| Abstrakt: |
The artist Karl Bodmer, who accompanied the German explorer, naturalist, and ethnologist Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, on a trip up the Missouri River in 1832–34 created one of the most important aesthetic and ethnological records that we have of the Indians of the North American plains. Bodmer’s superb watercolors were then reproduced in Maximilian’s book, Reise in dasinnere Nord-America in den Jahren 1832 bis 1834 (1839), two volumes plus atlas, which was translated and published in both French and English. Bodmer’s images were then widely copied by other artists and published in such disparate sources as Graham’s Magazine in the United States, Heinrich RudolfSchinz of Zurich in his Naturgeschichte und Abbildungen des Menschen der verschiedenen Rassen und Stamme nach den neuesten Entdeckungen und vorzuglichsten Originalien (3rd ed., 1845), and the Revistacientifica y literaria de Méjico (Méjico: El Museo Mejicano, 1845), to mention only a few, ultimately having a great influence on the iconography of the North American Plains Indians. The Library of the Royal Palace in Bucharest held copies of both Maximilian’s impressive works, Reise nach Brasilien in den Jahren 1815 bis 1817 and Reise in das innere Nord-America in den Jahren 1832 bis1834. After the communists took the power in 1948, after King Mihai I was compelled to abdicate in December 30, 1847, most of the books from the royal library were spread among different cultural institutions. The two volumes of Reise in das innere Nord-America, still wearing the royal cypher in gold on the leather cover, are now preserved at the Library of the Romanian Academy while the first volume of Reise nach Brasilien is in the library of the „G. Oprescu” Institute of Art History. (The whereabouts of the second volume is unknown.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
