Philipp Keller (1895-1980) bequeathed to the Swiss Museum of Transport, among other things, his entire library. Working in overseas trade, he was fascinated by all aspects of shipping. This is impressively reflected in the large collection of books started by his father.

In a project last year, the books were photographically catalogued and are now ready to be recorded in the electronic library catalog. The impressive collection consists of works from the 16th to the 20th century covering all aspects of global shipping. Expedition diaries and descriptions of the famous seafarers Vasco da Gama, James Cook and Ernest Shackleton are included, as well as adventure novels, pirate literature, works on trade history, naval warfare and shipbuilding. The books in Portuguese, Dutch, French, English, Spanish and German are now waiting to be discovered by a wide audience.

Traveling through South America
The Swiss naturalist and doctor Johann Jakob von Tschudi (1818 - 1889) made several trips to South America. He explored the animal world, published research on the indigenous Quechua language and negotiated for Swiss colonists in 1861 as an extraordinary envoy of the Swiss Confederation in Brazil.
Back at his home in Austria, he published his "Travels through South America" in five volumes from 1866 to 1869. In it, he recounts his long voyage by ship from Hamburg to Rio de Janeiro and his impressions of the country and its people. He gives tips on how to successfully visit fish markets and gets carried away with a page-long treatise on the different flavors of bananas. His sometimes strongly colonialist style of writing gives an impression of the power relations of the time. He also describes slavery, which was still widespread in Brazil at the time, in detail and mostly without criticism. Tschudi's five-volume first edition is part of a special collection in the Swiss Museum of Transport library.