Bengt Skytte

Bengt Skytte from Duderhof

Bengt Skytte ad Duderhof (Benedikt Skytte) (born September 30, 1614, Stockholm ; † July 23, 1683, Hamburg ) was a Swedish nobleman , civil servant and diplomat who also worked in Germany .

family

Bengt Skytte was born to Johan Skytte (* 1577 Nyköping ; † March 15, 1645 in Söderåkra ) and Mary Neaf , daughter of a Scottish mercenary in Sweden. His sister was Vendela Skytte . In addition, he had two older brothers Johan (* 1612) and Jakob (* 1613).

In 1636 he married Christine Sparre , the second marriage after 1670 Eva Mörner . The daughter Maria Skytte emerged from the first marriage .

education

Bengt studied from 1624 at the universities of Uppsala , Leiden and Dorpat (today: Tartu ). He was connected to a Europe-wide corresponding network of scholars. In 1631 and 1634 he visited Gerhard Johannes Vossius twice in Amsterdam , at least once with his brother Jakob.

science

In 1645 he founded - like his father before - the "Skyttean Professorship" at Uppsala University.

He was very interested in comparative linguistics and is said to have tried to develop a universal language. In 1651/52 he traveled through Germany and Hungary. He found similarities between the Finnish language and Hungarian . Spent a few weeks in Hungary with Johann Amos Comenius . The word lists for the Hungarian language compiled by Skytte were later used by Olof Rudbeck the Elder and Olof Rudbeck the Younger . He was also personally known to Johannes Duraeus and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , with the latter since Bengt Skytte's stay in Berlin in 1667. After Skytte's death, Leibniz was very interested in receiving writings from his estate.

In addition to his interest in languages, Skytte was interested in hermetics and alchemy .

Career

Already in 1629 was Bengt Skytte member of a diplomatic mission to London , where he by King Charles I to the Knights defeated was. In 1631 he traveled to Moscow to sound out the political situation. In 1632 he received an audience with King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden in Augsburg .

In 1633 he was appointed chamberlain to Queen Christina of Sweden. He became her advisor and favorite. From 1634 he was an employee of Axel Oxenstierna in Magdeburg , on a diplomatic mission in Paris , where there was also an encounter with Cardinal Richelieu , and in southern Italy.

In 1637 Bengt Skytte was appointed assessor at the Chamber of Commerce, 1638 auditor in the Reich Chamber and 1640 Chamber Councilor. From 1641 to 1642 another trip to Switzerland, France and the Netherlands followed. Bengt Skytte was under discussion when it came to filling the post of Swedish consul in Edinburgh in 1643 .

He was made governor of Uppsala in 1646 , an office that he held until 1649. In 1647 he became land marshal (who was the leader of the knighthood in the Swedish State Council ) and Reichsrat. 1648/49 he was Chancellor of the University of Dorpat. In 1652 he was on a diplomatic mission again: this time to the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople .

1654–1656 he was Governor of Estonia , a term that was overshadowed by the Second Northern War . In 1655 he accompanied the abdicated Queen Christina of Sweden on her way to Italy to Mainz and stayed privately outside of Sweden in 1656 and 1662, from 1659 for a few years in London, where he also maintained his scientific contacts and worked in a circle of intellectuals Gresham College was up . Here his concept of a scientific academy Sophopolis was born . This should become a place of study and residence for outstanding scholars, who should be able to devote themselves exclusively to their research there. Bengt Skytte submitted his idea to King Charles II , who could not be won over for funding. He then tried to sell his “Sophopolis” project to German territorial lords. He was able to convince Friedrich Wilhelm , Elector of Brandenburg , in 1667. However, Skytte made such high demands with regard to his own position in the project that the elector let his already given approval in practice come to nothing. He also turned to the Count of Hanau , Friedrich Casimir . Together with Johann Joachim Becher , who worked there, he submitted the project to the Count of Hanau , who also greatly encouraged it. From 1664 onwards, with the help of Skytte, he began to expand his art chamber , which was also to serve as a teaching material collection for the academy. The project ultimately failed in 1669/70 together with other ambitious plans of the count, when his agnates feared the state bankruptcy of the county and Emperor Leopold I ordered the compulsory administration of the county by the agnates. Skytte then had to leave Hanau.

literature

• Sylvain Auroux: History of Linguistics - An International Handbook on the Development of Linguistics from Its Beginnings to the Present . Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-11-016735-2 .
• Gerhard Bott: Count Friedrich Casimir von Hanau (1623–1685). The "King of the land of milk and honey" and his art treasures . Hanau 2015, ISBN 978-3-86314-215-5 .
• John P. Considine: Dictionaries in Early Modern Europe: lexicography and the making of heritage . Cambridge 2008, ISBN 978-0-521-88674-1 .
• Allison Coudert, Richard Henry Popkin, Gordon M. Weiner: Leibniz, Mysticism, and Religion = International Archives of the History of Ideas 158. Dordrecht 1998.
• Donald R. Dickson: The Tessera of Antilia: utopian brotherhoods and secret societies in the early seventeenth century . Leiden 1998, ISBN 90-04-11032-1 .
• Daniel Droixhe: Souvenirs de Babel. La reconstruction de l'histoire des langues de la Renaissance aux Lumières (PDF) Bruxelles 2007.
• Marjory Harper: Emigrant Homecomings: the return movement of emigrants, 1600-2000 . Manchester 2005, ISBN 0-7190-7070-8 .
• Skytte, Bengt, riksråd . In: Herman Hofberg, Frithiof Heurlin, Viktor Millqvist, Olof Rubenson (eds.): Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon . 2nd Edition. tape 2 : L – Z, including supplement . Albert Bonniers Verlag, Stockholm 1906, p. 473 (Swedish, runeberg.org ).
• Herbert Jaumann: Handbook of scholarly culture in the early modern period . Volume 1, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-11-016069-2 , p. 612f./ref>

Remarks

1. ^ French Benoît Skytte , Latin Benedictus Skyttius
2. ↑ The manuscript of his main work, Sol praecipuarum linguarum subsolarium , which was never published , is now owned by Uppsala University, and another in the Royal Library in Stockholm .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hofberg u. a .: Skytte, Bengt, riksråd .
2. ↑ Jaumann, manual. P. 613.
3. ↑ Hofberg u. a .: Skytte, Bengt, riksråd .
4. ↑ Dickson: The Tessera of Antilia. P. 220.
5. ^ Dirk van Miert: Humanism in an Age of Science: the Amsterdam Athenaeum in the golden age, 1632-1704 . Leiden 2009, ISBN 978-90-04-17685-0 , p. 126, note 49.
6. ↑ Jaumann, manual. P. 613.
7. ^ Considine: Dictionaries. P. 293.
8. ^ Considine: Dictionaries. P. 245.
9. ^ Droixhe: Souvenirs. P. 199; Auroux: History of Linguistics , p. 1150.
10. ^ Auroux: History of Linguistics , p. 1150; Droixhe: souvenirs. P. 135.
11. ↑ Dickson: The Tessera of Antilia. P. 220.
12. ↑ Auroux: History of Linguistics , p. 1150.
13. ↑ Jaumann, manual. P. 613.
14. ↑ Coudert et al. a .: Leibniz. P. 87f.
15. ↑ Coudert et al. a .: Leibniz. P. 87f.
16. ↑ Harper: Emigrant Homecomings. P. 63.
17. ↑ Hans-Joachim Torke, Holm Sundhaussen, Ricarda Vulpius: Russian and Ukrainian history from 16.-18. Century = Research on Eastern European History 58.Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-447-04480-2 , p. 239.
18. ↑ Jaumann, manual. P. 613.
19. ↑ Jaumann, manual. P. 613.
20. ↑ Jaumann, manual. P. 613.
21. ↑ Jaumann, manual. P. 613.
22. ↑ Jaumann, manual. P. 613.
23. ↑ Harper: Emigrant Homecomings. P. 64.
24. ↑ Jaumann, manual. P. 613.
25. ↑ Harper: Emigrant Homecomings. P. 64.
26. ↑ Jaumann, manual. P. 613.
27. ↑ Elżbieta Święcicka: The collection of Ottoman-Turkish documents in Sweden . In: Colin Imber, Keiko Kiyotaki (ed.): Frontiers of Ottoman Studies 2 = Library of Ottoman Studies 6. London 2005, ISBN 1-85043-664-9 , pp. 42-62 (51); Nabil I. Matar: Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 . Cambridge 1998, ISBN 0-521-62233-6 , p. 147.
28. ↑ Jaumann, manual. P. 613.
29. ↑ Harper: Emigrant Homecomings. P. 64; Jaumann, manual. P. 613.
30. ↑ Dickson: The Tessera of Antilia. P. 220f.
31. ^ Helmar Schramm, Kunstkammer, Laboratorium, Bühne: Schauplätze des Wissens im 17. Jahrhundert Berlin, 2003, pp. 188–191.
32. ^ Edward H. Thompson (Ed.): Johann Valentin Andreae: Christianopolis = International Archives of the History of Ideas 162. Dordrecht 1999, pp. 302f.
33. ^ Bott: Count Friedrich Casimir. P. 80f.
34. ^ Bott: Count Friedrich Casimir. P. 77ff.
35. ↑ Reinhard Dietrich : The state constitution in the Hanauischen. In: Hanauer Geschichtsblätter . 34, Hanau 1996, ISBN 3-9801933-6-5 , p. 98.