Johann Georg Kohl was a German travel writer, historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 and geographer

Geographer

A geographer is a scholar whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society.Although geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography...

.

Life

Son of a wine merchant, he attended a gymnasium

Gymnasium (school)

A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...

 in Bremen, and then studied law at the universities of Göttingen, Heidelberg and Munich. When his father died in 1830, he had to break off his studies, and spent six years working as a tutor in Courland

Courland

Courland is one of the historical and cultural regions of Latvia. The regions of Semigallia and Selonia are sometimes considered as part of Courland.- Geography and climate :...

. He then traveled to St. Petersburg and other parts of Russia. In 1838, he returned to Germany and settled in Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

 from where he visited much of Europe and wrote about his experiences.

Future Theories

Kohl's main scientific work, Der Verkehr und die Ansiedlungen der Menschen in ihrer Abhängigkeit von der Gestalt der Erdoberfläche (Transportation and settlement of people and their dependence on surface terrain) (1841, 1850) is regarded as the founding document of modern transport and urban geography. Using Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 as an example, he formulated a mathematical theory for the development of spherical cities and how eventually these cities would develop skyscrapers and underground shopping centers. Similarly, also fundamental to the theoretical geography was his Die geographische Lage der Hauptstädte Europas ("The Current Situation in The Capitals of Europe") (1874).

Trip to America

From 1854 to 1858, he traveled in the United States. He prepared some valuable maps for the U.S. government, and at the request of the United States Coast Survey prepared two reports: History of the Discovery of the U. S. Coast and the History and Investigation of the Gulf Stream (Bremen, 1868). While in Washington and at Harvard, Kohl made friends with many writers (including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...

, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...

 and Washington Irving

Washington Irving

Washington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works...

) and scholars (including George Bancroft

George Bancroft

George Bancroft was an American historian and statesman who was prominent in promoting secondary education both in his home state and at the national level. During his tenure as U.S. Secretary of the Navy, he established the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845...

, Charles Bennett Deane and Louis Agassiz

Louis Agassiz

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz was a Swiss paleontologist, glaciologist, geologist and a prominent innovator in the study of the Earth's natural history. He grew up in Switzerland and became a professor of natural history at University of Neuchâtel...

). Kohl's book Reisen in Canada und durch die Staaten von New York und Pennsylvanien (Travels in Canada and the states of New York and Pennsylvania; 1856) is still consulted for historical study into Pennsylvania Dutch

Pennsylvania Dutch

Pennsylvania Dutch refers to immigrants and their descendants from southwestern Germany and Switzerland who settled in Pennsylvania in the 17th and 18th centuries...

. On his return to Europe, he settled in Bremen

Bremen

The City Municipality of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany. A commercial and industrial city with a major port on the river Weser, Bremen is part of the Bremen-Oldenburg metropolitan area . Bremen is the second most populous city in North Germany and tenth in Germany.Bremen is...

where he was appointed city librarian in 1863.

External links