IN 1881, A DECADE AFTER German unification, and on the cusp of German colonial expansion, the missing Leichhardt was ushered back into the limelight in his country of birth when his collected letters to his family ceased to be a phantom book and were finally published. The editors were Otto Leichhardt, one of Leichhardt's nephews, and Georg Neumayer, an erstwhile scientist in Australia, and now the director of the German Maritime Observatory (Deutsche Seewarte). They appeared under the auspices of one of the country's premier and wealthiest geographical societies, the Geographische Gesellschaft in Hamburg, which had been founded eight years earlier, in 1873, and were published by Ludwig Friederichsen, an ardent supporter of the German colonial project. After a fairly lean twenty-five year period in German-speaking Europe, Leichhardt's time had come. Was this simply about giving a missing and somewhat forgotten uncle, countryman, and pioneering scientist in the field his due? Was it about defending him against posthumous Anglo-Australian detractors like Daniel Bunce? Or was it about crafting a new national history that was capable of incorporating the contributions that German speakers had made to other people's colonies? How was that done, and exactly what purpose might such a history have?

Ferdinand Mueller's deep interest in Leichhardt was shared by his contemporary, associate, and rival Georg Neumayer (1826–1909), a native of the Palatinate region of western Germany, who made lengthy sojourns in Victoria between 1852 and 1854, and then again between 1857 and 1864. However, Neumayer's fascination only publicly emerged when he was back in German-speaking lands, where it manifested itself in both his sustained lobbying for a new “search”—this time directed from Europe—as well as in his publication of the letters home. Neumayer is best known today as a champion of Antarctic exploration and research; indeed, the German Antarctic station is named after him. Yet Australian exploration and the search for and commemoration of Leichhardt were also important to him in the 1860s, as well as subsequently. Whereas Mueller was a stayer, Neumayer represented that species of German scientist who returned home to write up.