The mysterious Dr Ferdinand von Sommer (~1800–49): Western Australia’s first government geologist

Introduction

Dr Ferdinand von Sommer (~1800–49) has been labelled ‘enigmatic’ and a ‘mystery-man’ for good reason.¹ Doubts have been raised about both his name and title, namely his signifier of nobility ‘von’ and his doctorate/s.² Neither his date of birth³ nor the identity of his parents⁴ is undisputed. There is no portrait of him and no gravesite. But it is undeniable that a man who called himself Dr Ferdinand von Sommer served as Western Australia’s first government geologist from September 1847 until August 1848 and had ‘Mount Sommer’, north of Perth, named after him.⁵ Ferdinand left behind three exceptional maps of his surveying and prospecting (Figs 1, 2 and 3) activities as well as reports to the government that—even by today’s standards—can be considered impressive. However, his absence from historical records is curious,⁶ and his legacy has become rather tainted. This paper aims to redress this by showing that Ferdinand’s scientific endeavours are worthy of investigation and by correcting some of the misconceptions recorded about him.⁷

Fig. 1.

Geological map, produced by Ferdinand von Sommer, of a part of Western Australia situated between Perth and the estuary of the Hutt. Colonial Secretary’s Office (1848a).

Fig. 2.

Geological map, produced by Ferdinand von Sommer, of parts of Western Australia situated eastwards and southwards of Perth, and between King Georges Sound and Cape Rich [Riche]. Colonial Secretary’s Office (1848b).

Fig. 3.

Geological map, produced by Ferdinand von Sommer, of parts of Western Australia situated between Perth and Cape Naturalist [Naturaliste] and between York and Doubtful Island Bay. Colonial Secretary’s Office (1848c).

Born on the cusp of the nineteenth century,⁸ the life that Ferdinand lived reminds us—as one scholar put it in relation to another seemingly universal talent—of a ‘gentleman’s career [with] no sharp line dividing Natural Science (it was called, indeed, Natural Philosophy) from Art’.⁹ In the manner of a Renaissance man, Ferdinand moved freely between academic disciplines, countries, jurisdictions, languages and cultures, exhibiting knowledge and skills in a variety of fields. In some ways, he seemed quaint and almost too old-fashioned for the early nineteenth century; yet in other ways, he might strike us even today as modern and forward thinking.

Ferdinand von Sommer died young, after an eventful life as an author and adventurer that spanned several continents and encompassed the duties of a university lecturer of nautical and astronomical studies as well as a language teacher, translator and poet in Europe, before working briefly as a missionary in India, practising as a medical doctor in South Africa and South Australia, and serving as a mineralogist and colonial government geologist in Western Australia and Timor. Many of these activities remain well documented and tell of numerous reinventions. Ferdinand’s premature death before the age of fifty years was widely reported—in Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore and England—as the demise of ‘a famous German naturalist, who died on Timor’, by best accounts on 23 June 1849.¹⁰ The cause of death was recorded as fever and/or brought on by the climate.¹¹ Even the attribute ‘German’ in his obituaries is not uncontested, given he was born in the Netherlands.

Like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who experimented with botany, anatomy, the science of colours and mineralogy, but excelled in theatre, literature and poetry, Ferdinand, fifty years Goethe’s junior, had a passion for both the sciences and the arts and embraced a life of learning with an immense hunger for knowledge. But Ferdinand ultimately lacked Goethe’s genius and did not find a patron and champion, despite coming to the attention of Goethe and seeking out the support of renowned academics Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss, to name but a few. Rather, he encountered a number of adversaries along the way who found little merit in his contributions to knowledge and who even went as far as labelling him an impostor for using academic titles and his signifier of nobility supposedly inappropriately.¹²

The oeuvre left by Ferdinand portrays a fearless and versatile, adaptable and tenacious individual. There was something quite Faustian about his drive and energy. His pursuit of the integration of varied areas of knowledge and his self-confident approach to life reflect his privileged position as a white man of a past century, whereas his desire to combine theory and university study with practical application and his willingness to learn on the job in international settings can be viewed as contemporary.

Whilst his tireless travels, multiple changes of name and his assertive personality¹³ complicate efforts to trace his life’s story, multi-layered cross-cultural encounters come into focus that explain more about the history of science and help map the complex interrelations that were in play in diverse nineteenth-century societies in Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania and that presented structures and strictures to the free movement of peoples and ideas.

The family

Ferdinand was born around 1801 into a large European family of military men and descendants of the landed gentry in the south-east of what is now Germany. The family’s status as ‘nobles’ was first confirmed in 1620,¹⁴ thereby establishing that the ‘von’ in his surname was used legitimately. As military men, his ancestors moved around frequently and changed allegiance depending on where they were in relation to Europe’s changing borders. Like him, Ferdinand’s father, Franz, was not a first-born son expecting an inheritance, but one who knew he had to make a living for himself. Born in 1769, the same year as Napoleon, Franz Theodor Joseph von Sommer¹⁵ initially seemed destined for life as a civilian around his hometown of Holzminden, just south of Brunswick. Dramatic political changes following the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars saw Franz von Sommer enter the Dutch army before being stationed in Coevorden, in the east of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.¹⁶ He married Anna Bernardina Clara Antonetta von Werlein¹⁷ from the German town of Münster and had at least one daughter and three sons. Ferdinand, the middle son, was born in Coevorden¹⁸ while his father was still serving in the Dutch army. This partly explains Ferdinand’s fluid nationality.

In 1813, when Franz von Sommer became major of the Königlich Westphälische Militärakademie,¹⁹ the local military academy in Brunswick, ‘Ferdinand de Sommer’ was enrolled there, as was customary for twelve-year-old boys.²⁰ This variation of his name is likely due the changes of borders and allegiances at the time, that also led the military academy to change its name and its administration; this may also explain some of the variations of his name across future decades. In 1818, he was registered at the Collegium Carolinum (technical university) in Brunswick,²¹ where he was focusing on Cameralwissenschaften, a field of study related to accounting and administration in absolutistic regimes where treasures were kept in a Schatzkammer/treasury; that is, a room full of the monarch’s assets. It seems that Ferdinand’s parents wanted their son to be a public servant, but by studying sciences, Ferdinand did not live up to that expectation.

The mathematician

In his late teens, Ferdinand enrolled as a student of mathematics under Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855), the famous German mathematician, geodesist and physicist, at Göttingen University, graduating with an MPhil in 1822.²² In general, academic degrees were attainable by studious men, and Doctor-diplomas were often part of the initial graduation. If candidates wished to pursue academic careers, they were required to achieve a habilitation—that included a disputation—and to lecture over several years as a Privatdozent (unsalaried lecturer); ultimately, they had to pay sixty thalers, which today would represent an average monthly salary,²³ before a university would offer a professorial position. The printing of academic certificates incurred an additional cost of a few thalers and this, together with the material losses that would likely have been experienced under difficult travel conditions in the years that followed, may explain why Ferdinand did not possess evidence of his academic degrees in later years. A contemporaneous historian at Göttingen University in 1820 also noted as quite acceptable and common that, ‘since the title of master’s degree has lost so much of its prestige, the graduates with a masters of philosophy have recently begun to use the title of doctor in general’.²⁴ So, Ferdinand may have felt well within his rights to call himself ‘DPhil’ upon his graduation, with or without having paid the sum required for the piece of paper. Money was certainly a concern for Ferdinand during that time. Gauss recalled that Ferdinand tried to enlist Gauss’ help when he found himself in debt.²⁵

By June 1822, Ferdinand had moved back to Brunswick and corresponded with Gauss from afar,²⁶ claiming to have solved a mathematical conundrum that had eluded Gauss. Gauss was consternated to hear of Ferdinand’s claim, thatwas unsupported by any proof. Indeed, Ferdinand’s mathematical project was doomed to go nowhere, yet only Gauss seemed to intuitively know this at that point in time.²⁷ Ferdinand continued to write up his ideas for much wider consumption and publication. Hoping to enlist Gauss’ support, he sent him the manuscript and asked Gauss to contribute an introductory note. However, Gauss was travelling and only had a chance to reply months later.²⁸ By that time, Ferdinand had long submitted a sixty-page ‘treatise’,²⁹ a verbose document that failed to follow any factual and mathematical deductive lines of argument and, most importantly, seemed not to be primarily driven by science, deductions or equations. Ferdinand sent Gauss a copy of his first publication, but Gauss—expecting to finally receive the proof for Ferdinand’s claim to have solved the prized question of the general solution of the equations of the 5th degree, even though Gauss sensed the very futility of this undertaking—was confused about both the content and tone of the publication. Gauss expressed his consternation to several of his friends and colleagues, chiefly to his confidant, the eminent astronomer Wilhelm Olbers, comparing Ferdinand³⁰ with the much maligned and mocked mathematician Józef Maria Hoëné Wroński (1776–1853).

Despite struggling to be recognised by the academic elite in his field of mathematics, Ferdinand continued to give public lectures on topics that appealed to an educated audience, such as the stars and measuring the world.³¹ He wrote feverishly and remained seemingly stoic, unfazed by criticism and unmoved by self-reflection, even when his critics became more numerous and vocal. By that time, the natural sciences had started to embrace objectivity, measurement and deductive analysis. Goethe, who himself had at times still tried to fuse the arts and sciences in didactic poems, noted ‘how difficult it is to weave together a work of knowledge and imagination: to mould two opposing elements into one living body’.³² Yet Ferdinand ignored these momentous changes in science communication, his tone and approach seemingly stuck in a bygone era.

The recruit

Turning his attention to the Mediterranean region, Ferdinand’s next move seems to emulate Goethe’s educational journey (Bildungsreise). In the winter of 1825–6, he claimed to have participated in the liberation fights in Greece.³³ However, this cannot be verified, as Philhellenes were chaotic in their organisation and their record keeping poor. Ferdinand’s activism would have come late in the struggle; by 1821, the Greeks had revolted against the rule of the Ottoman Empire, leading to waves of romantic supporters from Western Europe and the United States wanting to join the cause. More than a thousand volunteers had arrived, prepared to fight for an Athens they imagined to be that of Pericles; some even expected to be able to converse in Ancient Greek and talk philosophy. More Philhellenes came in the wake of Lord Byron’s involvement in 1824–5, the so-called romantic Byronists who were attracted by Greece’s ‘exoticism’.³⁴ Whether real or imagined, Ferdinand was in fine company with his desire to take part in the Greek freedom fight; Edgar Allan Poe, ‘a fervent admirer of Byron’, also claimed to have ‘set out “without a dollar on a quixotic expedition to join the Greeks then struggling for liberty”, [although] it is known that he got no nearer than Boston’.³⁵

What can be confirmed is that Ferdinand joined the Dutch navy, then a mighty fleet designed to protect its international merchant fleet;³⁶ but he did not name his biological parents, listing instead the Dutch-sounding names of Frans (or Franz) and Maria van Hanstein as his next of kin.³⁷ Ferdinand served on the Rupel from July 1826 until late 1828,³⁸ sailing on the Mediterranean Sea, deterring pirates and privateers by escorting Dutch merchant vessels loaded with silver, cotton and dried fruit to and from Malta³⁹ as well as those carrying prized Levantine opium, used for eating or smoking, around Dutch trading outposts in the Ottoman Empire.⁴⁰ Here he would have had time to consolidate his foreign language skills; in addition to his native Dutch and German, as well as his knowledge of scholastic Latin from his school and university years, he was by now also confidently working in both English and French.

The author

An article related to mathematics (written in Latin) that Ferdinand had sent to Alexander von Humboldt years earlier received a late reception when Humboldt forwarded it with his recommendation to the Paris Academy.⁴¹ Ferdinand also received his first academic citation when fellow mathematician J. Joseph Schön referenced him in his dissertation in 1825.⁴² Back in his parental home in Brunswick, Ferdinand submitted a manuscript to the Berlin Academy and sent his ‘treatise on the solution of higher equations’ to the Royal Society in London in early 1830.⁴³ After receiving a reply from London that he interpreted as encouraging, Ferdinand wrote again to one of the secretaries of the Royal Society, Sir Edward Sabine (1788–1883), explaining that he was

at present chiefly occupied in composing a complete compendium of navigation, for which purpose I have been two years and a half at sea as instructor on board the Dutch frigate Rupel. Observations and measurements for which I found a particular favourable opportunity in the Mediterranean convinced me, the Nautic will yet admit of greater perfection.⁴⁴

All the while, the political atmosphere in Brunswick reached fever pitch. Duke Charles II’s absolutistic conduct turned his own people against him and they ultimately revolted; as a result, Charles II fled from Brunswick on 7 September 1830, whereupon his castle was looted and set on fire by local citizens.⁴⁵ During his hurried exodus, Charles was only accompanied by his most loyal confidants, among them Adjutant Carl von Sommer, Ferdinand’s older brother.⁴⁶ This so-called Brunswick Revolution of 1830 is memorable, as it is the only revolution that deposed a German ruler in the nineteenth century. With both Ferdinand’s father and brother seen as loyal supporters of a deposed ruler, their reputations would likely have been compromised. This would have robbed Ferdinand of his comfortable home base and financial support. For the next two years, Ferdinand earned his money as an author and journalist, moving from mathematics to philosophical topics, writing reviews as well as creative pieces and ultimately finding a popular topic with a series of articles about cholera, which allowed him to combine his storytelling with scientific observations.⁴⁷

After the failed coup, his father moved to nearby Holzminden in late 1830, and though he lived to witness a duel between his sons Carl and Louis that was legally prosecuted,⁴⁸ his health was deteriorating. When in 1832 Ferdinand’s father died aged 63,⁴⁹ his sister married⁵⁰ and his brothers got into trouble with the authorities again, Ferdinand’s residence in the Dukedom of Brunswick became increasingly unattractive. His younger brother, Louis, was ultimately dismissed from military service⁵¹ and he enlisted in the liberal army in Portugal.⁵² He was court-martialled in Brunswick in absentia on 29 August 1832 for an attack on his brother Carl with a weapon and an ensuing duel.⁵³ He enlisted as ‘Louis Von Sommer’ in the Portuguese army in 1833, as well as under the variant spelling of ‘Luiz van Sommer’.⁵⁴

The lecturer

His father had been buried for only a few days when Ferdinand wrote to the Prussian Ministry of Culture seeking employment in Berlin.⁵⁵ After the political and familial turmoil of recent years, Ferdinand must have been attracted to Berlin University for similar reasons as those of Ludwig Feuerbach, who in 1826 wrote:

There is no question here of drinking, duelling and pleasant communal outings; in no other university can you find such a passion for work, such an interest in things that are not petty student intrigues, such an inclination for the sciences, such calm and such silence. Compared to this temple of work, the other universities appear like public houses.⁵⁶

Ferdinand ultimately gained the right to lecture in mathematics and nautical sciences on 6 February 1833, effectively catapulting him into the ranks of Berlin’s professoriate,⁵⁷ a status he cemented with his prolific publication record in the 1830s and early 1840s.⁵⁸ Ferdinand tried to establish himself in several disciplines, in both science and languages. In addition to teaching at Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm University, he also advertised his services as a private teacher for Dutch and English⁵⁹ and was engaged at a School of Artillery and Engineering that was later to become Berlin’s Technical University. The term engineering in its name might be responsible for Ferdinand’s reputation as an Ingenieur.⁶⁰

It is in Berlin that he found love with Coevorden-born Caroline Wilhelmine Lindow, daughter of a merchant in Berlin. On 21 June 1836, Ferdinand and Caroline Wilhelmine Lindow had a son, Carl Friedrich Wilhelm.⁶¹ The child was born out of wedlock and was initially registered as Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Lindow, but when the child was baptised on 31 July 1836 in Berlin, Ferdinand was acknowledged as the biological father in the church records.⁶² However, Ferdinand was to leave both of them behind for months to come, and it is possible that his departure from Berlin might relate more to private than professional matters. To his colleagues at least, this move came as a complete surprise: ‘He disappeared in 1838, and we did not hear from him again until 1842.’⁶³

The missionary

The reason for Ferdinand’s disappearance from Berlin was closely tied to his friendship with one of his colleagues, Hans Röer. Like Ferdinand, Hans had been a Privatdozent at Berlin University since 1833, where he lectured in philosophy. Hans gave up his position in 1837–8 to study medicine and Ferdinand went along. Together they enrolled at the university in Jena. At that time, university medical training taught skills ranging from shaving, pulling teeth, splinting broken and treating dislocated limbs, haemostasis and bloodletting to applying bandages, and was finished with a written examination that was based on the works of Paracelsus.⁶⁴ Hans and Ferdinand graduated as medical doctors and surgeons in 1838. The local paper reported that they were exempt from the final oral disputation on grounds of their imminent departure on a research trip to Asia.⁶⁵ Now Hans and Ferdinand were able to call themselves trained doctors and surgeons.

In London, both of them underwent training to become ordained missionaries and intended to put to use their medical degrees and their Christian beliefs for practical work, something the London Missionary Society welcomed, as it was deemed ideal when religious conversion work in faraway missions was aided by the ministers' being able to win the trust and gratitude of the locals by also performing medical services.⁶⁶ Their religious training in London was conducted between May and September 1838 and their ordination took place on 6 September at Silver Street Chapel.⁶⁷

Following completion of their religious training, their posting could have taken them anywhere in the British Empire, but as chance had it, they were destined for India.⁶⁸ Married missionaries were customarily paid more and received better conditions. This might have convinced both men to reunite with their partners and to marry them.⁶⁹ Caroline Lindow and son arrived on 17 July 1838⁷⁰ in London. Hans’ partner, Emily Rhode, arrived from Brunswick, and both couples married on the same day, 14 September 1838, in London in the presence of the same witnesses.⁷¹ The following day they sailed on the Duke of Buccleugh to Calcutta, India,⁷² where they landed in early 1839.

Initially, everything seemed to go to plan. After a few weeks in Calcutta to adjust and prepare, Ferdinand, his wife and child headed to Benares. According to the narrator in his memoirs, Ferdinand met with a colourful array of people in India, including the ailing leader Runjit-Singh, and was fascinated by the cultural differences.⁷³ However, his wife’s poor health forced the von Sommer family to reconsider their plans less than a year after arrival. They returned to Calcutta and boarded the sailing ship London under Captain R. Taylor, which was headed for London. ‘Dr. Somer’,⁷⁴ ‘Mrs Somer and 1 child’,⁷⁵ as they were recorded, left India on 5 January 1840.

The medico

It could have been due to Caroline von Sommer’s poor health or their inability to pay for the full passage to London, given that their travel would have no longer been funded or subsidised by the London Missionary Society after their hasty and premature departure, that the family disembarked part way through their return journey to Europe.⁷⁶ Soon after their arrival in Cape Town, Ferdinand met the obstetrician Dr Johann Wehr (1764–1854) and formed a friendship as well as medical partnership with him over the coming months.⁷⁷ Within weeks, upon obtaining ‘the necessary authority from His Excellency the Governor’, he had set up practice in South Africa, sharing the premises of the Wehr family’s surgery and advertising his services in a Cape newspaper on 21 March 1840.⁷⁸

Doctors were in high demand as the Cape Colony was affected by smallpox, measles, glanders, poor hygiene and a lack of potable water. In the Cape Archives, the following entry relates to Ferdinand: ‘Dr. F. von Sommer claiming remuneration for his medical attendance during the epidemic in Cape Town in 1840’.⁷⁹ The public health situation was far from ideal for the family. When Caroline von Sommer had obviously recovered to such a degree that she fell pregnant, the young family must have been eager to return to Europe.

Although there are sources⁸⁰ claiming that Ferdinand spent years in the Cape Colony and had migrated there as early as 1835, this is refuted by the fact that their daughter, Clara, was born in London on 1 July 1841, suggesting the entire von Sommer family was back in London by early to mid-1841 at the latest.⁸¹

The naturalist

By the time Dr Ferdinand von Sommer returned to London in 1841, he had become ‘Prussian’, a ‘naturalist’, was called ‘Frederic de Sommer’,⁸² and had acquired a sizeable art collection of interest to museums and art dealers. His fabled ‘rich and curious collection of natural history and other objects […] unique in Europe’ was reported on in several news outlets in English, German and French,⁸³ speaking to Ferdinand’s desire to sell the collection to the highest bidder. It is unclear where his collection of paintings on mica ended up and whether the artwork was in fact African or rather Indian, or Indian-inspired, because nineteenth-century paintings on mica normally originated in India. Around the 1840s, they were produced mainly for the colonial tourist trade.

Ferdinand emerged here for the first time as a naturalist and collector, much in the vanguard of other enlightenment travellers. As Cook and Witcomb note, collecting was a scientific endeavour, spurred on by ‘an intense interest in the diversity of the natural and cultural world […] the exotic and the curious, […] propelled by Cook’s voyages around the Pacific, bringing into the purview of natural history an interest in non-western peoples and their material culture’.⁸⁴ Collecting, whether art or natural specimens, was a respectable pastime for the educated classes and ‘the middle-class nature of collecting’ might have attracted Ferdinand as much as the income that it promised.⁸⁵ When Shellam and Patterson diagnose motivations for collecting as having been ‘part of a broader practice of observation, travel, colonialism and network building’,⁸⁶ they ignore to some extent the most pragmatic motivation: making a living by trading them. This behaviour is reminiscent of another contemporary, Polish-Austrian John Lhotsky (1795–1866), who also tried to sell collected items for a living as a naturalist.⁸⁷ Like Lhotsky, Ferdinand seems to have acted in the manner of a businessman and entrepreneur. However, to some members of the establishment, the sale of natural and cultural curiosities from overseas would have been considered distasteful, just as any notion of financial precarity would have been unattractive.

Doctor of everything

With perseverance, Ferdinand also applied for scientific posts. Unable to gain recognition for his international feats and to secure social or financial rewards after his media campaign in England, Ferdinand turned once again to the Continent. While reading, writing and publishing⁸⁸ with his usual diligence and imagination, he stumbled upon yet another area of interest in topical English-language publications: mineralogy and metallurgy.

Only a few years earlier, in 1838, electrometallurgy had been invented in Russia, but it was Alfred Smee (1818–77), a chemist and scientific genius from London, who popularised the technique in Britain with the publication of his book on the subject in 1840.⁸⁹ Ferdinand offered his new-found knowledge to relevant university staff at Berlin University⁹⁰ and was ultimately invited to lecture again in nautical science, as well as in the art of mine surveying, from the winter semester 1842–3. This marked the start of his most prolific publishing period, with both fiction and non-fiction works, such as poetry, autobiography, historical novels and philosophical works,⁹¹ pushing his page count into the thousands.

But those years must have been trying for his young family. On 1 September 1842 their third child, another son, was born.⁹² The baby was christened Franz Ferdinand, but died on 22 October, at less than two months of age.⁹³ Although not too uncommon in those times, the loss of a child would have been hard to bear. Caroline was soon pregnant again and with baby Wilhelm the household once again became larger, louder and more costly, which might explain Ferdinand’s decision to travel alone to the furthest point on the globe from Berlin to pursue his next business venture.

In late 1844, he sailed to New Zealand but did not stay there, possibly deterred by flaring racial tensions as he heard about the Maori Wars in Nelson.⁹⁴ Instead, he continued on the Palmyra from New Zealand via Portland Bay (Victoria) to Adelaide, South Australia, arriving on 21 September 1845.⁹⁵

Moving to the antipodes meant entering a world without universities with yet again an unfamiliar environment and different social codes. Kociumbas and others have described colonial science back then as a site of ‘political struggle between competing classes and ideologies’;⁹⁶ nations should also be added to this list. In Australia, a certain intellectual dependence on and deference to European-trained gentlemen allowed men of Ferdinand’s ilk to quickly rise through the ranks. At the time, notions of white supremacy, racial prejudices and pseudo-scientific classifications of ethnicities were rife, notions that were both popularised and academically ennobled by Charles Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection over a decade later, in 1859. Darwin placed Australia’s Indigenous population at the lowest stage of the evolution from ‘savagery to civilisation’.⁹⁷ By contrast, Ferdinand had recognised the negative impact of colonisation already on earlier travels, commenting that Robben Island, off Cape Town, was ‘where the poor Hottentots atone for the crimes forced upon them by the robbers of their land, possessions and freedom’.⁹⁸

The assayer

Ferdinand arrived in South Australia in the middle of the ‘Burra Copper Boom’ (1845–51), ‘Australia’s first mineral boom’.⁹⁹ The quickly expanding Burra Burra Copper Mine site in the Clare Valley, 100 km north of Adelaide, attracted thousands of men, among them many Germans, not least due to the fact that the founding South Australian Company had appointed the German mineralogist Johann Menge (1788–1852) as its first mine and quarry agent and geologist in 1836. Fluent in both German and English and well-rounded in his education, Ferdinand managed to convince the mine’s management to employ him on a temporary basis while their mine superintendent, Mr August Ey, was still learning English.¹⁰⁰ Years later, in a letter to the editor, an eye-witness remembered: ‘Dr. Von Sommer arrived in South Australia, dignified by a moustache and distinguished by a palpable want of familiarity with the English language, in virtue of which qualifications he was duly installed as assayer, smelter, and superintendent at the Burra Mine’.¹⁰¹

Ferdinand, whose name was misspelled by the media as ‘Dr Von Saumeron’, was touted as ‘a German gentleman of eminence as a mineralogist’ and employed to prepare drawings of the mining field.¹⁰² He reportedly worked there from October 1845 to February 1846¹⁰³ and left somewhat of an impression. Centuries later he would become an inspiration for a fictitious character in a novel about the mining industry in Australia, although the British author added the disclaimer that ‘any similarities with known individuals are purely coincidental’.¹⁰⁴

Ferdinand’s idiosyncrasies as well as his competencies were noted:

Von Sommer’s letters to Ayers [were] tinged with occasional Germanisms, such as a delicious coinage, when asked to send a poor specimen of a grey horse back to Adelaide, he said he will send it “townwards”. He implemented the “tut-work” system, or sinking of shafts by miners paid at so much per fathom – vital work, but not immediately productive like “tributework”, the raising of ore on commission. Von Sommer’s spelling “Totwork” is a nice German-English hybrid, signifying “deadwork”. From von Sommer we learn further that […] the smelting house [was constructed] out of non-heat-resistant soft clay, and with no protection for the bellows. Worse still, no access was allowed for the bellows to connect with the furnaces.¹⁰⁵

Ferdinand’s termination was ultimately justified by financial pressures; he was deemed ‘too costly to retain’.¹⁰⁶ However, his dismissal might be in part blamed on his frequent and blunt—albeit valid—criticism relating to the mining operation.¹⁰⁷

The complainant

Ferdinand may have sensed that his days in mining were numbered and so was considering his next professional move. Around the time he ceased employment at the Burra Mine, Ferdinand appears to have sought the opportunity to return to medical practice. Following examination of his testimonials by members of the South Australian Medical Board, Ferdinand received his registration as a medical doctor on 7 July 1846.¹⁰⁸ As a medical doctor he made the news when he attended to a patient after a serious road accident involving a horse-drawn cart: ‘Dr. Von Sommer has set the limb, and the patient is now apparently doing well’.¹⁰⁹

It is possible that around this time Ferdinand also came into contact with representatives from the newly formed Western Australian Mining Company. Messrs Vigors and W. Samson had sailed from Western Australia to South Australia in July 1846¹¹⁰ to inspect that state’s renowned mines, with the hope of replicating similar success in the fledgling mining industry in Western Australia.¹¹¹

During his remaining time in South Australia, Ferdinand’s public record was somewhat tainted by bad press. In October 1846, he was involved in a court case, dismissed on a technicality, in which he was the complainant for an assault.¹¹² On 30 January 1847, he was again in the papers, this time in relation to his pursuing money owed to him through the courts. However, the case ‘von Sommer v Woods’ was closed: ‘Struck out—the plaintiff having suddenly left the colony’.¹¹³ Indeed, Ferdinand is listed as having left Adelaide for Western Australia on the schooner Hawk on 23 January 1847.¹¹⁴ His next employer would be the Western Australian Mining Company.

The South Australian press maintained quite a grudge against von Sommer. Even allowing for the characteristic vigour of discussion in the early Australian press, the vehemence with which Ferdinand was treated is surprising but can be explained by him having got on the wrong side of John Stephens, the editor and proprietor of the South Australian Register.

Ultimately, Ferdinand instructed his lawyer to seek redress in a libel suit based on contested verbal interactions. The case ‘von Sommer v. Stephens’ made the news for several weeks.¹¹⁵ Stephens was accused of having done his ‘utmost to wound the feelings and destroy the character, and also to ruin the prospects in life’ of Ferdinand.¹¹⁶ The papers delighted in reprinting letters and witness statements, rumours and inuendo, referring to the plaintiff as ‘a German, who had been occasionally mixed up in mining speculations, but lately had not followed any fixed calling’,¹¹⁷ an extraordinary claim considering he was a practising doctor. The jury found for Ferdinand and awarded him the nominal sum of ‘one farthing’—a quarter of one penny.¹¹⁸

The geologist

This bad press was in stark contrast to the reception Ferdinand initially received in the west of the country, where his arrival was greeted with some fanfare. The editor of The Inquirer in Perth wrote:

We have much pleasure this week in congratulating our readers on the arrival of the Hawk from Adelaide, having on board Dr. Ferdinand von Sommer, a mineralogist of eminence, whose services have been engaged by the Committee of the Mining Company, and also a practical miner of experience. We shall now, at all events, be soon able to ascertain our chances of sharing in the mineral wealth of Australia.¹¹⁹

Indeed, officials in the young colony were quite desperate for good news to drum up excitement about the possibilities in the West. Accordingly, Ferdinand’s task was to aid the urgent economic development of Perth and surrounds, given Western Australia’s land mass was still largely terra incognita for the new arrivals.

Ferdinand remained in the employ of the Western Australian Mining Company from February 1847 to September 1847.¹²⁰ He was then appointed by the Western Australian Government as its first government geologist.¹²¹ Having secured employment in Western Australia, Ferdinand appears to have written to his family in Berlin, encouraging them to join him ‘Down Under’. Both him seeking to rent a comfortable house in Perth (Fig. 4) and the arrival of wife Caroline von Sommer, their sons Carl and Wilhelm and daughter Clara in England in March 1847¹²² would appear to confirm that Caroline was trying to reunite with her husband. However, actually communicating with him would have been difficult.

Fig. 4.

Advertisement placed by Ferdinand von Sommer seeking rental accommodation. Anonymous (1847f) p. 2.

Within weeks of arriving in Western Australia, Ferdinand had left Perth and was surveying: ‘Dr. Von Sommer […] started yesterday morning to inspect the land recently purchased by the Western Australian Mining Company’,¹²³ where one of its principal shareholders, Henry Cole, supervised work on a shaft, nowadays heritage-listed as Cole’s Shaft or Kelmscott Mine. On public websites, Ferdinand is credited as having been present there in 1846, which is incorrect.¹²⁴ When he inspected the project it was in 1847, he did not agree with aspects of it and suggested instead ‘a proper and practical way of mining’.¹²⁵ This forthrightness did not make him many friends.

Thereafter Ferdinand travelled north to Port Grey on the Champion, supplied by the government with rations, horses, and ‘sufficient supply of provisions for their proposed stay in the bush and return-journey’.¹²⁶ On 22 June 1847, he sent his first report back to Perth, and it was published in the local paper in October 1847¹²⁷ and followed by ‘its continuance dated Moore River, o[n] 25 August, for the information of His Excellency the Governor’.¹²⁸ His subsequent third report, entitled ‘Report of a Geological Survey of Victoria District by F. von Sommer’ on 20 October 1847, to the Colonial Secretary in Perth, ran at over twenty typeset pages in full-length.¹²⁹ Again, this report was published in the paper, this time within a matter of days,¹³⁰ as the public seemed to take a keen interest in the whereabouts and findings of their first government geologist. Ferdinand had obviously taken to this—for him, novel—genre of writing reports with gusto, ensuring enough detail regarding journey, direction, conditions and encounters to showcase his accomplishments as a geologist. Ferdinand spoke to the desires of the new settlers of finding productive land for farming and mineral exploration, and Ferdinand was aware of the potential for exploitation—of people, sea and soil. ‘Commencing with Champion Bay, and Port Grey, I recognised there positive signs of a recent marine coral formation […] of practical importance both with regard to navigation and to colonisation.’¹³¹

His mention of the term colonisation highlights Ferdinand’s awareness of the pragmatic and instrumentalist rationale for exploring land and collecting specimens; as Cook and Witcomb explained for the Australian context, gentleman explorers in the nineteenth century were driven by ‘the need for colonists to familiarise themselves with the land and its resources to facilitate economic development. It was for this reason that some of the largest collections at the time were those of geology and economic botany.’¹³² Ferdinand’s work made him a part of ‘the colonial “gentry”’¹³³ and furthered Western Australian interests, which were ‘primarily motivated by economic concerns but also became increasingly important to the colony’s sense of identity and self-representation’.¹³⁴ Prior to Ferdinand’s arrival, John Septimus Roe had already emerged as ‘the leading intellectual figure in the small colony’.¹³⁵ Roe worked with a variety of learned men, mobile collectors, surveyors and explorers—including Dr Ferdinand von Sommer, whom he clearly respected as a scientist—equipped to cover hundreds of square kilometres of often unsettled and as yet unexplored land.

One had to be ‘robust and resourceful’,¹³⁶ especially to be able to obtain potable water, a problem that was particularly pronounced when Ferdinand’s party travelled through WA’s Great Southern area. Not far from where Ferdinand went, three marooned crewmen from the whaler Patriot had been forced ashore at gunpoint for insubordination a few months earlier. They were trekking ‘along this barren and desolate coastline, traversing the rugged limestone buttresses, deep bays and windswept sand dunes, starving and thirsty, driven towards the safety of a beckoning Albany’, itself hardly more than a ‘little colonial outpost […], a speck on the map’.¹³⁷ The whalers, despite being close to starvation and dying of thirst, were frightened of the local Menang people and reportedly pointed their guns toward them whenever they approached in an effort to assist them.¹³⁸ One of the sailors died in the sand dunes of Reef Beach, 25 km west of what is now the settlement at Bremer Bay. Ferdinand must have come past that site on his trip south but he and his fellow travellers managed to avoid this same fate. He credited several helpers along his way, among them Wadjuk Noongar and Menang men. One of the Indigenous men who guided them on the South coast in WA has been identified as Bob. Another Indigenous adviser also provided geological input, on ‘coal […] he, the native, had seen at Sydney and Hobart Town. As we understood, this man knew exactly the place where this coal was, and he offered to lead us there by a practicable road’.¹³⁹ Ferdinand’s party was keen to map the place, therefore the disappointment was palpable when, on ‘arriving at the eastern extremity of Doubtful Island Bay, the native asserted […], that the same coal he was about to show us, was also to be found there, and accordingly brought us, not coal, but granite stones, containing short and black hornblende!’¹⁴⁰

Ferdinand showed regard for his fellow travellers as well as for the costs that certain decisions would incur. In particular, his considerations surrounding his time around Mount Manypeaks speak to his leadership and sense of duty:

All that now remained in order to complete my design, was to send for a whaleboat which was said to lay on Cheyne’s Beach, and this I would have done, notwithstanding it would perhaps not have been the safest way of travelling, if I had thought myself authorized to engage the heavy expenses, required to satisfy the owner of the boat and its crew.¹⁴¹

Mention is found of Ferdinand in several diaries of Western Australians he encountered, such as in Marshall Waller Clifton’s Australind Journals:

20th May […] dined at Eliots [George and Louisa Eliot from Bunbury] where we met Dr Van Sommer who had returned alone from Kojenup on his Way back from Doubtful Island with Mr Bland [Revett Henry Bland, Resident Magistrate for York, Albany and Perth and Protector of Aborigines].¹⁴²

Marshall Waller Clifton, a British politician, coloniser and entrepreneur, resided in Upton House in Australind, where he also ran cattle.¹⁴³ Clifton joined Ferdinand over the coming wet and windy winter days, riding on horseback through the bush and visiting several settlers and communities. Noteworthy is their encounter with Reverend John Ramsden Wollaston, soon to be Archdeacon of Western Australia (1849–56),¹⁴⁴ who was awaiting the news about his appointment to King George Sound in May 1848. Wollaston mentioned ‘Dr. Von Sommer’ in his Albany journals:

On Monday, all day long, we had visitors […] among [them] a Dr. Von Sommer, a German Geologist M.D. of Gottingen at present in the pay of the local Government, on his return from a three months exploration; but he had found nothing—This is not the side of Australia for minerals.¹⁴⁵

While Ferdinand was open in communicating to everyone along the way what he had and had not found, he certainly did not rule out anything, as others did. Moreover, he took a broader interest in what he could observe, including the spread of European diseases through the thinly settled area and among the Indigenous population: namely scarlet fever and whooping cough. Rev. Wollaston, whom Ferdinand met again on Sunday, 4 June, had news about several deaths. The daughter of Mrs Short had died of scarlet fever and several ‘natives’ had caught whooping cough: ‘it often proves fatal to them, at this wet season especially’.¹⁴⁶ As a medical doctor, Ferdinand would have understood his agency and culpability in this process, and as a scientist, he also noted aspects of observed Indigenous culture.¹⁴⁷

On Sunday, 4 June 1848, Clifton and Dr von Sommer attended the church service conducted by the visiting Reverend John Ramsden Wollaston, Archdeacon, and shared a dinner with him.¹⁴⁸ The next morning, Monday, 5 June 1848, despite it being another windy and rainy day, ‘Dr von Sommer’ made an early start, before ‘breakfast’.¹⁴⁹

The legacy

Media reports from South Australia and Western Australia suggest that Ferdinand was well accustomed to being revered by some parties yet reviled by others. He was wont to publicly respond to criticism he felt was unjust through letters to the editors of local papers, taking issue with ‘rather stupid backbitings’¹⁵⁰ and appealing to the ‘more enlightened portion of this colony’.¹⁵¹ He expressed outrage when he discovered criticism both of his credentials and methodology in a letter from ‘anonymous hand inserted, during my absence, in a late number of your paper’.¹⁵² One opinion suggested that Ferdinand was accorded credibility simply by virtue of his foreignness rather than his qualifications and another implored action to prove that the government was ‘employing a really scientific person, and not a mere charlatan’.¹⁵³ His services to the colony were reduced to those of ‘a gentleman who spends his time in riding over the country, for really we cannot see has done as yet anything else’.¹⁵⁴ Such coverage would have been hurtful and it likely took its toll. He sailed for Batavia in August 1848,¹⁵⁵ ending his tenure in Australia. There seemed to be an almost smug satisfaction in the South Australian reporting of his exit: one paper reported that Ferdinand had ‘in despair, or disgust, betaken himself and his crucibles to Batavia’,¹⁵⁶ while another declared that ‘Dr von Sommer had quitted Western Australia for Batavia after some queer doings in the way of pretended mineral research and discovery’.¹⁵⁷ Ferdinand ultimately travelled on to Java, knowing that his skills as a polyglot would make him an attractive hire for the Dutch government. A Dutch publication features the following information about his engagement:

A German scholar, Ferdinand von Sommer, who spent some time in Hindostan and later in New Holland doing physical research, mainly of a mineralogical and geological nature, and took an active part in the exploitation of the copper mines in Perth, on the Swan River in Western Australia, left Java for Timor in 1848 in order to continue his research on the island.¹⁵⁸

It was reported that Ferdinand had made an offer to the Dutch East Indies government to ‘search for copper deposits on Timor and the surrounding islands, of which he believed, on the basis of geological considerations, to be certain [and] at various places, and especially at Tialarong, the most unmistakable evidence of the presence of copper was found’.¹⁵⁹

While Ferdinand’s exact travel details remain unknown, he made for sad news while travelling with A. G. Brouwer on a reconnaissance of Belu, a region in Dutch Timor, to gather information about valuable minerals for the Dutch colonisers:

Brouwer’s principal aim was to secure mining concessions, but after Von Sommer’s sudden demise in the field, Brouwer had difficulties continuing the expedition, since he was not really a mineralogist. Two manuscripts, a secret report for the Dutch government about the political situation followed by a section about Timor’s geography, and another […] ended up at the KITLV Archive […]. After the Timor mission, Brouwer was […] accused […] of incompetence and untruths in his assessment of minerals in Timor. […] The enterprise ended abruptly when Brouwer passed away.¹⁶⁰

Dr Ferdinand von Sommer was pronounced dead in Dilly Atapoepoe (or Atapupu), in present-day West Timor, most likely on 23 June 1849. According to other sources, he ‘died on 23 May in Tialarong’ as a result of illness.¹⁶¹

Credit was given to the ‘tireless mineralogist’ for reportedly finding at Atapoepoe (Tialarong) on Timor ‘certain and unequivocal evidence of […] rich copper layers, consisting of the so-called green carbonate’.¹⁶² One Dutch newspaper elaborated further ‘that the competent German naturalist, Mr Sommer, […] rendered valuable services to the British East Indies government, [his] extensive expertise had led to the discovery of the rich copper mine in New Holland’.¹⁶³

German newspapers only featured a brief obituary months later, blaming the delay on the overland mail service and restating the claims made in the international media when they honoured him as a ‘famous German natural scientist’.¹⁶⁴ Ferdinand’s many foreign language publications are held in libraries throughout Germany and evidence of his work as government geologist can be found in Perth and London, including

letters in the Geological Society’s archive, and in the State Records Office of WA, spectacular handcoloured geological maps of Western Australia made by him in the 1840s, representing sectional diagrams of the country. He also published a paper in the Proceedings of the Geological Society of London […] in June 1848, which states that Von Sommer “traced the first or western coal-field down from the heads of the Irwin River to those of the Moore … and has transmitted specimens of the coals, shales, sandstones and petrifactions of these localities. […]”. He also sent a collection of rocks and shells to the Geological Society in 1848.¹⁶⁵

Conclusion

Ferdinand von Sommer’s legacy has at best been unnecessarily denigrated and, at worst, exploited by others, not just in Australia and England, but also back in Prussia. In a final twist, German-language papers were following with great interest the antics of a young man impersonating Dr Ferdinand von Sommer in the late 1850s. Ferdinand’s first-born son, Carl, had died aged 22 on 19 December 1858 in Berlin.¹⁶⁶ The impostor, possibly his youngest child, Wilhelm, who would have no personal memories of his late father, may have created his own image of Ferdinand. Police reported that ‘an alleged Doctor of Philosophy, Franz Wilhelm Ferdinand von Sommer, who was unable to prove that he had lawfully obtained the title of Doctor, just as he was unable to prove that he was entitled to hold the title of nobleman’,¹⁶⁷ had ‘swindled a considerable sum of money from his benefactress, the convent mistress of Renoault [and] squandered this money at the Schandau baths and other places of amusement’¹⁶⁸ in the company of a seventeen-year old girl with whom he had co-habited in the spa town. He was ‘sentenced to three years in prison and a fine of 500 thalers’,¹⁶⁹ but managed to escape when he ‘was granted leave of absence from prison for some time due to illness […]. Now he has been arrested in Frankfurt am Main after committing new frauds there and a local official has travelled there to transport him here’.¹⁷⁰ Decades after Ferdinand von Sommer’s death, the antics of his impostor ultimately led to the removal of the Adelstitel ‘von’,¹⁷¹ which explains some of the confusion around Ferdinand von Sommer in the scientific biographies written over the following centuries. The above corrections to the records might convince some of his critics to reconsider Dr Ferdinand von Sommer’s legacy.