
































Microsoft Word - 7) Lehmann .docx


History of Meteorology 8 (2017) 
 

 
 

 

145 

 

 

 

Losing the Field: 
Franz Thorbecke and (Post-)Colonial Climatology in Germany 

 
 

Philipp Lehmann 
lehmann@ucr.edu 

University of California, Riverside 
 

 

 

 

In the introduction to an edited volume on the “Morphology of Climate Zones” from 1927, the 
German geographer and former expedition leader Franz Thorbecke (1875-1945) described the 
goal of the collection of essays as follows: 

  

The contributors have agreed to refrain from providing a systematic edifice of 
their respective climate types on a general level; they do not strive for 
completeness across the entire surface of the earth; rather everyone will report 
primarily about their own observations and draw conclusions from them.1 

 

The volume was certainly not limited geographically: participants reported on 
environments from the polar regions to tropical forests and deserts. Rather than reaching 
generalized and generalizable rules or laws, however, Thorbecke and his fellow authors strove 
for detailed analyses of particular regions with their particular climatological and morphological 
characteristics. In itself, this focus of the volume may not be all too surprising: it did, after all, fit 
in well with the goals of regional geography, or Länderkunde, which continued to be a popular 
methodology at least among Germanophone practitioners in the 1920s.2 Thorbecke, however, 

                                                                                                 
1 Franz Thorbecke, “Klima und Oberflächenformen: Die Stellung des Problems,” in Morphologie der Klimazonen, 
ed. Franz Thorbecke (Breslau: F. Hirt, 1927), 3. 
2  On the significance of the concept of regional geography by Alfred Hettner, see: Ute Wardenga, “Defining 
Geography: The Structure and Development of Alfred Hettner’s Methodological Construct,” in Struggles over 
Geography: Violence, Freedom and Development, ed. M. J. Watts (Heidelberg: University of Heidelberg, 2000), 



History of Meteorology 8 (2017) 
 

 
 

 

146 

took pains to defend the approach of the book in his introduction, revealing a certain insecurity 
about the limited scope of the work, which not only focused on the particulars of the selected 
climatic zones, but also dealt exclusively with present climatic conditions and their effects on the 
extant – and thus directly observable – morphological phenomena. 

 It is difficult to pinpoint what exactly drove Thorbecke to write and publish the three-
page preface. He had first delivered a version of it as a short introductory speech at the 
Naturforschertag, a conference bringing together scientists from various disciplines. The speech-
turned-preface reads more like a preemptive defense than either an introduction to the essays to 
follow or even the “positing of the problem” that the title promises.  Against the backdrop of his 
own work and the wider context of German science in the 1920s, however, Thorbecke may have 
felt the need to uphold a particular way of thinking about climates and climatology that he had 
learned and practiced in the field or, more concretely, that he had experienced in the German 
colony of Cameroon. After the First World War, the kind of work that Thorbecke and his co-
authors had done to establish and maintain their respective careers was no longer possible. The 
Treaty of Versailles had codified the loss of the German overseas colonies during the war, while 
the political isolation of post-war Germany also entailed the isolation of German science from its 
international networks of knowledge production and exchange.3 At the same time, climatological 
work had been moving from its nineteenth-century home in geography to the physical and 
chemical sciences and thus also from the earth to the atmosphere. In the first decades of the 
twentieth century, the study of weather and climate underwent far-reaching changes, with both 
the use of new technologies, such as aeroplanes, and new dynamic atmospheric approaches in 
meteorology and, ultimately, also in climatology. 4  All of these political, academic, and 
disciplinary developments, however, were absent in Thorbecke’s vision. In his short introduction 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
113–26; Ute Wardenga, Geographie als Chorologie  : zur Genese und Struktur von Alfred Hettners Konstrukt der 
Geographie (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1995); on the persistence and development of the concept, see: Ute Wardenga, 
“German Geographical Thought and the Development of Länderkunde,” Inforgeo 18, no. 19 (2006): 135–155. 
3 See: Bernd Widdig, Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 
169–95; on the issue of scientific isolation and the search for alternative research sites, see also Penelope Hardy’s 
contribution to this issue: “Meteorology as Nationalism on the German Atlantic Expedition,” History of 
Meteorology 8 (2017): 124–144. 
4 See: Robert Marc Friedman, Appropriating the Weather: Vilhelm Bjerknes and the Construction of a Modern 
Meteorology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); Frederik Nebeker, Calculating the Weather: Meteorology in 
the 20th Century, International Geophysics Series 60 (San Diego: Academic Press, 1995); Sabine Höhler, 
Luftfahrtforschung und Luftfahrtmythos: wissenschaftliche Ballonfahrt in Deutschland, 1880-1910 (Frankfurt: 
Campus, 2001); James Rodger Fleming, Inventing Atmospheric Science: Bjerknes, Rossby, Wexler, and the 
Foundations of Modern Meteorology, 2016; Gabriele Gramelsberger, “Calculating the Weather: Emerging Cultures 
of Prediction in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Europe,” in Cultures of Prediction in Atmospheric 
and Climate Science: Epistemic and Cultural Shifts in Computer-Based Modelling and Simulation, ed. Matthias 
Heymann, Gabriele Gramelsberger, and Martin Mahony (New York: Routledge, 2017); on the early development of 
a “dynamic climatology,” see also: Philipp N. Lehmann, “Whither Climatology? Brückner’s Climate Oscillations, 
Data Debates, and Dynamic Climatology,” History of Meteorology 7 (2015): 49–70. 



History of Meteorology 8 (2017) 
 

 
 

 

147 

and with the edited volume in general, he seems to have been intent to hold on to a way of 
practicing climatology that was tightly bound up to the short-lived overseas colonial endeavors 
of his home country. While the colonial empire had quickly become but a distant memory in the 
crisis-ridden early years of the Weimar Republic, it was still very present in scientific output and, 
particularly, in geographical writing. 

 This article will take Franz Thorbecke’s work in Africa to illuminate the significance of 
scientific work in the colonial field to the shape and content of climatological practice. 5 
Germany, which transitioned rapidly and involuntarily from a colonial power with global reach 
to a smaller and internationally isolated postcolonial state during the First World War, serves as a 
fascinating case study to examine the effects of both the construction and the subsequent loss of 
that colonial field among scientists, who shaped their methods and made their names overseas. 
Climatology, as a multivalent discipline with a past in both geography and the physical (and 
chemical) sciences, was one of the most global disciplines of the turn of the twentieth century, 
relying on data from around the world.6 It was thus perhaps no surprise that Thorbecke chose to 
focus on climatology in many of his publications in the interwar period to present and develop 
his vision of a science dependent on colonial landscapes in need of careful and detailed study. 

 

Thorbecke’s field 

 

Franz Thorbecke was born in Heidelberg in 1875.7 He studied natural sciences at Göttingen, 
before transferring to the University of Heidelberg to work with Alfred Hettner, one of the 
foremost geographers of his time who was serving as the editor of the renowned Geographische 
Zeitschrift.8 After the completion of his studies, Thorbecke worked as an editorial assistant at 
Hettner’s journal and, in 1905, he took on a teaching position at a girls’ secondary school in 
Mannheim. Only two years later he left his post again, when the opportunity arose to join an 
expedition to the German colony of Cameroon in Central Africa, organized by the geographer 
                                                                                                 
5 On the importance of imperial or colonial meteorology, see: Martin Mahony, “For an Empire of ‘All Types of 
Climate’: Meteorology as an Imperial Science,” Journal of Historical Geography 51 (2016): 29–39; see also other 
contributions in this volume. 
6 For a short overview of the development of climatology in Europe and North America, see: Matthias Heymann, 
“The Evolution of Climate Ideas and Knowledge,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 1, no. 4 
(2010): 581–597. 
7 For a short biographical sketch, see: Andreas Freitäger, “Franz Thorbecke (1875-1945),” in Gelehrte, Diplomaten, 
Unternehmer: Kölner Sammler Und Ihre Bücherkollektionen in Der Universitäts- Und Stadtbibliothek Köln, ed. 
Gernot Gabel (Cologne: Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln, 2003), 150–59. 
8 Together with Petermanns Mitteilungen, the Geographische Zeitschrift was one of the most important and widely-
read Germanophone geographical journals of its time; on Petermanns Mitteilungen, see: Sebastian Lentz and Ferjan 
Ormeling, eds., Die Verräumlichung des Welt-Bildes: Petermanns geographische Mitteilungen zwischen 
“explorativer Geographie” und der “Vermessenheit” europäischer Raumphantasien. (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 2008). 



History of Meteorology 8 (2017) 
 

 
 

 

148 

Kurt Hassert.9 Upon his return to Germany a year later, Thorbecke used material he collected on 
his journey to write a dissertation in geography on the Manengouba Highlands, which he 
published in 1911.10  

In the same year, Thorbecke was chosen to lead another expedition to Cameroon 
alongside his assistant Leo Waibel (1888-1951). The expedition was organized and financed by 
the private German Colonial Society, but also supported by the German Colonial Office.11 In 
1913, Thorbecke returned to Germany and started to write his major oeuvre Im Hochland von 
Mittel-Kamerun (“In the highlands of central Cameroon”), based on his extensive travel journals. 
Im Hochland was published in four volumes between 1914 and 1951, thus spanning four 
different political regimes in Germany. The last part of the final volume appeared posthumously 
and was edited by Thorbecke’s wife.12 Marie Pauline Thorbecke had accompanied her husband 
on the second journey to Cameroon, and had contributed to the expedition in various ways – 
most enduringly by writing her own journal and by recording the scientific work in photographs, 
drawings, and paintings. 13  She also became the center of public attention surrounding the 
expedition, when she was injured during a nighttime spear attack in Cameroon. The spear had 
probably been aimed at her husband, but the exact circumstances of the attack remained unclear. 
Marie-Pauline survived the confrontation with only minor superficial wounds, which did not stop 
her husband from using the attack to complain about insufficient protection by the colonial 
government for scientific endeavors.14 

                                                                                                 
9 For a short report on the expedition, see: Kurt Hassert, Forschungs-Expedition ins Kamerun-Gebirge und ins 
Hinterland von Nordwest-Kamerun (Berlin: Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, 1910); on the history of the 
German colony of Cameroon, see: Alexandre Kum’a N’dumbe, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich in Kamerun: wie 
Deutschland in Kamerun seine Kolonialmacht aufbauen konnte, 1840-1910 (Douala: AfricAvenir, 2009); Albert 
Gouaffo, Wissens- und Kulturtransfer im kolonialen Kontext: das Beispiel Kamerun-Deutschland (1884-1919) 
(Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2007); for an English introduction to the German overseas empire, see: 
Sebastian Conrad, German Colonialism: A Short History, trans. Sorcha O’Hagan (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge 
University Press, 2012). 
10 Franz Thorbecke, Das Manenguba-Hochland: Ein Beitrag zur Landeskunde Kameruns (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 
1911). 
11 Carsten Gräbel, Die Erforschung der Kolonien: Expeditionen und koloniale Wissenskultur deutscher Geographen, 
1884-1919 (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015), 185–90. 
12 Franz Thorbecke, Im Hochland von Mittel-Kamerun: Physische Geographie des Ost-Mbamlandes, ed. Marie 
Pauline Thorbecke, vol. 4, pt. 2, 4 vols. (Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter & Co., 1951). 
13 See: Christraud M. Geary, “‘On the Savannah’: Marie Pauline Thorbecke’s Images from Cameroon, West Africa 
(1911–12),” Art Journal 49, no. 2 (June 1, 1990): 150–58; Anne-Kathrin Horstmann, “Koloniale Geographie - das 
Ehepaar Marie Pauline und Franz Thorbecke,” in Köln und der deutsche Kolonialismus. Eine Spurensuche, ed. 
Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst and Anne-Kathrin Horstmann (Cologne: Böhlau, 2013), 101–6. 
14 Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (BArch) Reichskolonialamt (R1001), Folder 3344, 46-7: Colonial Government 
of Cameroon to Colonial Office, 14 October 1912; Franz Thorbecke, Im Hochland von Mittel-Kamerun: Die Reise: 
Eindrücke und Beobachtungen, vol. 1 (Hamburg: Friederichsen, 1914), 72–74; Marie Pauline Thorbecke, Auf der 
Savanne: Tagebuch einer Kamerunreise (Berlin: Mittler, 1914), 174–80; see also: Gräbel, Die Erforschung der 
Kolonien, 167. 



History of Meteorology 8 (2017) 
 

 
 

 

149 

  
Fig. 1.“Middle Cameroon”; map of the area of Theorbecke’s expedition (Abhandlungen des 

Hamburgischen Kolonialinstituts, 1914) 

 

As Thorbecke’s second expedition had concluded immediately before the First World 
War, he could not return to Cameroon to develop his studies further: after the onset of hostilities 
in 1914, Germany swiftly lost control over its African colonies on the battlefield, and lost them 
for good in the Treaty of Versailles, whose twenty-second article transformed the colonies into 
League of Nations mandates.15 Along with the nascent scientific infrastructure that the colonial 
governments and scientists had built up, the entire territory of Cameroon was partitioned 
between France and Britain, with France gaining the lion’s share. Thorbecke, who first took up a 
teaching post in Mannheim and then became the successor of his erstwhile travel companion 
Kurt Hassert at the University of Cologne, never got over the loss of the colonial possessions. To 
him, the collapse of the German overseas empire meant not only a loss of national prestige, but 
also a loss of his primary field of research. In his interwar writings, he frequently highlighted the 
contribution of German science to the exploration, mapping, and development of its former 
African colonies and lamented the present conditions under new colonial management – a 
strategy Thorbecke used to legitimate the colonial revisionism he shared with a number of his 

                                                                                                 
15 See: Nele Matz, “Civilization and the Mandate System under the League of Nations as Origin of Trusteeship,” ed. 
A. von Bogdandy and R. Wolfrun, Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law 9 (2005): 47–95 (the article 
includes the full text of Article 22 of the Versailles Treaty as an annex). 



History of Meteorology 8 (2017) 
 

 
 

 

150 

geographical colleagues. 16  Leo Waibel, Thorbecke’s assistant on the second Cameroon 
expedition, even had first-hand knowledge of the loss of the colonial empire, as he was caught 
off-guard by the onset of hostilities while on a research mission in German Southwest Africa 
(today Namibia) with his colleague and fellow geographer Fritz Jaeger. Both Waibel and Jaeger 
were drafted into the colonial army and fought in some encounters against the South African 
army, which was under the command of the British Imperial Government. The fighting in 
Southwest Africa ended before it had really begun, when the outnumbered German forces 
surrendered in July 1915 after having retreated and regrouped various times.17 Ultimately, both 
Waibel and Jaeger were allowed to continue with some of their studies, while they were stuck in 
Africa unable to return to Europe during wartime. In their post-war account, however, the two 
geographers showed little appreciation for their situation and complained about travel restrictions 
into some parts of the territory, which had not allowed them to stick to their original research 
plans.18  

 The Weimar years were difficult for many of the German researchers who had built their 
career around fieldwork in the colonies. Most of them were not allowed, or did not have the 
financial means, to return to their field sites. Some, like Thorbecke’s first expedition companion 
Kurt Hassert, turned to other topics, while many of the geographers active in the German 
colonies just before the First World War continued to publish on the territories or regions they 
had become acquainted with during their expeditions, drawing on data they had collected in the 
prewar years.19  And most of the former colonial scientists openly mourned the loss of the 
German overseas empire, which had presented them not only with new opportunities for 
research, but also with new funding prospects from organizations like the German Colonial 
Association and from government agencies like the Colonial Office.20 All of these opportunities 
had vanished with the war and its aftermath. 

The situation changed when Hitler and the National Socialists assumed power in 1933. 
Many of the geographers who had been active in the colonies were well-disposed toward the new 
regime. This was not only due to a general preponderance of conservative to völkisch outlooks 
among the majority of colonial scientists, but was also founded in the shared hope that the new 
                                                                                                 
16 See, for example: F. Thorbecke, “Die Karte von Kamerun in 1:300000,” Geographische Zeitschrift 24, no. 2/3 
(1918): 81–84. 
17 See: Hew Strachan, The First World War, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 550–65. 
18 Fritz Jaeger and Leo Waibel, Beiträge zur Landeskunde von Südwestafrika (Berlin: E. S. Mittler und Sohn, 1920). 
19 See, for instance: Fritz Jaeger, “Die Landeskundliche Erforschung Südwest-Afrikas Während Der Deutschen 
Herrschaft,” Geographische Zeitschrift 31, no. 5 (1925): 280–89; Hans Meyer, “Geopolitische Betrachtungen über 
Deutsch-Ostafrika (Tanganyika Territory) einst und jetzt,” Zeitschrift für Geopolitik 3, no. 1 (1926): 161–74. 
20 On the development of Germanophone geography, see: Bruno Schelhaas and Ingrid Hönsch, “History of German 
Geography: Worldwide Reputation and Strategies of Nationalisation and Institutionalisation,” in Geography: 
Discipline, Profession and Subject since 1870, ed. Gary S. Dunbar, 62 (Springer Netherlands, 2001), 9–44; Hans-
Dietrich Schultz, Die deutschsprachige Geographie von 1800 bis 1970: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte ihrer 
Methodologie (Berlin: Selbstverlag des Geographischen Instituts der Freien Universität Berlin, 1980). 



History of Meteorology 8 (2017) 
 

 
 

 

151 

political situation would mean a renewed interest in colonial revisionism in Africa and beyond.21 
In the early years of the Third Reich, some of the former colonial scientists published glowing 
articles about their work overseas, attempting to revive public interest in the colonial empire.22  

Thorbecke, as well, drew new hope from the openly imperialist tone of National Socialist 
propaganda. While he did not join the NSDAP, he showed his positive stance towards the new 
regime by actively participating in the purges at the University of Cologne.23 In his work, he was 
particularly interested in the Lebensraum rhetoric of the Nazis, which fit neatly with his ideas of 
the necessity of colonial spaces for both economic and scientific survival and development.24 
Once he realized that the imperial plans of Hitler’s regime were focused on the east rather than 
the south, Thorbecke attempted to emphasize the importance of tropical colonies for a new 
German Empire and began to lay out plans for a new German political and scientific presence in 
Africa himself, describing “geography as the trailblazer for colonization.”25  While his pleas 
never made an impression on the political leadership of the Third Reich, Thorbecke never tired 
of upholding his vision of scientific work from the Wilhelmine colonial period, when he was one 
among a group of geographers sent out to the colonies to gather information and data on the 
“German land overseas.” 

 

Colonial climatology as auxiliary science 

 

Back in his expedition days, Thorbecke had been tasked with answering questions ranging from 
“are there lions in the colony” to “how far has the cultivation of European vegetables and 
tropical crops progressed in the highlands.”26 As different and wide-ranging as these questions 
were, they also shared some implicit commonalities. After all, in order to find answers to both of 

                                                                                                 
21 See: Gräbel, Die Erforschung der Kolonien, 355–56. 
22 See, for instance: Carl Uhlig, “Neue deutsche Kolonialpolitik,” Aus Unterricht und Forschung: Wissenschaftliche 
Zeitschrift auf nationalsozialistischer Grundlage 4 (1934): 168–80; Fritz Jaeger, “Die geographische Bedeutung der 
deutschen Kolonialarbeit Zum 50. Geburtstag des deutschen Kolonialreiches,” Petermanns geographische 
Mitteilungen 80 (1934): 105–7. 
23 See: Frank Golczewski, Kölner Universitätslehrer und der Nationalsozialismus: personengeschichtliche Ansätze 
(Cologne: Böhlau, 1988), 64. 
24 See: Franz Thorbecke, “Deutsche Kolonien und deutsche Geographie,” Geographische Zeitschrift 40, no. 5/6 
(January 1, 1934): 181–90; Franz Thorbecke, “Das deutsche Kolonialproblem,” Geographische Zeitschrift 42, no. 
11 (1936): 417–19. 
25  See: Franz Thorbecke, “Die Geographie als Wegbereiterin der Kolonisation: Rückblick und Ausblick,” in 
Lebensraumfragen europäischer Völker. Europas koloniale Ergänzungsräume, ed. Heinrich Schmitthenner, Oskar 
Schmieder, and Karl Dietzel, vol. 2 (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1941), 28–47; Franz Thorbecke, “Das tropische 
Westafrika,” in Afrika: Beiträge zu einer praktische Kolonialkunde, ed. Paul Rohrbach (Berlin: Werner & Co., 
1943), 29–60. 
26 BArch R1001/3342, 3-14: “Aufgaben der Expedition ins Kamerun- und Manenguba-Gebirge samt Hinterland.”  



History of Meteorology 8 (2017) 
 

 
 

 

152 

these questions – and for the determination of economic possibilities in general – knowledge of 
the climatic conditions in the colonies was paramount. And, thus, meteorological observations 
and the collection of climatological data series became some of the most important day-to-day 
tasks of the expeditions. 

While Thorbecke had shared the duties of leading the first expedition to Cameroon in 
1907/08 with Kurt Hassert, he was clearly the man in charge during the second journey. He 
devised the plans for the research to be undertaken and negotiated with the Colonial Office in 
Berlin about the travel route and finances. 27  First and foremost, Thorbecke was following 
governmental directives to explore the economic potential of German Cameroon and was 
answerable to the German Colonial Society. He nevertheless retained the right to make the 
decisions on how to approach the tasks given to the expedition and to set his own research 
priorities in the field.28 Throughout his time in Africa, he stayed true to the wide-ranging tasks of 
a colonial geographer, including everything from ethnographic studies to altitude measurements. 
The daily work of the expedition also comprised daily meteorological observations and larger-
scale climatological studies, which Thorbecke pursued with unwavering energy. And even after 
his return to Germany, he spent a large share of his time – and a large share of his publications – 
dealing with climatological issues. 

 The most direct testimony of Thorbecke’s work on the weather and climate in Cameroon 
is supplied by his “climatological-meteorological journal,” which he updated daily for almost an 
entire year in 1912. It was published – probably with only minor editorial changes – in the last 
volume of Im Hochland von Mittel-Kamerun.29 The journal gives temperature and barometric 
pressure readings for usually three times each day – conducted at varying times in the morning, 
early afternoon, and evening. Besides these numerical data, however, the journal also includes 
extensive – sometimes multiple-paragraph-long – discursive entries about the weather conditions 
and direct sensory perceptions, as in the following example from Yoko (or Joko) in central 
Cameroon: 

 

Then it turns very humid, the sun stings, thick black cumulus clouds cover the 
sky, especially from the east and south-east; from 13:30 onwards, thunderstorms 
in the distance, we hear violent rolls of thunder, which get evermore intense 
around 14:00, thus seeming to draw nearer. The cool wind increases, the 
corrugated sheet roof rattles beneath the sun, which is now moving behind the 
clouds.30 

                                                                                                 
27 BArch R1001/3344, 29: Thorbecke to Friedrich von Lindequist (Head of the Colonial Office), 8 October 1911.  
28  See, for instance: BArch R1001/3344, 52-64: Report by Thorbecke, “Wirtschafts- u. verkehrsgeographische 
Beobachtungen der Expedition der Deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft nach Kamerun,” n.d. 
29 Thorbecke, Im Hochland von Mittel-Kamerun: Physische Geographie des Ost-Mbamlandes, 4, pt. 2:115–285. 
30 Thorbecke, 4, pt. 2:156 [my translation]. 



History of Meteorology 8 (2017) 
 

 
 

 

153 

 

Other than the narrative depiction of extraordinary weather events like heavy thunderstorms or 
rainbows, Thorbecke also spent many lines describing the observation and experience of the 
atmospheric phenomena accompanying sunsets, as in the following example: 

 

Sunset with afterglow, the sun itself remains behind clouds, almost full moon with 
a small, yellow corona against the cloudless sky, which is covered only by a few 
vapor clouds above the valley. Despite the intense moonlight casting shadows, 
some stars pierce through fully with their silver light, as intensely as I have never 
observed at home.31 

 

In these almost lyrical passages, Thorbecke added qualitative information to the quantitative 
information of the instrument readings, such as the auditory effects of incoming thunderstorms 
and the light quality of the moon and the stars. He also put his experience into a comparative 
context to observations in Germany and ascribed a singularity and uniqueness to the phenomena 
observed in Cameroon. It seems almost as if Thorbecke was consciously attempting to fill the 
quantitative numerical data he recorded with place-specific qualifiers, expressed through 
descriptions of his own sensory perception. In one of the most strikingly expressive passages, 
Thorbecke wrote about a particularly remarkable sunset he experienced:   

 

The twilight was especially beautiful and magnificent today; the sun must have 
set behind grey clouds in the west with an almost blood-red tinge, or so I deduced 
from the grey-violet silhouette of the Njua [an inselberg or island mountain in 
Central Cameroon] being set sharply – almost hauntingly – against the red 
glowing evening sky.32 

 

To some degree, Thorbecke’s penchant for qualitative descriptions can be ascribed to the 
difficult conditions of instrument-based work during the expedition. He commented on the 
material problems with thermometers and barometers, some of which had broken or been 
misplaced very early on his travels. 33  Thorbecke, however, also seemed to have a more 
theoretical interest in adding qualitative addenda to the numerical data he recorded on his 
journey through Cameroon. He was trained in Hettner’s school of regional geography, which 
valued narrative descriptions as a tool to understand and communicate the particular 
                                                                                                 
31 Thorbecke, 4, pt. 2:160 [my translation]. 
32 Thorbecke, 4, pt. 2:168 [my translation]. 
33 Thorbecke, 4, pt. 2:6–8. 



History of Meteorology 8 (2017) 
 

 
 

 

154 

characteristics of a landscape. This training showed throughout all of Thorbecke’s multi-volume 
expedition report and – somewhat more surprisingly – was even very prominent in the 
meteorological-climatological journal he kept with great regularity. Colonial climatology, in 
Thorbecke’s work, was thus less a discipline to feed data tables on atmospheric conditions, but 
rather an auxiliary science to regional geography, aiding its task to identify the full range of 
characteristics of a particular and possibly even unique landscape. 

 

Climatology as telluric science 

 

Thorbecke concluded his second expedition to Cameroon merely a year before the onset of 
hostilities of the First World War. On his journey, he had collected a vast amount of data and 
information, but had not yet synthesized nor published most of his material by 1914. This work 
was left for the years of the war and, subsequently, the postwar period, when Thorbecke had to 
witness first the military defeat of the German colonial forces and, then, the definitive loss of the 
colonies in the Treaty of Versailles. The first volume of Thorbecke’s major oeuvre Im Hochland 
appeared just before the onset of the war. Containing a description of the travels and ruminations 
about the colonial future of the colony, it is the most narrative of the volumes.34 The second 
volume on the “anthropogeography of East Mbama-Land” was published during wartime in 
1916.35 In the short preface, Thorbecke acknowledged the war and the de facto loss of the 
colonies, but he did not alter his manuscript to mirror the political changes due to his “faith in the 
recovery of the colonies.”36  

 After the war, Thorbecke published the third volume of Im Hochland comprising his 
ethnographic studies (including the transcriptions of Cameroonian songs), and the fourth volume 
containing a detailed map of his area of study in Cameroon with detailed annotations.37 These 
volumes, however, were not Thorbecke’s only publications on Cameroon during the time. In 
articles, essays, and edited volumes, Thorbecke drew on his wealth of data from his expeditions. 
Possibly defending his choice to stick with his research subject, he tried to make a virtue out of 
necessity: “Only when we have brought order to today’s store of knowledge,” Thorbecke wrote 
in 1927, “can science progress further.”38 What he did to bring order to the information he had 
gathered in Africa, however, was not guided by an interest in finding the overarching laws or 

                                                                                                 
34 Thorbecke, Im Hochland von Mittel-Kamerun: Die Reise: Eindrücke und Beobachtungen. 
35 Franz Thorbecke, Im Hochland von Mittel-Kamerun: Anthropogeographie des Ost-Mbamlandes, vol. 2, 4 vols. 
(Hamburg: Friederichsen, 1916). 
36 Thorbecke, 2:vii. 
37 Franz Thorbecke, Im Hochland von Mittel-Kamerun: Beiträge zur Völkerkunde des Ost-Mbamlandes, vol. 3, 4 
vols. (Hamburg: Friederichsen, 1919); Franz Thorbecke, Im Hochland von Mittel-Kamerun: Die Karte des Ost-
Mbamlandes nach den Aufnahmen der Expedition, vol. 4, pt. 1, 4 vols. (Hamburg: Friederichsen, 1924). 
38 Thorbecke, “Klima und Oberflächenformen: Die Stellung des Problems,” 1. 



History of Meteorology 8 (2017) 
 

 
 

 

155 

regularities behind the recorded phenomena and data, but rather in line with the main approach 
of German regional geography of the time, described by Ute Wardenga as “attempt[ing] to 
record even the smallest areas as unique and unmistakeable [sic!] entities.”39  

 Thorbecke, however, did not simply call for a narrow focus on the particular region and 
its characteristics. Instead, he argued that only knowledge of many different regions and climate 
zones could lead to the recognition of the particular characteristics that made a landscape 
singular and unique. In Thorbecke’s view, colonial – and thus geographically expansive – 
science was thus necessary for identifying the ontological extent of distinct, small-scale 
landscapes. This was a different take on Kleinklimatologie than Deborah Coen has described in 
her work on interwar Austria, as Thorbecke was not content to view the now smaller Germany as 
a sufficient field for climatology, but argued for the necessity of the overseas field and hoped for 
a return to colonial glory.40 In his own words: 

 

If today there are still vast areas of tropical Africa that await geographical 
investigation, both official and private initiatives in the German colonies in Africa 
have provided us with such an expansion and consolidation of geographical 
knowledge, that from the infinity of enormous spaces we can separate an ever-
larger number of singular landscapes, which, after all – and notwithstanding their 
obvious classification as part of a major geographic region [Großlandschaft] – 
exhibit only their own particular characteristics, which mark them as special 
geographic areas [länderkundliche Sondergebiete], as geographic individuals in 
the spirit of [Carl] Ritter, which remains valid today.41 

 

Together with Alexander von Humboldt, Carl Ritter (1779-1859), whom Thorbecke referred to 
approvingly, was one of the almost mythical progenitors of academic geography.42 He became 
the first professor of geography in Germany in 1820 and influenced the direction of the field 
through his 21-volume magnum opus, in which he described his vision of a unifying 

                                                                                                 
39 Wardenga, “Defining Geography,” 143. 
40  Deborah R. Coen, “Scaling Down: The ‘Austrian’ Climate Between Empire and Republic,” in Intimate 
Universality: Local and Global Themes in the History of Weather and Climate, ed. James Rodger Fleming, Vladimir 
Jankovic, and Deborah R. Coen (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2006), 115–40. 
41 Franz Thorbecke, “Die Inselberg-Landschaft von Nord-Tikar,” in Zwölf länderkundliche Studien von Schülern 
Alfred Hettners ihrem Lehrer zum 60. Geburtstag (Breslau: F. Hirt, 1921), 215 [my translation]. 
42  On Ritter, see: Andreas Schach, Carl Ritter (1779-1859): Naturphilosophie und Geographie: 
erkenntnistheoretische Überlegungen, Reform der Geographie und mögliche heutige Implikationen (Münster: Lit, 
1996); Walter E. Boettcher, “Carl Ritter’s Early Geographic Thought, 1779-1817” (University College London, 
1991); Manfred Büttner, Carl Ritter: zur europäisch-amerikanischen Geographie an der Wende vom 18. zum 19. 
Jahrhundert (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1980). 



History of Meteorology 8 (2017) 
 

 
 

 

156 

methodology.43 While this is not the place to expound on Ritter’s system, Thorbecke picked up 
on his predecessor’s emphasis on both an anthropocentric vision of geography that put humans at 
the center of geographical investigation, and the importance of studying each particular region of 
the earth in its own right.  

 For Thorbecke’s treatment of climate, this meant that the emphasis was not on the 
borderless atmosphere, but rather on the surface of the earth, structured and divided by physical 
configurations, such as streams, mountains, and deserts. Thorbecke was thus clearly not in tune 
with the emergent field of dynamic meteorology and its emphasis of physical-mathematical 
models of the atmosphere. Indeed, he never showed any awareness of these new approaches and 
instead continued to see climatology as a subfield of geography. But Thorbecke’s approach was 
still “dynamic” in its own right. Contrary to the caricature of nineteenth-century climatology as a 
purely statistical endeavor obsessed with averages and means, Thorbecke’s approach assumed 
that atmospheric phenomena could alter physical conditions and vice versa. In his work on the 
morphological effects of the climate, Thorbecke listed actions from “mechanical weathering” to 
“chemical decomposition” that could alter the morphology of a landscape. 44  This dynamic 
dimension of climate in Thorbecke’s writings, however, always remained telluric, or earthbound 
and grounded. It remained connected to the particular, regional Landschaft, or landscape, while 
at the same time requiring knowledge of landscapes all around the globe as vital points of 
reference. 

 

Concluding remarks 

 

In his recent study on field science in the American West around the turn of the twentieth 
century, Jeremy Vetter argues that in contrast to the laboratory, which derived significant 
scientific authority from its claim to place- and time-less universality, the field tended to remain 
entrenched in its particular geographical context. By and large, field scientists were thus not 
aiming to discover the universal laws of nature, but rather sought to explore, examine, and record 
a specific place with all its particularities in great detail – using not only instruments and 
numerical data tables, but also direct sensory experience and qualitative descriptions. 45 
Thorbecke’s climate studies during the interwar years fit this mold quite well: rather than looking 
for the general mechanisms behind meteorological phenomena and their effects, he focused on 

                                                                                                 
43 The rather unwieldy title of the work is Erdkunde im Verhältniß zur Natur und zur Geschichte des Menschen, 
oder allgemeine, vergleichende Geographie, als sichere Grundlage des Studiums und Unterrichts in physicalischen 
und historischen Wissenschaften. 
44 Franz Thorbecke, “Der Formenschatz im periodisch trocknen Tropenklima mit überwiegender Regenzeit,” in 
Morphologie der Klimazonen, ed. Franz Thorbecke (Breslau: F. Hirt, 1927), 10–19. 
45 Jeremy Vetter, Field Life: Science in the American West during the Railroad Era (Pittsburgh: University of 
Pittsburgh Press, 2016). 



History of Meteorology 8 (2017) 
 

 
 

 

157 

particular climatic conditions and their reciprocal interactions with the physical features of a 
particular place to identify singular landscapes and regions.  

 And yet, Thorbecke’s emphasis on the uniqueness of particular places was not simply a 
“local,” but also a “global” endeavor: only by the painstaking work of taking stock and 
identifying all the singular landscapes around the world could each landscape’s uniqueness be 
determined conclusively against a comparative framework. With each new landscape explored, 
described, and analyzed, the comparative framework would expand and thus lead to the growth 
of geographic knowledge in general. While the ultimate end product of this process could 
conceivably be an inductively produced theory (and Thorbecke hinted at that in his writings), the 
time had not yet come, as knowledge about many parts of the earth was still incomplete and 
insufficient.  

Here, Thorbecke remained one step shy of his Austrian contemporary and colleague 
Heinrich von Ficker, who – with a similar background in geography and an analogous 
predilection for particular places – was open to careful generalizations and even considered the 
implications of his findings in the context of the general circulation of the atmosphere.46 For 
Thorbecke, in contrast, the focus of climatology had to remain on collecting both quantitative 
and qualitative information from around the world to classify landscapes and identify new and 
possibly unique phenomena. And yet, by putting the single region into a comparative framework 
containing, in the best of cases, the whole assembly of regions around the globe, Thorbecke 
avoided another iteration of what the geographer David Livingstone calls the “regionalizing 
ritual” prevalent among German geographers around the turn of the century, which could so 
easily result in an unscientific regional impressionism.47   

 It is difficult and possibly misleading, however, to neatly separate Thorbecke’s scientific 
endeavors from his political motivations. Both his approach to climatology and meteorology as 
auxiliary disciplines to the overarching and multifaceted discipline of colonial geography, and 
his conception of a regional, comparative geography, also harmonized nicely with his view of the 
need for colonies, which could be studied as well-defined units of analysis. Rather than using or 
even addressing new approaches in meteorology that relied more on physical-mathematical 
models of the borderless atmosphere than the observations of field scientists, Thorbecke 
defended the importance of the single colonial region whose borders were clear and 
geographically demarcated. The field whose loss he so lamented was thus scientific and political 
at the same time. 

As Thorbecke’s case also shows, scientific work in the colonies, which extended the 
scientific field beyond Europe, did not automatically or necessarily lead to a more global vision, 
or more concretely, a vision that transcended borders and increased the scale to larger 
                                                                                                 
46 See: Deborah R. Coen, “Imperial Climatographies From Tyrol to Turkestan,” Osiris 26 (2011): 45–65. 
47 David N. Livingstone, The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise (Oxford, 
UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), 260–303. 



History of Meteorology 8 (2017) 
 

 
 

 

158 

geographical entities.48 While the data collected in the colonial field surely aided in global 
visions and visualizations of natural phenomena such as weather systems or concepts of global 
circulation, colonial fieldwork and postcolonial longing to regain the overseas field could also 
lead to a strengthening of the regionalist impulse in meteorology and climatology as practiced by 
Thorbecke and many of his German colleagues. 

 

 

                                                                                                 
48 Cf.: Paul N. Edwards, “Meteorology as Infrastructural Globalism,” Osiris, 2nd Series, 21 (January 1, 2006): 229–
50; Paul N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming 
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010). 


