Ida Pfeiffer – "We live the sailor way"

The Viennese Ida Pfeiffer (1797–1858) is considered one of the most famous women travellers of the 19th century. Between 1842 and 1858, she undertook five major journeys and is considered the first woman to circumnavigate the world. In the middle of the 19th century, she undertook two round-the-world trips lasting several years. She devoted 16 years of her life to traveling, publishing her travel notes and scientific collecting.

Ida Pfeiffer also wrote numerous letters from her travels to relatives, friends and acquaintances, to (sometimes famous) travel acquaintances and experts in established scientific institutions and museums, and later to European newspapers to publish her spectacular experiences. For many years, these manuscripts and documents lay scattered and forgotten in various libraries, archives and museums and were only known to the specialist public.

Gabriele Habinger makes Ida Pfeiffer's letters, some of which she wrote from the remotest regions of the world, accessible to a wider public and skillfully places them in a biographical and historical context.

The editor Gabriele Habinger was born in St. Pölten in 1961 and is a lecturer at the Institute for Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Vienna. She is in charge of the "Edition Frauenfahrten" at Promedia-Verlag.

An event of the Weltmuseum Wien Friends. The Weltmuseum Wien Friends association offers a variety of advanced events to all those interested in the contents of the Weltmuseum Wien, such as object discussions, special guided tours, excursions as well as film and photo lectures.

Duration: 45 min.
The lecture is free of charge (valid museum ticket required, free entrance for members of the Weltmuseum Wien Friends)
Registration: friends@weltmuseumwien.at   
Meeting point: WMW Forum