Around the World in Seven-League Boots: The Adventurous Travels of Adelbert von Chamisso. Few Germans before him saw as much of the world as Adelbert von Chamisso. He himself regarded the adventurous three-year sea voyage aboard the Rurik as the true centerpiece of his life, as the defining element. As a scion of French nobility, he was long homeless after the Revolution of 1789 and grew up in Berlin. There, he began to write poetry - in German - and found a new intellectual home in natural history. However, he is best remembered for his famous fairy tale about Peter Schlemihl. It has taken such a firm place in our language and thinking as the seven-league boots in which Schlemihl travels the world, devoid of shadow after a pact with the devil and with an inexhaustible purse in his pocket. During his research expeditions, Chamisso helped to trace the legendary Northeast Passage, created herbaria of previously unknown plants, and was the first to describe the generational change in marine animals. And, not unlike his Schlemihl, he wrote brilliant, poetic reports about it. Glaubrecht uncovers a long-overlooked treasure in his detective search through museum collections and Chamisso's estate. In his biography, we can finally discover the whole Chamisso. He clearly shows how literature, poetry, and natural scientific knowledge emerged simultaneously in this exceptional figure, what Chamisso himself made of his world journey, and what posterity made of him.