Alexandre-Stanislas de Wimpffen

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Alexandre-Stanislas Baron de Wimpffen (also Freiherr von Wimpffen ; * 1748 in Deux-Ponts , † 1819 in Paris ) was a French nobleman, officer and travel writer. Among other things, the baron from the von Wimpffen family from Württemberg wrote an early history of the island of Hispaniola .

meaning

Painting from 1780: "A black woman and a Spaniard make a mulatto - Black 1. Spaniard 2. Mulatto 3."

Alexandre-Stanislas came from the Alsatian line of the family and, after his brothers Franz Ludwig , Georg and Felix, was the youngest son of Baron Johann Georg von Wimpffen (1689–1767).

The baron toured parts of Europe as well as Africa as well as North and Central America and published his travel impressions. As an officer in the French army, von Wimpffen was stationed in the West Indies and visited Mexico from there .

About his visits to the French colony of Saint-Domingue (today's Haiti ), he wrote the book Voyage a Saint Domingue, pendant les années 1788, 1789 et 1790 , during which the front of an insight into life on the island and the French Revolution and before the Haitian Revolution granted . Baron de Wimpffen reported, among other things, that in the pre-revolutionary society of slavery in the colony "multiracial couples can be found everywhere and this fact is deliberately overlooked even by the most respectable members of the community."

De Wimpffen commented on the jumble of island names as follows:

“ The old name of S. Domingo is not well known. Franz Coreal says: that the natives called them Quisquesa , Haiti, Cipanga. Probably, however, they only wanted to designate only individual parts where the strangers had settled, not the whole island. The Spaniards named it Isabella as soon as they arrived and now call her Hispagnola, like all the nations that sail there, with the exception of the French, who confused the name of the capital S. Domingo with that of the island, and of at the time, they are still understood under the name of S. Domingo. "

literature

Frontispiece of the travelogue A Voyage to Saint Domingo from 1797
  • Voyage a Saint Domingue, pendant les années 1788, 1789 et 1790; par le Baron de Wimpffen. Paris 1797. ( digitized version, original French text )
  • A voyage to Saint Domingo, in the years 1788, 1789, and 1790. By Francis Alexander Stanislaus de Wimpffen , London 1797. ( digitized, English )
  • Baron von Wimpffen's latest trips to Saint Domingo or news about the geographical, physical, statistical, moral and political conditions of this island. Erfurt: first part 1798, second part 1799. ( digitized, German )
  • Letters from a traveler, written from England and France, a part of Africa, and from North America, from Baron von Wimpffen, real Privy Councilor and first Chamberlain to Her Majesty, the Queen of Wurtemberg; Translated from the French manuscript and edited by PJ Rehfues , district director in Bonn and corresponding member of the Italian Academy in Florence. Darmstadt 1815. ( digitized, German )
  • Haiti au XVIIIe siècle. Richesse et esclavage in une colonie française. Édition présentée et annotée par Pierre Pluchon , Paris 1993.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stanislaus de Wimpffen In: The Kingdom of this World , p. 66.
  2. ^ Stanislaus de Wimpffen In: The Kingdom of this World , p. 66.
  3. ↑ Tom Reiss : The Black General . The life of the true Count of Monte Christo , Munich 2014, p. 53.
  4. ↑ The Baron von Wimpffen's latest trips to Saint Domingo , pp. 52–53.
personal data
SURNAME Wimpffen, Alexandre-Stanislas de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wimpffen, François Alexandre Stanislaus Baron de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French nobleman, officer and travel writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1748
PLACE OF BIRTH Zweibrücken
DATE OF DEATH 1819
Place of death Paris