Georg Forster - Forster at Universities

Forster At Universities

The publication of A Voyage round the World brought Forster scientific recognition all over Europe. The respectable Royal Society made him a member on 9 January 1777 though he was not even 23 years old. He was granted similar titles from Academies ranging from Berlin to Madrid. These appointment did not give him money though. In 1778, he went to Germany to take a teaching position as a Natural History professor at the Collegium Carolinum in Kassel, where he met Therese Heyne, a classical philologist's daughter. She later became one of the first independent female writers in Germany. They married in 1785 (which was after he left Kassel) and had three children, but their marriage was not happy. From the time in Kassel on, Forster was in active correspondence with important figures of the Enlightenment, including Lessing, Herder, Wieland and Goethe. He also initiated cooperation between the Carolinum in Kassel and the University of Göttingen where his friend Georg Christoph Lichtenberg worked. Together, they founded and published the scientific and literary journal Göttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Litteratur. Forster's closest friend, Samuel Thomas von Sömmering, arrived in Kassel shortly after Forster, and both were soon involved with the Rosicrucians in Kassel.

However, by 1783 Forster saw that his involvement with the Rosicrucians not only led him away from real science, but also deeper into debt (it is said he was not good at money); for these reason Forster was happy to accept a proposal by the Polish Komisja Edukacji Narodowej (Commission of National Education) and became Chair of Natural History at Vilnius University in 1784. Initially, he was accepted well in Vilnius, but he felt more and more isolated with time. Most of his contacts were still with scientists in Germany; especially notable is his dispute with Immanuel Kant about the definition of race. In 1785, Forster travelled to Halle where he submitted his thesis about the plants of the South Pacific for a doctorate in medicine. Back in Vilnius, Forster's ambitions to build a real natural history scientific centre could not get appropriate financial support from the Polish authorities. Moreover, his famous speech on natural history in 1785 went almost unnoticed and was not printed until 1843. These events led to high tensions between him and the local community. Eventually, he broke the contract six years short of its completion as Catherine II of Russia had given him an offer to take part in a journey around the world (the Mulovsky expedition) for a high honorarium and a position as a professor in Saint Petersburg. This resulted in a conflict between Forster and the influential Polish scientist Jędrzej Śniadecki. However, the Russian proposal was withdrawn and Forster left Vilnius. He then settled in Mainz, where he became head librarian of the University of Mainz, a position his friend Johannes von Müller had held before, who made sure Forster would succeed him when Müller moved to the administration of Elector Friedrich Karl Josef von Erthal.

Forster regularly published essays on the scientific and discovery expeditions of his times and continued to be a very prolific translator; for instance, he wrote about Cook's third journey to the South Pacific, and about the Bounty expedition, as well as translating Cook's and Bligh's diaries from these journeys into German. From his London years, Forster was in contact with Sir Joseph Banks, the initiator of the Bounty expedition and a participant in Cook's first journey. While at the University of Vilnius he wrote the article, "Neuholland und die brittische Colonie in Botany-Bay", published in the Allgemeines historisches Taschenbuch, (Berlin,Dezember 1786), a remarkably prescient essay on the future prospects of the English colony founded in New South Wales in 1788.

Another field of his interest was indology (One of the main goals of his failed expedition to be financed by Catherine II had been to reach India). He translated the Sanskrit play Shakuntala using a Latin version provided by Sir William Jones: this strongly influenced Herder and triggered German interest in the culture of India.