Biography

German medic and naturalist. Carl Hoffmann settled in Costa Rica, sampling the local flora and fauna and working as a surgeon in the Nicaraguan National War. Born in Stettin (now Szczecin in Poland), he studied at the University of Berlin and graduated as a medic at the age of 23. He began to work as a doctor in order to support his love of natural history, which he exercised on excursions into the local countryside.

Hoffmann soon became involved in the scientific community of Berlin and came to know Alexander von Humboldt, who recommended Hoffmann and his friend, fellow medic and naturalist Alexander von Frantzius, to travel to Costa Rica and study its natural history. It appears they chose the neotropics due to chronic health problems from which they both suffered, as well as wishing to leave the current political situation in their home country.

The journey was not easy and travelling with his wife, Emilia Hoffmann, the group arrived in San Juan del Norte (Greytown), Nicaragua, in 1854. The Hoffmanns settled in San Jose and quickly became immersed in the growing German community in the capital. Developing his house into a consultation clinic and small pharmacy Carl Hoffmann also supplemented the income from his practice by selling wine and liquor.

Their house overlooked the volcano Irazú and Hoffmann had always harboured a strong desire to climb the peak and study the geography of this feature. Eventually he found the time to explore the area a year and a half after his arrival and soon afterwards he also climbed the volcano Barva; in both cases he studied the physical geography and climatology and later published his findings. He also wrote important works on the vegetation of the two peaks, reflecting Humboldt's ideas of biogeography and likewise categorising different altitudinal vegetation zones. During this time Hoffmann made very important collections of the local flora and fauna, both on his volcano trips and on other excursions around the capital, in Heredia and Guanacaste, and was involved in editing the German Periodical of Costa Rica.

During the war of 1856, against William Walker the American filibuster, the German community of San Jose offered their assistance to the Costa Rican army and Hoffmann was made chief surgeon of the Expeditionary Army. Travelling with them to Puntarenas, he took the opportunity to collect plants on the way. He very quickly came face to face with the horrors of wartime surgery when his first task was the amputation of a sergeant's arm. However, Hoffmann soon took the lead treating casualties in the battles of Santa Rosa and Rivas, where just three doctors and one assistant had to tend to hundreds of injured soldiers. He organised a temporary hospital and over four days organised all the patients while they awaited support. Unfortunately an outbreak of cholera then began and the troops returned home only to spread the disease.

Back in San Jose Hoffmann visited the families of the wounded soldiers while the epidemic raged. Hailed as a hero, the events had taken their toll on the young surgeon and his health deteriorated to the point where he was unable to return to the front line, but remained in the city as the war continued. He later suffered from swelling of the joints, which prevented him from writing, treating specimens or even working as a pharmacist and Hoffmann was forced to live in increasing poverty.

Unfortunately Emilia Hoffmann died before her husband in a local typhoid epidemic, but the government began to give him a monthly pension for his duty in the army, and he travelled the area searching for a more favourable climate for his ailments. Despite attempts to delay the progression of his illness he passed away in 1859.

Hoffmann left his specimens to the Berlin Museum and his library to the University of Santo Tomás but it is hard to ascertain the exact numbers that he collected due to the damage they incurred in this museum during the Second World War. He did not undertake many taxonomic studies using his specimens because of limited access to books or equipment, but left their classification to his many correspondents in Berlin. For this reason many of the new species discovered by Hoffmann now bear his name: 22 species of plants and 16 species or subspecies of animal, including the two toed sloth Choloepus hoffmanni.

Sources:
Quirós, H. L., 2006, Karl Hoffmann: naturalista, médico y héroe nacional. Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad.