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"One of our most famous natural scientists, who used to live in Paris and in Vienna since 1848, Mr. Ami Boué, died here this night," wrote the Neue Freie Presse on November 22, 1881. Who was this Mr. Boué from Lambrechtsgasse 6 in Vienna, who - according to the party - died on "November 21, 1881 at 10:30 in the evening, after long suffering in the 88th year of his life "slept with the Lord".
Boué was born on March 16, 1794 in Hamburg. His family came from France, was wealthy and was among the richest in Hamburg. This means that he was not only born with the German language, but also French. This was followed by stays in Geneva, Paris, Edinburgh, where he studied medicine and received his doctorate on August 15, 1817, as well as Vienna and Berlin. Information about his life and work is provided in his autobiography, written in 1879, which was not allowed to be published during his lifetime. The author's statement on the title page is a commitment to Austria: "Dr. med. Ami Boué, member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna, born in Hamburg on March 16, 1794 and died as an Austrian in Vienna. The only survivor, although the eldest of three brothers and a sister." Johannes Seidl retranslated the French autobiography and published it with Angelika at the end of 2013.
Ami, a short form of Amédée, was weak at birth; his uncle compared him "to a carrot." Not a compliment for the newborn, who was given little chance of survival, "but despite that, my body was well formed, of a moderately sanguine temperament and very healthy physical condition." One more sentence should be quoted. "My smallpox was very merciful because it was inoculated into me to prevent the severity of the outbreak." So there is no trace of vaccine skepticism.
He attributes his good health, which he maintained into old age, to his childhood and diet. "In the summer, she [my mother] let me run around almost naked and without shoes or stockings. In addition, until the age of 20, I lived mostly on dairy foods, vegetables, fruits and broths, far more than on meat." When it comes to drinking, he prefers water; “I only rarely tasted wine.” He avoided coffee, only in Turkey he couldn't give it up. "Chocolate, cocoa and sometimes tea alternated as my breakfast for several years." In England he drank “tea and quite a lot of spirits.” Ami Boué was sporty and trained through and through and, at just under 60 years old, fit as a fiddle. "I was able to […] not only fold my arms backwards, but also bring my mouth up to the tips of my feet."
His mind was in no way inferior to his body. Boué had a good sense of language and an excellent memory; he was a multitasker; he only had weaknesses when it came to numbers. "I often took part in two conversations at the same time or read two subjects in writing or orally." Of course, in addition to Latin, he also knew ancient Greek. "I was able to master the English language so well in six months that I was not only able to follow the lectures of the professors in Edinburgh, but also translated most of what was presented into French during the lesson. Three months was enough for me to learn Italian."
He could read Russian and speak Serbian, but he couldn't find his way around "Czech and especially Polish." In Turkey he learned the colloquial language, and with Albanian he used a dictionary to help him. "It was more difficult for me to communicate in the Scandinavian-speaking area." He took lessons in Hungarian, but had to admit that this language "presents noticeably more difficulties than Slavic and Turkish." He describes himself as a "polite, courteous, humane character" and emphasizes his "deeply cosmopolitan views."
Boué, who had lived in Paris since 1817 but traveled a lot in the first decades of the 19th century, had married Eleonore Beinstingl in Vienna in 1826 and was then looking for a permanent home: "So in 1835 I saw the moment had come when I had to decide on a place as my permanent residence." Boué had traveled to many cities. "Since I detested the narrow-mindedness of small towns, there were at this time only three large cities that seemed to promise me domestic happiness and the resources necessary for my life, namely Paris, Geneva and Vienna. The northern climate of Hamburg, as well as London, is not attractive, the surroundings of Berlin are extremely boring for a lover of the Alps; Naples and Palermo were extremely pleasant cities, if only the population were a little larger, and Constantinople one is too cut off from the areas of science." Paris was out of the question for him "and Geneva was repugnant to me because of the tendency towards musciness that many of my acquaintances showed, so I could not hesitate to return to the beautiful Vienna Basin, the real, natural crossing point of four streets, each of which led to different peoples and countries, and this at the gate to the Orient".
Although Boué earned his doctorate in medicine, he was drawn to geology. He knew the who's who of leading geologists and is considered the geology pioneer on the Balkan Peninsula, where he also dealt with railway routes and ethnographic questions. He was the first to draw a geological map of the world, "Carte géologique du globe terrestre", which he presented in Graz in 1843. Franz von Hauer (1822–1899) about his work: "The list of his publications includes 11 independent works in 12 volumes and 4 smaller notebooks, then, according to a cursory count, at least 300 treatises and shorter notes in around 30 different English, French and German periodicals and society publications."
Milestones are the "Esquisse géologique de la Turquie d'Europe" ("Geological Sketch of European Turkey") from 1840 and the four-volume work "La Turquie d'Europe" about European Turkey, which was written between 1836 and 1840. What is unique is his “Collection of geological maps of European [sic!] Türkiye,” which he gave to the k.k. in 1879. Geological Reichsanstalt donated. They belong to the group of works about which Hauer wrote "Original Communications of Self-Made Observations"; today they are important sources for the history of exploration of the Balkan Peninsula.
Let's start with his Austrian experiences under Emperor Franz I. "When I entered Vienna for the first time in June 1821, I was almost expelled. [...] After spending the night in a village, I reached the Tabor line in a farmer's wagon, the guard [sic] thought I was a resident and overlooked my suitcase and my passport. After a few days I went myself from my inn to what was then the Foreigners' Inquisitorium, where the board took me with me In horror, he took away my passport, but gave it to me - a monthly residence card - only after receiving a letter from the then banker, Count Fries, in which I was well looked after [...] In Paris at that time, strangers were attracted, but in Vienna they resented their presence. His opinion about Metternich’s police state is devastating. "Everywhere, at least in continental Europe, you find a political police, but I don't think there was anywhere as clumsy a police as under the blessed Emperor Franz. Many harmful personalities were overlooked or a blind eye was turned to their activities by tormenting completely harmless people with particular zeal or by turning the tourist into a dangerous propagandist."
He experienced worse things in Romania in 1824. In Cluj-Napoca he took a Wallachian coachman and horses for the journey to Transylvania. Here his two servants wanted to poison him with the juice of the common datura (Datura stramonium) and mixed the poison into his breakfast chocolate. Boué developed leg weakness, but recovered in Sibiu. The servants repeated the poison attack with a higher dose. "But the bitterness of the poison caused me to drink only half the cup. The rest and a second cup were left untouched and were drunk by a servant and a maid of the inn, bringing the crime to light." Things got worse for both of them and the poison took full effect. "[I] felt [...] miserable, my pupils were dilated, my eyes saw everything red and yellow. Fortunately, severe vomiting freed me from a more pernicious effect of the poison. [...] I had a kind of mad attack for more than 24 hours, the innkeeper gave me milk to drink." Finally his servants robbed him too. Boué survived everything; he suffered from memory problems for more than a year; In his recommended autobiography he mentioned this and other adventures under the heading: "Special features of my life". (Thomas Hofmann, November 19, 2021)