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Eine Frauenfahrt um die Welt: Alle 3 Bände: Reise von Wien nach Brasilien, Chili, Otahaiti, China, Ost-Indien, Persien und Kleinasien
Dieses eBook: "Eine Frauenfahrt um die Welt (Gesamtausgabe - Band 1 bis 3)" ist mit einem detaillierten und dynamischen Inhaltsverzeichnis versehen und wurde sorgfältig korrekturgelesen.
Ida Pfeiffer (1797-1858) war eine österreichische Weltreisende, die als erste europäische Frau das Innere der Insel Borneo durchquerte.
Zur Handlung: Zu dieser Reise brach Ida Pfeiffer im Mai 1846 auf, über Hamburg gelangte sie nach Rio de Janeiro. In Brasilien entkam sie nur knapp einem Mordanschlag. Im Februar 1847 machte sie die gefürchtete Schiffspassage durch die stürmischen Gewässer um Kap Hoorn nach Valparaíso in Chile. Über Tahiti, wo sie von der Königin empfangen wurde, erreichte sie Macau, danach Hongkong und Kanton. In diesen Orten war das Auftreten einer weißen Frau ein so außerordentliches Ereignis, dass sie immer wieder in Bedrängnis geriet. Über Singapur ging es weiter nach Ceylon, von dort nach längeren Exkursionen Ende Oktober 1847 nach Südindien. Hauptsächliche Stationen ihrer Reise durch den indischen Subkontinent waren Kalkutta, Benares und Bombay. Sie fand Aufnahme in den Häusern reicher und vornehmer Inder, nahm an einer Tigerjagd teil, legte aber auch weite Strecken auf Ochsenkarren zurück. Im April 1848 reiste sie weiter nach Mesopotamien und Persien, sie besuchte Bagdad, begleitete Karawanen durch die Wüste, sah die Ruinen von Babylon und Ninive, wurde von Räubern bedroht. Der englische Konsul in Täbris, ein Landeskenner, war von der Kühnheit ihrer Unternehmungen tief beeindruckt. Über Armenien, Georgien, Odessa, Konstantinopel und Athen ging es nach Hause. In Wien traf sie im November 1848 ein, kurz nachdem der Fürst von Windisch-Graetz dort den Oktoberaufstand niedergeschlagen und damit die Revolution von 1848 in Österreich beendet hatte. Die Aufzeichnungen von dieser Reise, Eine Frauenfahrt um die Welt, erschienen 1850 in drei Bänden.
Ida Pfeiffer (1797-1858) war eine österreichische Weltreisende, die als erste europäische Frau das Innere der Insel Borneo durchquerte.
Zur Handlung: Zu dieser Reise brach Ida Pfeiffer im Mai 1846 auf, über Hamburg gelangte sie nach Rio de Janeiro. In Brasilien entkam sie nur knapp einem Mordanschlag. Im Februar 1847 machte sie die gefürchtete Schiffspassage durch die stürmischen Gewässer um Kap Hoorn nach Valparaíso in Chile. Über Tahiti, wo sie von der Königin empfangen wurde, erreichte sie Macau, danach Hongkong und Kanton. In diesen Orten war das Auftreten einer weißen Frau ein so außerordentliches Ereignis, dass sie immer wieder in Bedrängnis geriet. Über Singapur ging es weiter nach Ceylon, von dort nach längeren Exkursionen Ende Oktober 1847 nach Südindien. Hauptsächliche Stationen ihrer Reise durch den indischen Subkontinent waren Kalkutta, Benares und Bombay. Sie fand Aufnahme in den Häusern reicher und vornehmer Inder, nahm an einer Tigerjagd teil, legte aber auch weite Strecken auf Ochsenkarren zurück. Im April 1848 reiste sie weiter nach Mesopotamien und Persien, sie besuchte Bagdad, begleitete Karawanen durch die Wüste, sah die Ruinen von Babylon und Ninive, wurde von Räubern bedroht. Der englische Konsul in Täbris, ein Landeskenner, war von der Kühnheit ihrer Unternehmungen tief beeindruckt. Über Armenien, Georgien, Odessa, Konstantinopel und Athen ging es nach Hause. In Wien traf sie im November 1848 ein, kurz nachdem der Fürst von Windisch-Graetz dort den Oktoberaufstand niedergeschlagen und damit die Revolution von 1848 in Österreich beendet hatte. Die Aufzeichnungen von dieser Reise, Eine Frauenfahrt um die Welt, erschienen 1850 in drei Bänden.
664 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1988
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246 people want to read
About the author
Ida Pfeiffer
212 books12 followersIda Laura Pfeiffer was an Austrian traveler and travel book author. She was one of the first female explorers, whose popular books were translated into seven languages.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 9, 2022
This is clearly an important book to read if you are interested in 19th century traveling women. Ida Pfeifer was the first woman to travel unaccompanied around the world and probably the first woman to travel around the world period. She wasn’t young, wealthy or traveling in a group.
She had made previous longish trips but had always wanted to circle the globe. She had a £100 gift from the Austrian government and that was all. Today that would equal £12,421 and that had to get her through her 2 1/2 year trip. She did send the odd botanical or insect sample to England or America to replenish her account. Frugality was more than a virtue it was necessity. Sailing ships were slower but cheaper than steam. She always carried handy letters of introduction for whatever governor, embassy official, missionary, etc. that might put her up for free. It makes for a better story to think about this Austrian “Victorian” lady traveling on deck with goats, freebooting in palaces and rubbing shoulders with Cossacks and bandits.
Her trip began in 1846 with the first real stay in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro was only a picturesque harbor. She’d already reported on her long travel across the Atlantic but hits her stride here. Her adventures here are typical of places later in the book. She reports on how she’s made welcome, visits to botanical gardens, agriculture, food, natives, etc. She was not a professional scientist but her notes and specimens were welcome in her day. Her curiosity took her to rough places, she traveled “alone” although she accepts help when offered. When on an adventure to see a remote tribe she and a lone male companion were attacked by an angry person with a knife. Her companion had to turn back but Ida fought off the assailant with her parasol and continued alone. Neither snakes or native delicacies deterred her. Roasted monkey was “superlatively delicious”.
Her spirit sustained her around Cape Horn, on to Tahiti, China, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and beyond. She was not stopped by hostility, stories of horrors or disease. She spent a long time in India and seemed to particularly enjoy that.
Her writing style is blessedly plain. It may be helped by the translator, but I think she was just too direct to mess around with exalted language. Naturally you get some 19th century prejudices about native people but she keeps it to a minimum. She watches but doesn’t moralize incessantly. Most of her scorn is reserved for ships that are improperly run or people who try to price gouge her (she’s really onto that) or those rude Russians near the end of her trip. She had been physically kidnapped by a Cossack and held captive two days until her documents could be verified.
In Tiflis (then part of Russia) she finally got to vent to authorities. The chancellor and governor “were not much pleased with me—my free expression of opinion, perhaps, did not suit them. I made no scruple of speaking my mind with to ill regulated posting establishments, and miserable roads. I moreover related my imprisonment with a few comments; and crowned all, I said I had intended to (go through Russia) but I had been completely deterred from doing so by my short experience of travels in the country…”
I suspect the many kindnesses shown to her on her travels were performed by frantic hosts hoping she’d leave and get herself killed somewhere else. I’m sure she struck people with a mixture of awe and panic wherever she went. She was lucky but as she says “I always succeed in carrying out my own will. I found energy and boldness have a weight with all people.”
Pfeiffer’s story is a classic and really not to be missed.
She had made previous longish trips but had always wanted to circle the globe. She had a £100 gift from the Austrian government and that was all. Today that would equal £12,421 and that had to get her through her 2 1/2 year trip. She did send the odd botanical or insect sample to England or America to replenish her account. Frugality was more than a virtue it was necessity. Sailing ships were slower but cheaper than steam. She always carried handy letters of introduction for whatever governor, embassy official, missionary, etc. that might put her up for free. It makes for a better story to think about this Austrian “Victorian” lady traveling on deck with goats, freebooting in palaces and rubbing shoulders with Cossacks and bandits.
Her trip began in 1846 with the first real stay in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro was only a picturesque harbor. She’d already reported on her long travel across the Atlantic but hits her stride here. Her adventures here are typical of places later in the book. She reports on how she’s made welcome, visits to botanical gardens, agriculture, food, natives, etc. She was not a professional scientist but her notes and specimens were welcome in her day. Her curiosity took her to rough places, she traveled “alone” although she accepts help when offered. When on an adventure to see a remote tribe she and a lone male companion were attacked by an angry person with a knife. Her companion had to turn back but Ida fought off the assailant with her parasol and continued alone. Neither snakes or native delicacies deterred her. Roasted monkey was “superlatively delicious”.
Her spirit sustained her around Cape Horn, on to Tahiti, China, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and beyond. She was not stopped by hostility, stories of horrors or disease. She spent a long time in India and seemed to particularly enjoy that.
Her writing style is blessedly plain. It may be helped by the translator, but I think she was just too direct to mess around with exalted language. Naturally you get some 19th century prejudices about native people but she keeps it to a minimum. She watches but doesn’t moralize incessantly. Most of her scorn is reserved for ships that are improperly run or people who try to price gouge her (she’s really onto that) or those rude Russians near the end of her trip. She had been physically kidnapped by a Cossack and held captive two days until her documents could be verified.
In Tiflis (then part of Russia) she finally got to vent to authorities. The chancellor and governor “were not much pleased with me—my free expression of opinion, perhaps, did not suit them. I made no scruple of speaking my mind with to ill regulated posting establishments, and miserable roads. I moreover related my imprisonment with a few comments; and crowned all, I said I had intended to (go through Russia) but I had been completely deterred from doing so by my short experience of travels in the country…”
I suspect the many kindnesses shown to her on her travels were performed by frantic hosts hoping she’d leave and get herself killed somewhere else. I’m sure she struck people with a mixture of awe and panic wherever she went. She was lucky but as she says “I always succeed in carrying out my own will. I found energy and boldness have a weight with all people.”
Pfeiffer’s story is a classic and really not to be missed.
March 17, 2016
What an extraordinary woman Ida Pfeiffer must have been! Born into a wealthy Austrian family in the first half of the 19th century, she fell on hard times later in life but never lost her childhood dream to travel the world, which she bravely did when her husband died.
She couldn't afford first-class accommodation or the swiftest means of transport such as steamships, so each of the unprecedented journeys she took to all points of the globe were done on a shoestring and were lengthy affairs.
This one, taking in Brazil, Chili, Tahiti, China, India, Persia and Asia Minor, took the best part of two and a half years!
And she loved most of all to go off the beaten track, the dangers of which to anyone, let alone a single, middle-aged woman, were considerable. China in particular was notorious for his hostility to europeans, but she insists on risking being stoned to visit Cathay.
On an excursion from Rio de Janeiro she is attacked by a native with a knife and lasso, defending herself gamely with her parasol. It doesn't prevent her from going beyond the area settled by whites so she can visit the Puri Indians, with whom she eats roasted monkey ('superlatively delicious').
Shining through the entire narrative is her interest and tolerance for those different from herself and disgust for the prejudice and brutality of of colonialism, especially of the British, despite their politeness towards herself:
'It is only Europeans, who have been brought up with Christian principles, who assume the right of treating coloured people according as their whim or fancy may dictate.'
And she says this of the negroes in Brazil:
'Among the so-called educated class of the place, there are many who, in spite of all the proofs of mechanical skill, as well as general intelligence which the blacks often display, persist in asserting that they are so far inferior to the whites in mental power, that they can only be looked upon as a link between the monkey tribe and the human race. I allow that they are somewhat behind the whites in intellectual culture; but I believe that this is not because they are deficient in understanding, but because their education is totally neglected.'
That's not to say that she likes all she sees. The lasciviousness she sees in Tahiti leads her to conclude that 'the Tahitian people are endowed with none of the more noble sentiments of humanity, but that their only pleasures are merely animal. Nature herself encourages them to this in an extraordinary manner.'
As for China, she calls it 'that most wonderful of all known countries' but 'I myself never met with a more dastardly, false, and, at the same time, cruel race, in my life; one proof of this is, that their greatest pleasure consists in torturing animals.'
In India she travels down the Ganges on a steamer, witnesses a Hindu funeral (it repulsed her), has a ride on one of the elephants of the Rajah of Benares and takes part in a tiger hunt in the Deccan region.
In Persia she gets to meet the seventeen year old prince who she takes a dislike to. He says of those European monarchs currently losing their crowns that 'the result would have been very different if they had had plenty of people strangled', like he does.
But for all the hardships in the East she endures on her epic journey, her most unpleasant times are spent closer to home in Russia and her surrounding states. In Armenia she is forcibly arrested by a Cossack and detained without reason and shabbily treated.
Once in Russia itself, she can't wait to leave:
'The Russians and the Cossacks have stupid coarse features, and their behaviour corresponds completely to what their appearance indicates; I never met with a people so covetous, coarse, and slavish as they are.'
It's difficult to disagree.
Pfeiffer writes in journal style with a short description of each day. Interestingly, she never recreates dialogue, which removes a common source of the travel writer's artifice, but also of their ability to bring the characters to life that they meet on the way.
If truth be told her style does become a little flat after a while, but her simple dignity, bravery and good sense more than make up for the lack of animation in her narrative.
She took other journeys and wrote about them too. I will certainly try and read at least one more of them.
She couldn't afford first-class accommodation or the swiftest means of transport such as steamships, so each of the unprecedented journeys she took to all points of the globe were done on a shoestring and were lengthy affairs.
This one, taking in Brazil, Chili, Tahiti, China, India, Persia and Asia Minor, took the best part of two and a half years!
And she loved most of all to go off the beaten track, the dangers of which to anyone, let alone a single, middle-aged woman, were considerable. China in particular was notorious for his hostility to europeans, but she insists on risking being stoned to visit Cathay.
On an excursion from Rio de Janeiro she is attacked by a native with a knife and lasso, defending herself gamely with her parasol. It doesn't prevent her from going beyond the area settled by whites so she can visit the Puri Indians, with whom she eats roasted monkey ('superlatively delicious').
Shining through the entire narrative is her interest and tolerance for those different from herself and disgust for the prejudice and brutality of of colonialism, especially of the British, despite their politeness towards herself:
'It is only Europeans, who have been brought up with Christian principles, who assume the right of treating coloured people according as their whim or fancy may dictate.'
And she says this of the negroes in Brazil:
'Among the so-called educated class of the place, there are many who, in spite of all the proofs of mechanical skill, as well as general intelligence which the blacks often display, persist in asserting that they are so far inferior to the whites in mental power, that they can only be looked upon as a link between the monkey tribe and the human race. I allow that they are somewhat behind the whites in intellectual culture; but I believe that this is not because they are deficient in understanding, but because their education is totally neglected.'
That's not to say that she likes all she sees. The lasciviousness she sees in Tahiti leads her to conclude that 'the Tahitian people are endowed with none of the more noble sentiments of humanity, but that their only pleasures are merely animal. Nature herself encourages them to this in an extraordinary manner.'
As for China, she calls it 'that most wonderful of all known countries' but 'I myself never met with a more dastardly, false, and, at the same time, cruel race, in my life; one proof of this is, that their greatest pleasure consists in torturing animals.'
In India she travels down the Ganges on a steamer, witnesses a Hindu funeral (it repulsed her), has a ride on one of the elephants of the Rajah of Benares and takes part in a tiger hunt in the Deccan region.
In Persia she gets to meet the seventeen year old prince who she takes a dislike to. He says of those European monarchs currently losing their crowns that 'the result would have been very different if they had had plenty of people strangled', like he does.
But for all the hardships in the East she endures on her epic journey, her most unpleasant times are spent closer to home in Russia and her surrounding states. In Armenia she is forcibly arrested by a Cossack and detained without reason and shabbily treated.
Once in Russia itself, she can't wait to leave:
'The Russians and the Cossacks have stupid coarse features, and their behaviour corresponds completely to what their appearance indicates; I never met with a people so covetous, coarse, and slavish as they are.'
It's difficult to disagree.
Pfeiffer writes in journal style with a short description of each day. Interestingly, she never recreates dialogue, which removes a common source of the travel writer's artifice, but also of their ability to bring the characters to life that they meet on the way.
If truth be told her style does become a little flat after a while, but her simple dignity, bravery and good sense more than make up for the lack of animation in her narrative.
She took other journeys and wrote about them too. I will certainly try and read at least one more of them.
June 8, 2022
Written more than 175 years ago in a very different world from the present. As a reader, you have to adjust for that and withhold judgement. Otherwise, I enjoyed her adventures and her comments on the people she met and the places she visited. She comes across as inquisitive, energetic and forthright with genuine concern and sympathy for the downtrodden and poor that she encountered. She was unique for her times, genuine and always willing to give an honest opinion. An enjoyable read.
August 22, 2018
Its daunting to think of this trip taken in the late 1840s by a woman alone. The section on India and Persia was especially interesting but throughout I was amazed at the hardships and travel conditions she endured to make this journey. A re-read for me; still fascinated by her , fearlessness, tenacity, comments and descriptions.
May 30, 2024
Brace yourself: Ida Pfeiffer hates all the food and finds most foreigners ugly, but her wanderlust pushes her onward for more and more adventures that she really seems to enjoy. As a traveler myself I really appreciated reading a first-person account of her travels. I highly recommend complementing this book with her biography "Wanderlust" by John Van Wyhe to get the full picture of this extraordinary woman.
February 12, 2019
Summary of the book: I saw foreign cities. They were horrible. I also saw people. They were horrible too.
Needless to say, this book thoroughly amused me :D
Needless to say, this book thoroughly amused me :D
October 9, 2023
Amazing, to meet princes as you travel in far flung places before the motorcar was invented. So much to discover and on sailing vessels too.
August 14, 2014
What an amazing journey that was. I think the - to us - historical perspective is fascinating. What she did, and what she went through are almost beyond my imagining in this world of fast planes and instantaneous communication. I thought it was a lot of fun to read, but I suspect it isn't to everybody's taste.
January 19, 2016
I loved this sensitive and observant German woman's memoirs of travelling on her own around the Middle East in the mid-19th century. She sounds like a contemporary woman, her language and worldview is not dated in the least, which I find remarkable. She is up for anything, can take a lot of discomfort and danger, has good sense and is good company on the road. Well worth reading!
February 3, 2016
Fascinating. She may be a tad racist for modern audiences, but otherwise her observations are droll and spot-on. Worthy reading, especially during travel. Will look up some of her other travel writing.
Read
September 13, 2016Brave or foolish, it doesn't matter. Ida Pfeiffer traveled alone around the world in the mid-1840's and wrote a book about her adventures. Her descriptions, of a world that no longer exists, are precise and informative. If you have a taste for travelers tales this is a good book to read.
January 1, 2019
3 Stars = Okay. I liked the book. It was worth reading.
Want to read
April 2, 2017I am listening to the most interesting college class from the Great Courses called "History's Voyages". I am learning so many amazing things about how we came to know the world we know today, but the most surprising lecture so far has been the story of Ida Pfeiffer - the first female travel writer - who traveled the world on her own when that just wasn't done. I am really looking forward to journeying with her.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews