Otto von Kotzebue
Encyclopedia
Otto von Kotzebue (December 30, 1787 – February 15, 1846) was a Baltic German
Baltic German
The Baltic Germans were mostly ethnically German inhabitants of the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, which today form the countries of Estonia and Latvia. The Baltic German population never made up more than 10% of the total. They formed the social, commercial, political and cultural élite in...

 navigator in Russia
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

n service.
The second son of August von Kotzebue
August von Kotzebue
August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue was a German dramatist.One of Kotzebue's books was burned during the Wartburg festival in 1817. He was murdered in 1819 by Karl Ludwig Sand, a militant member of the Burschenschaften...

, he was born in Reval
Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...

 (now Tallinn, Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...

), then part of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

. After attending the St Petersburg school of cadets, he accompanied Adam Johann von Krusenstern
Adam Johann von Krusenstern
Adam Johann Ritter von Krusenstern , was an admiral and explorer, who led the first Russian circumnavigation of the globe.- Life :...

 on his voyage of 1803–1806. On promotion to lieutenant, Kotzebue was placed in command of an expedition, fitted out at the expense of the imperial chancellor, Count Nikolay Rumyantsev
Nikolay Rumyantsev
Count Nikolai Petrovich Rumyantsev was Russia's Foreign Minister and Imperial Chancellor in the run-up to Napoleon's invasion of Russia...

, in the brig
Brig
A brig is a sailing vessel with two square-rigged masts. During the Age of Sail, brigs were seen as fast and manoeuvrable and were used as both naval warships and merchant vessels. They were especially popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries...

 Rurik. In this vessel, with only twenty-seven men, including the naturalists Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz
Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz
Johann Friedrich Eschscholtz was a Livonian physician, botanist, zoologist and entomologist.Eschscholtz was born in Dorpat , Governorate of Livonia in the Russian Empire...

 and Adelbert von Chamisso
Adelbert von Chamisso
Adelbert von Chamisso was a German poet and botanist.- Life :He was born Louis Charles Adélaïde de Chamissot at the château of Boncourt at Ante, in Champagne, France, the ancestral seat of his family...

, and the artist Louis Choris
Louis Choris
Louis Choris was a famous German-Russian painter and explorer. He was one of the first sketch artists for expedition research. Louis Choris, who was a Russian of German stock, was born in Yekaterinoslav on March 22, 1795...

, Kotzebue set out on July 30, 1815 to find a passage across the Arctic Ocean
Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Ocean, located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic north polar region, is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceanic divisions...

 and explore the less-known parts of Oceania
Oceania
Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...

.

Proceeding via Cape Horn
Cape Horn
Cape Horn is the southernmost headland of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago of southern Chile, and is located on the small Hornos Island...

, he discovered the Romanzov Islands, Rurik Islands and Krusenstern Islands
Tuamotus
The Tuamotus or the Tuamotu Archipelago are a chain of islands and atolls in French Polynesia. They form the largest chain of atolls in the world, spanning an area of the Pacific Ocean roughly the size of Western Europe...

 (today Tikehau
Tikehau
-External links:* * * * * * * * * * *...

), then made for Kamchatka
Kamchatka Peninsula
The Kamchatka Peninsula is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of . It lies between the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Sea of Okhotsk to the west...

, and in the middle of July proceeded northward, coasting along the north-west coast of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, and discovering and naming Kotzebue Sound
Kotzebue Sound
Kotzebue Sound is an arm of the Chukchi Sea in the western region of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is on the north side of the Seward Peninsula and bounded the east by the Baldwin Peninsula. It is long and wide....

 or Gulf and Cape Krusenstern
Cape Krusenstern
Cape Krusenstern is a cape on the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Alaska, located near the village of Kivalina at .It is bounded by Kotzebue Sound to the south and the Chukchi Sea to the west, and consists of a series of beach ridges and swales with numerous ponds and lakes...

 in the remote Chukchi Sea
Chukchi Sea
Chukchi Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is bounded on the west by the De Long Strait, off Wrangel Island, and in the east by Point Barrow, Alaska, beyond which lies the Beaufort Sea. The Bering Strait forms its southernmost limit and connects it to the Bering Sea and the Pacific...

.
Returning by the coast of Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, he again sailed to the south, sojourned for three weeks at the Sandwich Islands
Hawaiian Islands
The Hawaiian Islands are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll...

, and on January 1, 1817 discovered New Year Island. After further cruising in the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

, he again proceeded north, but severe illness compelled him to return to Europe, and he reached the Neva on August 3, 1818, bringing home a large collection of previously unknown plants and much new ethnological information.
In 1823 Kotzebue, now a captain, was entrusted with the command of an expedition in two ships of war, the main object of which was to take reinforcements to Kamchatka. There was, however, a staff of scientists on board the Russian sailing sloop "Enterprise," who collected much valuable information and material in geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

, ethnography
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...

 and natural history. The expedition, proceeding by Cape Horn, visited the Radak
Ratak Chain
The Ratak Chain is a chain of islands within the island nation of the Marshall Islands. Ratak means "sunrise". It lies just to the east of the country's other main island chain, the Ralik Chain...

 and Society Islands
Society Islands
The Society Islands are a group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean. They are politically part of French Polynesia. The archipelago is generally believed to have been named by Captain James Cook in honor of the Royal Society, the sponsor of the first British scientific survey of the islands;...

, and reached Petropavlovsk
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky is the main city and the administrative, industrial, scientific, and cultural center of Kamchatka Krai, Russia. Population: .-History:It was founded by Danish navigator Vitus Bering, in the service of the Russian Navy...

 in July 1824. Many positions along the coast were rectified, the Navigator islands
Samoa
Samoa , officially the Independent State of Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa is a country encompassing the western part of the Samoan Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. It became independent from New Zealand in 1962. The two main islands of Samoa are Upolu and one of the biggest islands in...

 visited, and several discoveries made. The expedition returned by the Marianas, Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

, New Caledonia
New Caledonia
New Caledonia is a special collectivity of France located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, east of Australia and about from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of...

 and the Hawaiian Islands
Hawaiian Islands
The Hawaiian Islands are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll...

, reaching Kronstadt on July 10, 1826.

There are English translations of both Kotzebue's narratives: A Voyage of Discovery into the South Sea and Bering’s Straits for the Purpose of exploring a North-East Passage, undertaken in the Years 1815-1818 (3 vols. 1821), and A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823-1826 (1830).

He died in Reval (now Tallinn
Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...

) in 1846 and was buried in the Kose Parish churchyard approx. 30 km from Tallinn where his imposing monument now stands. In the last years of his life he lived in the manor of Kau
Kau
Kau or KAU may refer to:*Kau, Hawaii, the southernmost district on the island of Hawaii*Karlstad University*Kenya African Union*Kerala Agricultural University*King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia...

 (now Triigi) near Kose. Kotzebue Sound
Kotzebue Sound
Kotzebue Sound is an arm of the Chukchi Sea in the western region of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is on the north side of the Seward Peninsula and bounded the east by the Baldwin Peninsula. It is long and wide....

, Kotzebue Street in Northern Tallinn and the city of Kotzebue, Alaska
Kotzebue, Alaska
As of the census of 2000, there were 3,082 people, 889 households, and 656 families residing in the city. The population density was 114.1 people per square mile . There were 1,007 housing units at an average density of 37.3 per square mile...

 are named after him.

External links

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