Biography
Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege was born at Aue, near Eschwege, in Hesse, descended from an ancient noble family of Lower Hesse. His father, Johann Christian Ludwig, was a landrat; his mother, Sophie, was born Mosebach. The date of his birth differs between sources: the Neue Deutsche Biographie gives 10 November 1777, the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 15 November. After lessons from a tutor, which he himself would judge insufficient, he attended the gymnasium at Eisenach, then studied from 1796 to 1799 at Göttingen, where he followed the teaching of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. He also trained in mining and intended to take up that trade.
He became an assessor in the mining service at Richelsdorf around 1801. Soon afterward, he left for Portugal to run an iron foundry: 1802 according to the NDB, 1803 according to the ADB. During the French invasion of 1807, he served as a captain in the Portuguese army (1805 according to the ADB). In 1810, he went over to Brazil, where the court of Lisbon had taken refuge; the ADB says rather 1809. In the captaincy of Minas Gerais, he had several small works built and in December 1812, at Congonhas do Campo, obtained the first iron smelting in Brazil. The NDB says he was appointed director general of the gold mines in 1817, the ADB in 1821; he also directed the mineralogical cabinet of Rio de Janeiro.
The journey that feeds the book is that of his tours in Minas Gerais between 1810 and 1813, from Rio de Janeiro toward Villa Rica, then to the Coroatos. From it he drew the Journal von Brasilien, oder vermischte Nachrichten aus Brasilien, auf wissenschaftlichen Reisen gesammelt, published in Weimar in 1818 by the publisher Friedrich Justin Bertuch, in two installments (the sequel is dated 1819 by the ADB). In it he brings together his notebooks, learned papers and texts by traveling companions.
Eschwege is also a recognized expert on diamonds. He drew up the first geological profiles and the first colored geological map of Minas Gerais, and afterward advised many German explorers. He published in particular the Geognostisches Gemälde von Brasilien (1822), Brasilien, die Neue Welt (1824), the Beiträge zur Gebirgskunde Brasiliens (1832) and the Pluto brasiliensis (Berlin, 1833), devoted to gold, diamonds and mining legislation. He had been a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy since 1815.
Returned to Europe in 1821, he married Sophie von Baumbach at Weimar in 1823; the couple had no children. He went back to Portugal, where he was chief of mines (Oberberghauptmann) from 1824. He returned to Hesse in 1830 because of dynastic troubles, founded there in 1832 a gold-mining company on the Eder, liquidated in 1835 for lack of nuggets, then resumed his Portuguese post until the service was abolished in 1836. He then worked at the Pena Palace in Sintra for Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha; the NDB places this project from 1839 to 1849. Retired in 1850 to Wolfsanger, near Kassel, he died there on 1 February 1855. His personal papers are held in the Hessian State Archives at Marburg; his mineralogical collection is at Clausthal-Zellerfeld. The sources consulted report no modern reissue of the Journal.
