Die Studie analysiert Strategien der Selbstinszenierung in frühen Publikationen Alexander von Humboldts, die um 1800 in Form von für die Veröffentlichung bestimmten Briefen zu Beginn seiner Amerikareise erschienen sind. Humboldt platziert sie in einem halben Dutzend deutscher und französischer Wissenschafts‐ und Publikumszeitschriften. Die Abreise, die Besteigung des Pico del Teide und die Ankunft in den Tropen konnten in Europa weithin und zeitnah rezipiert werden. Der Teide‐Aufstieg, als vorläufiger Höhepunkt der Mikro‐Reiseerzählung, wird als Initiationsort von Humboldts Wissenschaftsprogrammatik stilisiert. Lange vor Abschluss der Reise und allen seinen Buchveröffentlichungen etabliert Humboldt in diesen kleinen, aber wirkmächtigen Veröffentlichungen erfolgreich das Selbstbild des innovativen, wissenschaftlich‐ästhetisch beschreibenden Reiseabenteurers. Vergleichstext ist Saussures Darstellung seiner Montblanc‐Besteigung. Zusätzlich werden die Briefveröffentlichungen durch den Vergleich mit Humboldts späteren Beschreibungen des Teide‐Aufstiegs in der Relation historique (1814–1831) und im Kosmos (ab 1845) kontextualisiert, die deutlich entheroisiert‟ sind. Die zeitgenössisch erschienene Beschreibung seines viel berühmteren Aufstiegs auf den Chimborazo (1802) ist ebenso geeignet, die rhetorische und ästhetische Gestaltung der frühen Teide‐Briefe kontrastiv herauszustellen.

William L. Shirer's best‐selling Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934–1941 profoundly shaped US‐American public opinion about Hitler and Nazi Germany. It has been and still is widely used as a source in historiography and historical journalism. The Berlin Diary was also the starting point of Shirer's writing career that led to the publication of the seminal The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960). Contrary to the book's self‐image, its paratextual shape and reception, it is not an ‘authentic day‐to‐day record of events’, but a highly edited and literary text: this article compares – for the first time – the distinctly different version of Shirer's diary that can be found among his papers and the published work. Firstly, an error in judgment of 1935 about Hitler that Shirer censored in his 1941 publication (and which he reinstated in 1984 in his memoirs) is analysed in detail. Secondly, further examples of seemingly minor alterations in entries of 1939/40 illustrate to what extent and with what intentions Shirer altered his diary for publication.

Humboldt is often credited with being the forerunner of modern ecology and environmentalism and the founder of modern comparative climatology – without having written a single book on climate. His contributions can be found in the 800 articles and essays that he published in scientific journals. New bibliographic and editorial research on these writings allows this article to present the forgotten climatological contributions for the first time, with the main intention of providing an overview over the extensive material. Humboldt published articles on the distribution of heat on the globe as well as about the chemistry of the subterranean atmosphere in mines. He invented the infographic concept of isothermal lines and wrote on sound propagation in the atmosphere. His mountaineering accomplishments promoted alpine climate studies. In his articles he compared the snow heights of the Andes, the Himalayas and the Alps. He wrote on the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean and the Baltic Sea, about the climate of Spain and that of Central Asia. In South America he was the first to describe the cold‐water current of the west coast (‘Humboldt current’). He also described and analysed anthropogenic climate change. These diverse contributions provide a new perspective on Humboldt's climatological research. What was the relevance of Humboldt's climatological writings in their time and what is it today?