German scholarly concern with Latin America has a long and interesting tradition that began before Alexander von Humboldt's famous journey to Latin America at the beginning of the 19th century.

Well-known research in entomology, for example, was carried out by Maria Sybilla Merian, who was active in 1699 in Surinam. Similarly, a long and protracted cooperation exists between German and Latin American mining research on the major mining centers of the colonial Latin American world: the Bolivian highlands and Mexico. Alexander von Humboldt was able to build directly on these established and generally accepted contacts, especially in Mexico, where he found old college friends from Freiberg (Saxony) in decisive positions in Mexican mining affairs.