Bernhard Diestel

Bernhard Diestel (* around 1620, probably on July 13, 1623 in Wippach , Duchy of Krain ; † September 13, 1660 in Jinan in the Chinese Empire ) was a Jesuit , missionary and explorer.

Diestel attended the Jesuit grammar school there in Laibach , was accepted into the Society of Jesus in 1639 and studied theology and philosophy at the Carolo-Franciscea in Graz between 1642 and 1651 . After a brief assignment in the Persian mission, on February 20, 1656, the Jesuit General Goswin Nickel commissioned him to research an overland route to China together with his friar Johann Grueber as part of the Asia Mission .

Shortly before Christmas 1656, the two reached Isfahan via Venice , the eastern Mediterranean and Smyrna . However, they had to give up their plan to travel across Asia from there because of the threat of war. Instead, they moved to Bandar Abbas on the south coast of Persia, took a boat from there to India and went ashore in Surat in the Gulf of Khambhat , where they were initially arrested and imprisoned for ten months. After their release, an English ship finally took them to the Portuguese colony of Macau , where the two arrived in July 1658.

On April 22, 1659 Grueber and Diestel in Macau received from the responsible Vice Provincial of the Jesuits, Simon da Cunha , the order to continue their way to Beijing and then to explore an overland route back to Europe from there. Diestel and Grueber were brought to Beijing with an escort of honor at state expense and subsequently worked at the court of Emperor Shunzhi , who was liberal towards the Christian missionaries, in the imperial astronomical office, where their famous friar Adam Schall von Bell was also employed. a close confidante of the emperor at the time. As Diestel could not stand the climate in Beijing, he was temporarily transferred to the mission station in Tsinan , where he died in 1660.

literature

• Cornelius Wessels: Early Jesuit Travelers in Central Asia 1603-1721. The Hague 1924, pp. 164-204.
• Cornelius Wessels: New Documents relating to the journey of Fr. John Grueber. In: Archivum historicum SJ . Vol. 9, Rome 1940, pp. 281-302.
• Bruno Zimmel:  Diestel, Bernhard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , p. 665 ( digitized version ).
• Bruno Zimmel: Bernhard Diestel, an Austrian missionary and explorer of the 17th century. In: Festschrift Josef Stummvoll. Vienna 1970, pp. 880-892