Caspar Schamberger

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Engraving made by Martin Bernigeroth for the funeral in 1706

Caspar Schamberger (born September 1, 1623 in Leipzig ; † April 8, 1706 ibid), also: Casper Schambergen , Caspar Schamberg , was a German surgeon who sparked a sustained interest in Western surgery in Japan in the middle of the 17th century .

Life

Caspar Schamberger was born in Leipzig as the son of the wine merchant Balthasar Schamberger, who immigrated from Franconia . After an apprenticeship in the Leipzig surgeons' guild , he went on a three-year wandering that took him through northern Germany, Denmark, Sweden and finally the Netherlands. Here he signed up for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1643 and in 1644, after an adventurous crossing, including a shipwreck on the Cape of Good Hope, Batavia (now Djakarta ), the company's main base in East Asia.

In 1649 he was sent to Japan as a surgeon to the Deshima trading post ( Nagasaki ). In the entourage of the special envoy Andries Friese / Frisius, he moved to Edo (now Tokyo ) at the end of that year . There his skills caught the attention of high-ranking personalities of the court. At their request, he stayed for another six months after the legation had left. In the following year he also spent several months in Edo. On November 1, 1651 he left the country.

The therapies recorded in writing by Schamberger's interpreter Inomata Dembei (also Dembyōe, 猪 股 伝 兵衛 ) and the interest of high-ranking patients stimulated the sustained engagement of local doctors with Western surgery. The 'surgery in the style of Caspar' ( カ ス パ ル 流 外科 , Kasuparu-ryū geka ) was the first surgical tradition of Central European characteristics in Japan.

From then on, the surgeons and doctors at the Deshima branch enjoyed the strong interest of Japanese colleagues, who received instructions, bought books, medicines and instruments and gradually acquired the necessary language skills in order to finally read Western frameworks on their own. These activities led to "Hollandkunde" ( rangaku ), which experienced a great boom in the 18th century, then also included other scientific disciplines and enabled the rapid modernization of Japan after the country opened in 1868. Manuscripts with recipes by Meester Caspar ( Mēsutoru Kasuparu ) were copied and distributed in the 19th century. With the use of new remedies, interest in replacing expensive Dutch imports with Japanese products grew at the same time, which already led to an exploration of the native flora in the first two decades after Schambergers and the publication of the work Yamato Honzō by Kaibara Ekiken (also Ekken) in 1709 led to a first high point in the development of an independent Japanese botanical science.

Schamberger himself probably didn't know anything about the sustainability of his work in the Far East. Richly rewarded, he returned to Leipzig in 1655, where he acquired citizenship and achieved considerable prosperity as a trader in the gold and silver trade as well as in the cloth trade. On the city maps of that time, you can find Schamberger's name on one of the large community gardens outside the city gates. With the career of their son Johann Christian , who became professor of medicine and rector of the University of Leipzig , the family reached its social zenith.

For his monumental book Museum Museorum (1704), the naturalist Michael Bernhard Valentini (1657–1714) from Giessen used, among other things, a "Japponische Reiß = description" by Schamberger, which apparently was never printed and was lost. What has been preserved, however, is a single copy of a writing that Schamberger printed at his own expense in 1686 in which he comments on three pictures ("Schildereyen") with people, coins, fruits, animals, etc., which he had observed during his years in East Asia:

»To the most noble / powerful prince and Lord / Johann Georgen the Third / drawn to Saxony / Jülich / Cleve and Berg / des Heil. Rom. Reichs Ertz = Marschalln and Chur princes / Landgraves in Thuringia / Marggraffen in Meißen / also Ober = and Nieder = Lausitz / Burggraffen in Magdeburg / Fürsteten Graffen in Henneberg / Graffen in the Marck Ravensberg and Barby / Lord in Ravenstein . Dreyer in subservience offered Schildereyen / The East Indian and gracing kingdoms in twelve years of travel observed / Most noble rarities related / Kurtze explanation / In expressly designed by Caspar Schambergern / Citizens and tradesman in Leipzig. Printed there by Christoph Fleischern in 1686. «

Caspar Schamberger died on April 8, 1706 in his hometown. As a surgeon, his funeral would have been modest, but with a wealthy merchant and father of the rector of the university, the expense was considerable. The more than sixty-page sermon by the theology professor and archdeacon at the Thomaskirche Gottlob Friedrich Seligmann was distributed as a print. There were also printed obituaries and a portrait of the renowned copper engraver Martin Bernigeroth .

Schamberger's son Johann Christian died just a few months after his father. The difficult division of property dragged on because of all kinds of disputes. But the male descendants died early or left the city, so that around the middle of the 18th century the family's name disappeared from the Leipzig citizens' register.

plant

  • Caspar Schamberger: In a twelve-year journey, the most noble, brief explanations concerning the rarities of the East-Indian kingdoms and the gracing kingdoms were offered to the Most Highly Powerful Prince and Mr. Johann Georgen, the Third Duke of Saxony. Leipzig: Christoph Fleischer, 1686. (Dresden State Art Collections)

literature

  • Wolfgang Michel : From Leipzig to Japan - The surgeon and trader Caspar Schamberger (1623–1706) . Iudicium Verlag , Munich 1999. ISBN 3-89129-442-5
  • Wolfgang Michel: Medicine, remedies and herbalism in the Euro-Japanese cultural exchange of the 17th century. Horin - Comparative Studies on Japanese Culture . No. 16, 2009, pp. 19–34 ( digitized in Kyushu University Institutional Repository )
  • Wolfgang Michel, Torii Yumiko, Kawashima Mabito: Kyushu no rangaku - ekkyō to Koryu ( ヴォルフガング·ミヒェル·鳥井裕美子·川嶌眞人共編「九州の蘭学ー越境と交流」 , dt Holland customer in Kyushu - border crossing and exchange.) . Shibunkaku Shuppan, Kyōto, 2009. ISBN 978-4-7842-1410-5

gallery

  • The Dejima trading post around the middle of the 17th century. From Arnoldus Montanus: Gedenkwaerdige Gesantschappen (1669)

  • Abstract of Western humoral pathology given by Schamberger in Edo in 1650. Translated and compiled most likely by Schamberger's interpreter Inomata Dembei (Denbē). The explanation of the key terms humor, phlegma, sanguis, cholera, melancholia, transliterated into syllabary, shows that the translator had enormous difficulties understanding.

  • Edo-period Japanese manuscript on materia medica, which was brought to the court of the Shogun in 1650 as a gift from the Dutch embassy. Schamberger's explanations were probably translated by the interpreter Inomata Dembei.

  • Oath of a Japanese student to his teacher that Caspar's remedies should be kept secret. Manuscript from 1771

  • Schamberger's book from 1686

  • Schamberger's garden with ponds at the gates of the city of Leipzig (bottom left).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michel (1999), pp. 9-36
  2. ↑ Michel (1999), pp. 81-142
  3. ↑ Michel (1999), pp. 149-175
  4. ↑ Michel (2009)
  5. ↑ Michel (1999), pp. 182-220
  6. ↑ The whereabouts of the three illustrations that were once attached or integrated into the book has not been clarified.
  7. ↑ Edited and commented on by Michel (2010)
  8. ^ Stolberg-Stolberg funeral sermon collection, No. 19803
  9. ↑ Michel (1999), pp. 182-207
personal data
SURNAME Schamberger, Caspar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Casper Schambergen, Caspar Schamberg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German surgeon, tradesman
DATE OF BIRTH September 1, 1623
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH April 8, 1706
Place of death Leipzig