August Weberbauer was born in Wrocław and studied natural sciences at various universities, specializing in biology. He obtained his doctorate from Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin (today’s Humboldt University of Berlin) in 1894 and his post-doctorate (habilitation) in Wrocław in 1898. He laid the foundation for the discipline of systematic botany in Peru. His papers still rank among the most important works on Peruvian botany today, in particular his publication “El mundo vegetal de los Andes” (“The Flora of the Peruvian Andes”). On his expeditions, he discovered and classified over 8,000 plants and over 250 plants were named after him. Between 1901 and 1905 Weberbauer made his first trip to Peru, commissioned by the Königlich Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Royal Prussian Academy of the Sciences) to study the flora of the Andes and collect plant specimens for the Königliche Botanische Museum (Royal Botanical Museum) in Berlin-Dahlem. He was director of Victoria Botanical Gardens (Cameroon) from 1906 to 1907 and subsequently appointed director of the Zoological and Botanical Gardens in Lima (Peru) in 1908. In 1922 Weberbauer obtained another doctorate from the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, where he then worked as professor of pharmaceutical chemistry from 1923. In 1925 the university awarded him a doctorate in botany and appointed him director of the botany department in 1935. From 1924 to 1929 Weberbauer embarked on four major expeditions in Peru, supported by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago (US). He also took several trips around Chile and Argentina after 1928.

Material:

• Materials on his life and work, as well as geological, climatological, geographical and ethnographic information about Peru from 1901 to 1948.
• 13 manuscripts
• 7 travelogues
• 7 diaries
• 53 notebooks
• notes
• 12 plant catalogs
• meteorological reports
• bibliographies
• 6 official documents
• 3 collections of photographs (135 photographs in total)
• 7 glass-plate negatives

Keywords: Peru, botany, travelogues