At forty-four, a Viennese housewife boarded a Danube steamer — and twice went round the world alone.
In March 1842, a mother of two grown sons left Vienna by river steamer, telling her family she was going to Jerusalem. She was forty-four, with little money and no companion. She crossed the Holy Land and Egypt, came home, and spent the next sixteen years covering, by common estimate, some 240,000 kilometres by sea and 32,000 by land: twice round the globe, into the interior of Borneo and Sumatra, across Iceland, through the Americas.
She travelled on the cheapest berths, paid her way by selling the insects, plants and shells she collected to museums, and wrote plain, unsentimental books that became bestsellers across Europe. London’s Royal Geographical Society would not have her as a member. Berlin’s made her its first woman honorary member.
Sixteen years on the move
The lifeline
1797
Born Ida Reyer in Vienna, 14 October — a girl among five brothers
1842
Aged 44, sets out down the Danube for Istanbul, Jerusalem and Egypt
1846
Sails from Hamburg on her first journey round the world
1851
Begins a second circumnavigation, via the Cape to Borneo and Sumatra
1857
Caught up in a failed plot in Madagascar; expelled, and falls gravely ill
1858
Dies in Vienna, 27 October, aged 61, at her brother’s house
By the numbers
The measure of her
240,000
Kilometres travelled by sea, by common estimate — about six times round the Earth
32,000
Kilometres travelled overland — on foot, horseback, cart and canoe
44
Her age when she set out on her first journey, in 1842
721
Specimens from her last journey, to Madagascar and Mauritius, now in Vienna’s Natural History Museum
Where she went, what she wrote
The journeys
1842–43
The Holy Land and Egypt. Down the Danube to Istanbul, on to Jerusalem, the Nile and Rome. Her diary appeared in 1844 as the journey of “a Viennese woman” — Reise einer Wienerin in das Heilige Land.
1845
Iceland and the Scandinavian North. Six months of travel from April to October, visiting Hekla and collecting specimens to sell on her return.
1846–48
The first circumnavigation. Brazil, round Cape Horn to Chile, Tahiti, China, India, Persia and Greece. Published in 1850 in three volumes as Eine Frauenfahrt um die Welt — A Woman’s Journey Round the World.
1851–55
The second circumnavigation. Cape Town, the interior of Borneo, and Sumatra — where in 1852 she went among the Batak, then reputed cannibals — then California, Peru and Ecuador. Meine zweite Weltreise, 1856.
1857
Madagascar. Unwittingly drawn into a plot to replace Queen Ranavalona I with her son, she was expelled with the conspirators. Her account was published after her death, in 1861.
Honoured by some, barred by others
Recognition
In her lifetime
Refused by London’s Royal Geographical Society, which admitted no women until 1913
Self-funded on a shoestring; an Austrian state grant of 1,500 guilders came only for her second voyage
Made the first woman honorary member of the Berlin Geographical Society, backed by Humboldt and Ritter
Honorary member in Paris; a Prussian gold medal for science and art
Since
1892: reburied in an honorary grave in Vienna’s Central Cemetery, moved there by the Association for Extended Women’s Education
2000: Ida-Pfeiffer-Straße named in Munich
2018: the University of Vienna creates the Ida Pfeiffer Professorship in its Faculty of Earth Sciences, Geography and Astronomy
Her specimens are still catalogued in the Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna
The city she left, and came back to
Vienna
Daughter of a prosperous textile manufacturer, she grew up the only girl among five brothers, and at 22 married a lawyer 24 years her senior. For two decades she raised her sons in straitened circumstances. Only when they were grown did she take the Danube east — and it was here she always came home.
1820
Married Dr Mark Anton Pfeiffer; two sons, born 1821 and 1824
1842
Left Vienna by Danube steamer on her first journey
34 yrs
After her death, her remains were moved to an honorary grave
“In my youth I dreamed of travelling — in my old age I find amusement in reflecting on what I have beheld.”
— Ida Pfeiffer, preface to A Woman’s Journey Round the World, Vienna, 1850
