FRANZ-WILHELM JUNGHUHN (1809-1864)
Gunung Guntur (2, 249m - 7,378 ft)
Indonesia (West Java)
Indonesia (West Java)
In Gunung Guntur, 1853-1854, watercolour on paper, Leiden University Library
The Mountain
Gunung Guntur (2, 249 m) the Thunder Mountain in Indonesian, is a stratovolcano, located in Kampung Dukuh village, 3 km from the capital district Cipanas and 7 km from the capital city of Garut, in West Java, Indonesia. Its last eruption dates back to 1847.The ridge of the mountain has a relatively unique shape. To the east, one could see the eruptions thunder until no large trees, and only sites lava flows. The mountain has been often used as inspiration by the artist.
From the top of the mountain thunder, the city of Regensburg can be seen.
The artist
Friedrich Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn was a German-Dutch botanist and geologist, who studied medicine in Halle and in Berlin from 1827 to 1831, meanwhile publishing (1830) a seminal paper on mushrooms in Limnaea. Junghuhn settled on Java, where he made an extensive study of the land and its people. He discovered the Kawah Putih crater lake south of Bandung in 1837.
He published extensively on his many often highly adventurous expeditions and his scientific analyses. Among his works is an important description and natural history in many volumes of the volcanoes of Java, Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis der vulkanen in den Indischen Archipel (1843).
He completed Die Topographischen und Naturwissenschaftlichen Reisen durch Java (Topographic and Scientific Journeys in Java) in 1845 and a first anthropological and topographical study of Sumatra, Die Bättalander auf Sumatra (Batak lands of Sumatra). in 1847.
In 1849, ill health forced his return to the Netherlands. While in the Netherlands, Junghuhn began work on a four volume treatise published in Dutch and translated into German between 1850 and 1854: Java, deszelfs gedaante, bekleeding en inwendige struktuur. Junghuhn was an avid humanist and socialist. In the Netherlands he published anonymously his free-thinking manifesto Licht- en Schaduwbeelden uit de Binnenlanden van Java (Images of Light and Shadow from Java's interior) between 1853 and 1855. The work was controversial, advocating socialism in the colonies and fiercely criticizing Christian and Islamic proselytization of the Javanese people. Junghuhn instead wrote of his preference for a form of Pandeism (pantheistic deism), contending that God was in everything, but could only be determined through reason. The work was banned in Austria and parts of Germany for its "denigrations and vilifications of Christianity", but was a strong seller in the Netherlands where it was first published pseudonymously. It was also popular in colonial Indonesia, despite opposition from the Dutch Christian Church there.
Recovered from his ills, Junghuhn returned to Java in 1855. He remained on Java until his death from liver disease in 1864. On his deathbed in his house near Lembang on the slopes of the volcano Tangkuban Perahu just north of Bandung, Java, it is said that Junghuhn asked the doctor to open the windows, in order to say goodbye to the mountains that he loved.
In Lembang there is a small monument to his memory in a grassy square named after him planted with some of his favorite trees among which the Cinchona. A minor item of trivia playing into polemical discussions of Junghuhn is his surname, literally translated as "young chicken".
The plants Cyathea junghuhniana and Nepenthes junghuhnii are named after Franz Junghuhn.