included illustrations.
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Two decades later his son Herrmann published a condensed (15-volume) version as the
Neues Conversations-Lexikon für alle Stände (1857 – 60).
9 One example is Meyer’s Universum: Ein Jahrbuch für Freunde der Natur und Kunst.
10 In the French source text, Wogan leaves California for Utah on page four of a fourteen-
page article.
11 I have not yet been able to determine if Andree or Vieweg had permission from
Brockhaus to use Schweinfurth’s material; however, since the head of the Vieweg firm,
Heinrich, was married to Helene, the daughter of Heinrich Eduard Brockhaus, who
was the head of the Brockhaus firm at that time, I presume permission had been
requested and granted (Killy 217).
12 Schweinfurth’s travels appeared in the followings volumes of Globus from 1874 – 75
(beginning on the listed page, but usually comprising roughly six pages of each issue):
vol. 26, pp. 272, 289, 305; vol. 27, pp. 81, 97, 113; vol. 28, pp. 257, 273, 298, 308, 324.
13 In other issues, space devoted to images outweighs the written text. For example, issue
17 of volume 28 presents five illustrations, including some full-page images, in just five
pages of a contribution written by Schweinfurth.
14 I have not been able to verify the source of these added images.
15 For instance, issues 17 and 18 of Globus 28 also include serialized excerpts of a trip to
China by the French traveler François Garnier.
Works Cited
Andree, Karl. Geographie des Welthandels: Eine wirtschaftsgeographische Schilde-
rung der Erde. Ed. Franz Heiderich and Robert Sieger. Vol. 1. Frankfurt: Heinrich
Keller, 1910.
–. Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Erdkunde für höhere Gymnasial- und Realklassen,
sowie für Hauslehrer und zum Selbstunterricht. Leipzig: Ludwig Schumann, 1836.
–. Letter to Rudolf Vieweg. 6 April 1836. Vieweg Archiv 331A.
–. Nord-Amerika in geographischen und geschichtlichen Umrissen; mit besonderer
Berücksichtigung der Eingeborenen und der indianischen Alterthümer, der Ein-
wanderung, der Ansiedlung, des Ackerbaus, der Gewerbe, der Schifffahrt, und des
Handels. 2nd ed. Braunschweig: Georg Westermann, 1854.
Andree, Richard. «Karl Andree.» Karl Andree. Geographie des Welthandels: Eine
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Berman, Russell. Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture.
Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1998.
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en der interessantesten Stätten der Erde und Beschreibungen. Prachtausgabe.
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Merkwürdigsten der Natur und Kunst auf der ganzen Erde. Amerikanische
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Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York:
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Schweinfurth, Georg. Im Herzen von Afrika: Reisen und Entdeckungen im Cen-
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Spurr, David. The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel
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Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Erdkunde. Vol. 1. Berlin: D. Reimer, 1853.You can also read
