Ida Laura Pfeiffer

Following the death of her father in 1806, her mother Anna, disapproving of her previously unconventional upbringing, insisted that she wear dresses and take up piano lessons.

During the grand review held in Schönbrunn Palace, she protested against foreign occupation by turning her back as the generals rode past.

She was introduced to contemporary explorers by her tutor, Franz Josef Trimmel, and became particularly interested in Robinson Crusoe and the writings of Alexander von Humboldt, whom she would later meet in Berlin.

Dr. Pfeiffer was soon forced to resign after uncovering corruption among senior government officials in Galicia and subsequently found it difficult to regain employment.

[5] After her sons settled in secure employment, Ida Pfeiffer was finally able to fulfill her childhood dream of traveling to foreign places.

She later wrote in Reise nach dem skandinavischen Norden und der Insel Island im Jahre 1845 ("Visit to Iceland and the Scandinavian North," 2 vols., Leipzig, 1845): When I was but a little child, I had already a strong desire to see the world.

Among those she met on the trip was landscape painter Hubert Sattler,[7] the British artist William Henry Bartlett,[8] and the Bohemian botanist, Count Friedrich von Berchtold.

[11] In 1846, Pfeiffer started on a journey round the world, visiting Brazil, Chile and other countries of South America, Tahiti, China, India, Persia, Asia Minor and Greece, returning to Vienna in 1848.

[12][13] She boarded the Danish brig Caroline, sailing southwest from Hamburg out into the Atlantic and across the equator, entering the harbor of Rio de Janeiro on 16 September 1846.

Along with Friedrich von Berchtold, she traveled up the Macacu River to Nova Friburgo in southeastern Brazil and ventured deep into the forest, accompanied by a single servant.

From Delhi, she arranged a bullock cart to Bombay under the advisement of Austrian scholar Aloys Sprenger, passing through Hyderabad and the Daulatabad Fort and the Ellora Caves in Aurangabad.

Among them was her childhood hero, Prussian explorer Alexander von Humboldt, whose travels in the Americas inspired a great number of contemporary scientists and naturalists, including Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Ernst Haeckel.

Pfeiffer was also welcomed by German geographer and cartographer Carl Ritter who was, at the time, Professor of Geography at the University of Berlin and with whom she would continue to collaborate after her departure.

[14] From Hamburg, Pfeiffer set sail to London and met with paleontologist Richard Owen, an outspoken critic of Charles Darwin, geographer Augustus Petermann for his expertise on Africa, and William Bartlett, her traveling companion to Jerusalem.

She proceeded across the Indian Ocean to the Malay Archipelago, spending two weeks in Singapore where she collected a new species of mole cricket[15] in addition to fish, seaweed, and crustaceans.

Along the way, she encountered Sultan Abdu'l Rashid Muhammad Jamal ud-din of the principality of Sintang, renowned ichthyologist Dr. Pieter Bleeker in Batavia (present-day Jakarta), and Colonel van der Hart at Bukittinggi in West Sumatra.

She was granted permission to enter the territories of local villages where she observed dance performances, acquired a finely carved tunggal panaluan, and accumulated a collection of valuable specimens, including ray-finned fish (Homalopterula gymnogaster) and checker barb (Puntius oligolepis).

She arrived on the West Coast of the United States during the California Gold Rush and visited Sacramento, Marysville, Crescent City, Santa Clara, and San Jose before heading south to Central America.

In her journal, she described visits to American circuses, theaters, private girls' schools, the Manhattan Detention Complex as well as encounters with the eminent short story writer, Washington Irving, the celebrated surgeon John Collins Warren, and Swiss-American biologist Louis Agassiz.

Unbeknownst to Pfeiffer, Lambert had joined Jean Laborde and a few other Europeans in a plot to replace Ranavalona I, the queen of Madagascar, with the more moderate crown prince, Rakoto (the future king Radama II).

A travelogue describing her final voyage, Reise nach Madagaskar ("Trip to Madagascar"), was published in Vienna in 1861 in 2 volumes and included a biography written by her son Oscar Pfeiffer.

[19] In 1892, the Viennese Society for the Further Education of Women transferred Ida Pfeiffer's remains to a place of honor in the Vienna Central Cemetery.