FRANZ WILHEM JUNGHUHN (1809-1864)
Gunung Gede (2,958 m - 9,705ft)
Indonesia (Java)
Print, 1856, Leiden University Library
The mountain
Gunung Gede or Mount Gede (2,958 m - 9,705ft) is a stratovolcano situated in West Java, Indonesia. It contains two peaks: Mount Gede (Big Mountain in Sundanese) and Mount Pangrango. Three major cities, Cianjur, Sukabumi and Bogor, are located in the volcano complex at the east, south and northwest, respectively, along with suburban growth. Seven craters are located in the complex: Baru, Gumuruh (2,927 m), Lanang (2,800 m), Kawah Leutik, Ratu (2,800 m), Sela (2,709 m) and Wadon (2,600 m).
Historical volcanic activity has been recorded since the 16th century. With the amalgamation and growth of Greater Jakarta with those 3 cities, dense suburban growth has engulfed the fringes of the volcano, home to roughly 4 million people. Though not listed as one of the Decade Volcanoes or thought to produce large eruptions, the huge populations nearby give a potential for severe destruction if indeed a large eruption did occur.
Gunung Gede is part of the Mount Gede Pangrango National Park. It evolved from already existing conservation areas, such as Cibodas Botanical Gardens, Cimungkat Nature Reserve, Situgunung Recreational Park and Mount Gede Pangrango Nature Reserve, and has been the site of important biological and conservation research over the last century. In 1977 UNESCO declared it part of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves.
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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 (in German: Java, seine Gestalt, Pflanzendecke, und sein innerer Bau). 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. Highly interested in botany and its practical applications, he became embroiled in a bitter and extended controversy about the effectiveness of Cinchona species in the treatment of malaria. This controversy was conducted in public and in print with open letters to and demands on Het Natuurkundig Genootschap; part of this exchange of minds can be followed in Natuurkundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indië from 1862 onwards. At his direction massive plantation of Chincocina was carried out in Java, making it leading producer of Kina (Chinocina bark).
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.
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