Johann Georg Kohl

Johann Georg Kohl (born 28 April, 1808, in Bremen; died 28 October, 1878) was a German travel writer, historian and geographer. With his sensitive powers of observation, he served as an amateur ethnographer.

Life

Son of a wine merchant, he studied law at the universities of Goettingen, Heidelberg and Munich but have never received a degree. From 1830 onward, he worked as a tutor, initially in Courland for German aristocratic families, then in St. Petersburg for the Stroganovs. In 1838, he returned to Germany and settled in Dresden where he met Wolf Graf Baudissin, a translator, whom which he maintained dealings.

Future Theories

Kohl's main scientific work, "Der Verkehr und die Ansiedlungen der Menschen in ihrer Abhängigkeit von der Gestalt der Erdoberfläche" ("The Transport and The Settlements of the people in Their Dependence on The Shape of The Earth's Surface") (1841, 1850) is regarded as the founding document of modern transport and urban geography. Using Moscow as an example, he formulated a mathematical theory for the development of spherical cities and how eventually these cities would develop skyscrapers and underground shopping centers. Similarly, also fundamental to the theoretical geography was his "Die geographische Lage der Hauptstädte Europas" ("The Current Situation in The Capitals of Europe")(1874).

Trip to America

In 1854 he traveled to the United States, where he received a commission from the US Congress for the U.S. Coast Survey to compile the history of the discoveries of the western, southern and eastern coasts from cartographic and other sources. The compilation grew until 1858, but today, the Library of Congress in Washington, DC have rejected the Kohl Collection of nearly 1,000 annotated drawings of maps from the late 15th to the 19th centuries. While in Washington and at Harvard, Kohl made friends with many writers (including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Washington Irving) and scholars (including George Bancroft, Charles Bennett Deane and Louis Agassiz). Kohl's book "Reisen in Canada und durch die Staaten von New York und Pennsylvanien" ("Travels in Canada and the States of New York and Pennsylvania")(1856) is still consulted for historical study into Pennsylvania Dutch.

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