*Germany in the World*

The author is David Blackbourn, and the subtitle is A Global History 1500-2000.  The focus is on Germany’s global influence abroad and no I don’t mean the Battle of Stalingrad, though that era is covered.  Here is one excerpt:

There was global demand for German scientists of every kind.  The Southern Hemisphere offers two striking examples.  One is Latin america, thanks partly to Humboldt’s legacy.  There were hundreds of Germans scientists in Argentina alone by the early twentieth century, and many others in Chile, Peru, and elsewhere.  German scientists also played an equally outsized role in Australia.  We have already seen the impact made by the botanist Richard Schomburgk and his circle of ’49ers in South Australia.  Among the many German scientists who arrived after midcentury and shaped Australia’s scientific landscape were several who were well connected internationally.  The geophysicist Georg von Neumayer is a perfect specimen of the type.  Neumayer enjoyed support in British scientific circles and was a disciple of the American astronomer and oceanographer Matthew Maury, who had himself been inspired by Humboldt.  In Australia Neumayer established an observatory in Melbourne, before returning to Germany, where he chaired the International Polar Commission in 1879.

Neumayer is a reminder that German remained, as they had been in the era of Forster and Pallas, inveterate scientific travelers.

Recommended, this is quite a good book.