Humboldt, Cotta, Ritter. Eine Miszelle über die Arbeit an einer Edition

Article in German, Abstracts in English, German and SpanishThrough the work on editing projects sometimes historical and biographical details are discovered. In this paper a letter from A. v. Humboldt to his publisher J. G. v. Cotta serves as an example of how the correct date of a wrongly dated letter could be found. The necessary research to answer this question also brought to light some new facts as to a meeting between Humboldt and geographer C. Ritter in Paris in 1824. We also learn about some topics on which Humboldt was working at the time and about his relationship to the French Court.