Johann Gottfried Ebel (6 October 1764 – 8 October 1830) was the author of the first real guidebook to
Switzerland
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
.
Biography
He was born at
Zullichau (
Prussia
Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...
). He became a medical man, visited Switzerland for the first time in 1790, and became so enamoured of it that he spent three years exploring the country and collecting all kinds of information relating to it. The result was the publication (
Zürich
Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...
, 1793) of his ''Anleitung, auf die nützlichste und genussvollste Art in der Schweitz zu reisen'' (2 vols), in which he gave a complete account of the country, the General Information sections being followed by an alphabetically arranged list of places, with descriptions. It at once superseded all other works of the kind, and was the best Swiss guidebook until the appearance of
Murray (1838).
It was particularly strong on the geological and historical sides. The second (1804–1805) and third (1809–1810) editions filled four volumes, but the following (the 8th appeared in 1843) were in a single volume. The work was translated into French in 1795 (many later editions) and into English (by 1818).
Ebel also published a work (2 vols, Leipzig, 1798 1802) entitled ''Schilderungen der Gebirgsvölker der Schweiz'', which deals mainly with the pastoral cantons of
Glarus
Glarus (; ; ; ; ) is the capital of the canton of Glarus in Switzerland. Since 1 January 2011, the municipality of Glarus incorporates the former municipalities of Ennenda, Netstal and Riedern.[Appenzell
Appenzell () was a cantons of Switzerland, canton in the northeast of Switzerland, and entirely surrounded by the canton of St. Gallen, in existence from 1403 to 1597.
Appenzell became independent of the Abbey of Saint Gall in 1403 and entered ...]
. In 1801 he was naturalized a Swiss citizen, and settled down in Zürich. In 1808 he issued his chief geological work, ''Über den Bau der Erde im Alpengebirge'' (Zürich, 2 vols). He took an active share in promoting all that could make his adopted country better known, e.g.
Heinrich Keller's map (1813), the building of a hotel on the Rigi (1816), and the preparation of a panorama from that point (1823). From 1810 onwards he lived at Zürich, with the family of his friend,
Conrad Escher von der Linth (1767–1823), a celebrated engineer.
References
*
External links
Pictures and texts of ''Instructions pour un voyageur qui se propose de parcourir la Suisse'' by Johann Gottfried Ebel can be found in the database VIATIMAGES
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ebel, Johann
1764 births
1830 deaths
People from Sulechów
People from the Margraviate of Brandenburg
German Protestants
German travel writers
German male non-fiction writers
German expatriates in Switzerland
Prussian physicians
18th-century German physicians