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Ernst Dieffenbach and his Travels in New Zealand
Son of a professor of theology and cousin of the well-known surgeon, Johann Friedrich, Johann
Karl Ernst Dieffenbach was born on 27 January 1811 in Giessen, a small university town in the
Grand Duchy of Hesse in Germany. 24 He enrolled as a student of medicine in 1828, and joined
the politically-motivated student fraternity (“Burschenschaft”) ‘Germania’ in part due to
humanitarian reasons and in part due to the politically-charged atmosphere in the lead up to the
July Revolution of 1830 in Paris, which, like its 1789 predecessor, had a noticeable impact in
Germany, particularly in Braunschweig, Hanover, Saxony, Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Darmstadt,
where demonstrations over the need for constitutional reforms combined with revolts in such
cities as Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Munich and Vienna. The various revolutionary
activities of the liberal-nationalist ‘Germania’, which like the original fraternity started by
students in Jena in 1815 stood for honour, freedom and the creation of a unified nation-state, in
turn influenced the young non-conformist by further instilling and reinforcing in him a strong
sense of liberty, justice and equality, to the point where he was exiled from his homeland for
more than a decade after his presumed involvement in the storming of the main guardroom in the
seat of the German Confederation in Frankfurt in April 1833. In order to avoid imprisonment, he
set off for Strasbourg in August (several months before the outspoken dramatist, Georg Büchner,
began studying in Giessen), and was then expelled in May 1834 around the same time as the
secret and revolutionary ‘Society for Human Rights’ was founded in his home town by Büchner
and his close circle of friends. Dieffenbach reached Zurich via Aarau around the end of June or
beginning of July, and soon became involved yet again with a political organisation. This time he
became a leading member of the Swiss section of ‘Junges Deutschland’, and was additionally
involved in organising meetings of lower-class tradesmen and artisans for the first Workers’
Movement, resulting in his eventual deportation to England via France in August 1836, not before
24 The most reliable and in-depth biography is still Gerda Elizabeth Bell, Ernest Dieffenbach: Rebel and Humanist.
Palmerston North: Dunmore, 1976; see also Gerda Bell, “Ernst Dieffenbach”, in: Welt für sich, 181-94; Gerda Bell,
“Ultima Thule: Ernst Dieffenbach”, in: Bis zu des Erdballs letztem Inselriff: Reisen und Missionen. Ed. Kurt
Schleucher. Darmstadt: Turris, 1975, 137-69; Nolden, German and Austrian Naturalists, 16-29; Ferdinand
Dieffenbach, “Der Erforscher Neu-Seelands. Ein deutsches Gelehrtenleben”, in: Das Ausland [=Ausland] 47:5 2 Feb
(1874): 84-87; Rolf Herzog, “Dieffenbach und die Anfänge der Völkerkunde in London”, in: Abhandlungen und
Berichte des Staatlichen Museums für Völkerkunde Dresden 44 (1990): 125-32; Wilhelm Wolkenhauer,
“Dieffenbach, Ernst. Arzt, Forschungsreisender und Geologe, 1811 bis 1855”, in: Hessische Biographien. Vol. 2.
Darmstadt: Hessischer Staatsverlag, 1927, 146-50; Denis McLean, “Dieffenbach, Johann Karl Ernst 1811 – 1855:
Explorer, naturalist, linguist, writer”, in: DNZB 1, 107f.; Dietmar Henze, “Dieffenbach, Ernst”, in: EEEE 2, 78.
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