Ernst Haeckel

Ernst Haeckel was a 19th century naturalist with a remarkable imagination. For instance, he was convinced that the biological development of every creature was parallel to its evolutionary development. So, a bird in an egg would reenact millions of years of evolution. Furthermore, without any particular prove, he claimed that some of the earliest ancestors of Homo Sapiens could be found in Indonesia. Indeed, a few years later one his students would find the remains of what came to be known as ‘Java man’, at that time the oldest man found.

Besides sensational claims like this, Haeckel also had the unforgivable tendency, like many of his contemporaries, to mix biology with anthropology. So, despite the discovery, he claimed that the Caucasian race had developed to become a superior race. It is no wonder that naturalists in that time traveled the world in the slipstream of colonialism and were financed by colonial regimes. They  were an essential part of the wicked business of justifying the exploitation of the colonies, since they provided the scientific proof of ‘so called’ Western superiority.

But in one area Haeckel managed to direct his vivid imagination into something slightly more positive: he was a remarkable artist and produced a great heap of fantastic illustrations of nature. Again, with an imagination larger than reality, he  idealized the plants and animals he had discovered and rendered them slightly more spectacular and aesthetic than in reality. As if on acid he created somewhat haluncinary images of plants and animals he discovered and ultimately bundled them in a book tentatively titled Art Forms Of Nature. You can find hi res images of all the pictures in the book here.