 Alexander Georg died in 1779, leaving the brothers Humboldt in the care of their emotionally distant mother.She had high ambitions for Alexander and his older brother Wilhelm, hiring excellent tutors, who were Enlightenment thinkers, including Kantian physician Marcus Herz and botanist Karl Ludwig Willdenow, who became one of the most important botanists in Germany.Humboldt's mother expected them to become civil servants of the Prussian state.