Andreas Müller (Orientalist)

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Andreas Müller (* 1630 in Greifenhagen ( Pomerania ); † October 26, 1694 in Stettin ), was provost of St. Nikolai in Berlin. As an exceptional expert on oriental languages ​​at the time, he made a particular contribution to the knowledge of Chinese in northern Germany.

Life

Andreas Müller was born as the son of the merchant and landowner Joachim Müller and Katherina Gericke. His father, who attached great importance to a good education, sent him to the Princely Pedagogy (later Regium Gymnasium Carolinum ) in Stettin .

He enrolled at the University of Rostock in 1646 , where he studied theology and oriental languages. Before he disputed there on March 9, 1653, he had completed his language skills at the University of Wittenberg under Andreas Sennert (1605-89). A few weeks later he became principal of the school in Königsberg in the Neumark , a position he gave up again in 1654.

Müller obtained his master's degree in Rostock on August 19, 1654 under the dean Augustus Varenius . The following year he became provost in Treptow . On May 25, 1657 he enrolled as a master's degree at the University of Greifswald . With financial support from his father, he was able to travel to England. There he worked with the orientalists Brian Walton and Edmond Castello on their “Biblia polyglotta” and “Lexicon polyglottum”. Then he found time to attend the Dutch University of Leiden (matriculated April 13, 1658). In Rostock he disputed again on December 16, 1659 about "Rhapsodia sententiarum de errore animarum etc.", whereupon he was admitted to the faculty in 1660.

Even at this point in time, Müller was considered a specialist in oriental sciences, which at that time meant knowledge of languages, less history and culture. He could read Turkish , Persian and Syriac well and had sufficient command of Arabic . Quotations from Aramaic and Coptic can be found in his works . He also had Japanese , Old Indian , Malay scripts and those of various Turkic dialects. In addition to Latin and ancient Greek , which is a matter of course for the educated, he mastered European languages , at least partially Hungarian , Russian and New Greek. Throughout his life he collected alphabets and translations of the Our Father .

Andreas was married to Emerentia born in 1661. Gerber, merchant's daughter from Szczecin. With her he had five surviving children. In 1693 he said of his wife that she was "32 years ago unchristian torturing him." The children were Margaretha (born March 16, 1664 in Treptow), Bonaventura (born October 4, 1665), later city physician in Stettin and Sara came to Bernau near Berlin to the world. The youngest son Quodvultdeus Abraham (* in Berlin), named after an older brother who died at the age of 4, later became a pastor.

After his return from England he was busy evaluating the extensive oriental materials he had brought with him. At the suggestion of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm , he became provost of Bernau in 1664. He undertook studies in the nearby department for oriental writings of the court library (founded 1661; today Prussian State Library ). The elector later commissioned him several times to buy oriental writings and to look after this library.

On July 7, 1667 he became provost of St. Nikolai in Berlin, a position in which he was attacked due to ongoing denominational trench warfare. As early as 1671 he requested and the discharge from the strenuous and time-consuming church office, which also included the Berlin Poor Inspection. His dismissal was refused, and in 1675 his appointment as consistorial councilor in the Berlin consistory brought him additional duties.

Nevertheless, he still found time for studies of Chinese and special tasks assigned by the elector. He was particularly inspired by the work "China illustrata" (Rome 1667) by Athanasius Kircher . Müller, who read Jesuit descriptions of the country and travelogues, published a new Latin edition of Marco Polo's travelogue " Il Milione " in 1671 . He and the elector's personal physician Christian Mentzel (1622–1701) provided impulses for the creation of previously missing textbooks and dictionaries .

As one of the first Protestant scholars, he recognized the Nestorian stele of Sianfu as genuine, which was often thought to be a Jesuit forgery. The elector repeatedly urged him to give his various treatises to print (at his own expense).

In 1674 he was called in to the negotiations between the Elector and the ex-admiral of the East India Company Artus Gijzel in order to help found a similar company in Brandenburg. Chinese books were bought from the admiral, as did later from the estate of Theodor Petreus . After the death of the librarian Johann Raue , Müller was commissioned on March 16, 1680 to create a catalog and appraisal of the oriental manuscripts in the electoral library. He also acquired a "Typographia Sinica" at his own expense, the largest Chinese collection of types in Europe at the time, with 3287 characters cut out.

Emperor Leopold I ordered him to Vienna in 1682 to translate some Chinese documents, but a trip did not seem to have taken place. At this time, Müller was in disgrace at the Prussian court, which had to do with the non-delivery of the "Clavis Sinica" announced by him in 1674 and funded from 1681. In 1683, however, Müller was again busy cataloging new additions to the court library.

In 1685 he was allowed to resign from his ecclesiastical offices. He retired to a newly acquired house in Szczecin, by which time he was already suffering from gout and complaining about his deteriorating eyesight. In 1692 he offered 1000 volumes of his library as a gift to the Pomeranian Consistory in Stargard , but since the gentlemen were late, he canceled the donation as increasingly bitter and vicious. He finally bequeathed a large part of his library to St. Marien Stift in Stettin, which also received his house. He had many of his private records burned on the day of his death, October 26, 1694.

Works

Sometimes Müller called himself Andrea Müller Greifenhagii after his place of birth in his writings and used the pseudonym Barnimus Hagiau.

Many of his non-theological works deal with the history, culture and language of China. The sources available to him were, like all knowledge about the Orient of the time, Jesuit influenced, since this order had a monopoly on imparting knowledge about Asia.

  • 1655: Horologium linguarum orientalum (Stettin)
  • 1670: Disquisitio Geographica & Historica de Cathaja , dedicated to Edmond Castello
  • 1670: Opus synchronismorum - a universal history based on mathematical-astronomical calculations (3 folio volumes; new edition 1685)
  • 1671: Marci Pauli Veneti / De regionibus Orientalibus; bound with Haithoni Armeni Historia orientalis
  • 1672: Monumentum Sinicum - on the Nestorian stele
  • 1674: Hebdomas Observationum / De Rebus Sinicis, seven treatises on the history, astronomy and geography of China
  • 1680: Imperii Sinensi Nomenclator Geographicus - a list of 1783 place names and geog. Coordinates
  • 1683: De ecclipsi passionali
  • 1684: Another part of the Cathalogi of the Chinese books ... Library catalog of the new acquisitions 1683, with list of emperors
  • 1695: Anthology: Opuscula nonnulla orientalia uno volumine comprehensa . urn : nbn: de: bvb: 12-bsb10872439-1

A work called "Clavis Sinica", which was already heavily criticized after its announcement in 1674, which was supposed to serve the simple learning of Chinese, he burned unfinished shortly before the end of his life after he had worked on it since 1668. Very few of his manuscripts, which are said to have comprised 150 volumes, have survived. His funeral sermons have been preserved in three edited volumes.

literature

Web links

Sources and individual references

  1. ↑ a b Bülow: Müller, Andreas . In: ADB .
  2. ↑ See the entry of Andreas Müller's master's degree in the Rostock matriculation portal
  3. ↑ Hans Wehr: Andreas Müller. In: Pomeranian Life Pictures . Cologne / Graz 1966, Vol. IV, p. 32
  4. ↑ cf. in detail: Jürgen Offermanns: The long way of Zen Buddhism to Germany: from the 16th century to Rudolf Otto . Stockholm 2002 (Diss .; Almqvist & Wiksell) Sert .: Lund Studies in History of Religions
  5. ↑ Jürgen Offermanns: The long way of Zen Buddhism ... 2002
personal data
SURNAME Müller, Andreas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Müller Greifenhagii, Andrea; Hagiau, Barnimus (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Provost in Berlin, one of the earliest connoisseurs of Chinese and an expert on oriental languages
DATE OF BIRTH 1630
PLACE OF BIRTH Greifenhagen (Pomerania)
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 1694
Place of death Szczecin