Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen
Signature Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen.PNG

Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen (born August 25, 1791 in Korbach , † November 28, 1860 in Bonn ) was a Prussian diplomat . He was ambassador to the Holy See in Rome and envoy in London . Bunsen was one of the founders of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome.

biography

education

His parents were the court clerk Heinrich Christian Bunsen (1743-1820) and his second wife Johanette Eleonore, nee. Brocki (1750-1819).

After graduating from high school in 1808 ( Alte Landesschule Korbach ), Bunsen began studying theology in Marburg and continued with theology and philology in Göttingen as early as 1809. He financed his studies through teaching. At the end of his studies he traveled to Paris, Leiden and Copenhagen.

At the Prussian embassy in Rome

Bunsen began his career in Rome as an assistant to the local ambassador, Barthold Georg Niebuhr . There he became interested in the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs by Jean-François Champollion .

When Niebuhr accepted a professorship at the University of Bonn as an ancient historian , Bunsen followed him as ambassador in Rome to the Vatican and rented a room in Palazzo Caffarelli . Here he socialized in circles of German artists, such as August Grahl , Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld , who lived in the Palazzo, or Wilhelm Hensel , and in dealings with highly educated Englishmen. On July 1, 1817, Bunsen married Fanny , born Frances Waddington (1791–1876), from Monmouthshire , Wales . He continued the salon that Niebuhr had started; his house was thus one of the centers of German and also European culture in Rome. He belonged to the narrow circle of the Roman Hyperboreans around Otto Magnus von Stackelberg , August Kestner , Eduard Gerhard and Theodor Panofka . In 1829 he was one of the founders of the Istituto di corrispondenza archeologica, which emerged from the Hyperboreans .

Bunsen had excellent international connections. So he found out about Karl Richard Lepsius , who was just in Paris . Bunsen invited Lepsius to continue the study of hieroglyphics where Champollion had left off. After initial hesitation, Lepsius agreed and came to Rome. Because of the Catholic subjects of Prussia in the Rhine Province , the mixed marriage dispute ( Cologne chaos ) led to a falling out with the Vatican, although Bunsen had brokered the Berlin Convention in 1834 , and Bunsen had to resign.

As envoy in London

Christian karl josias from bunsen.jpg

After a short stay in Great Britain and Switzerland - the later extremely popular song Die Wacht am Rhein was performed for the first time in his house in Bern in 1840 - he was accredited as ambassador to London in 1841 . There he immediately contacted the British Egyptologists and began to write his work "Egypt's Place in World History" (1844 to 1857 in six volumes).

He couldn't get over his release from Rome and sought revenge. He wanted to realize this by proving that the religion of Egypt corresponded more to the Protestant than the Catholic denomination. In this context he tried to establish a diocese in Jerusalem , which should be administered jointly by Protestants and Anglicans. To do this, he tried to equip an expedition to Egypt . The Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV and the Minister of Culture Johann Albrecht Friedrich von Eichhorn could be won and Lepsius was entrusted with the management.

Lepsius came to London and, together with Bunsen, prepared the expedition in the British Museum . The expedition was a resounding success that helped Lepsius gain a chair in Berlin. When the British government ( Russell I government ) was looking for a German scientist in 1849 to accompany the missionary and anti-slavery opponent James Richardson on his expedition through the Sahara , von Bunsen, with the support of Alexander von Humboldt, placed the classical philologist and geographer Heinrich Barth (1821-1865) as an intermediary ), under whose direction the West Africa expedition turned out to be one of the most important research trips of all time. In 1853, Bunsen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Since 1851 he was a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1855 he was elected a foreign member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

However, during the Crimean War, Bunsen began to prepare a Prussian-British alliance against Saint Petersburg without any support from Berlin, which in 1854 led to his resignation and final retirement.

In retrospect, his person might seem a bit strange, but he was enormously effective in establishing an Egyptological network.

Florence Nightingale

Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen, drawing by Carl Julius Milde

Christian von Bunsen is believed to have been instrumental in Florence Nightingale's decision to devote her life to nursing. The two first met in 1842, probably through Richard Monckton Milnes the acquaintance. Bunsen introduced her to the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Schleiermacher and, inspired by him, dealt with David Friedrich Strauss ' sensational work Das Leben Jesu, critically edited . Bunsen himself had undertaken comparative religious studies studies and his approaches also shape Florence Nightingale's work Suggestions for thought, which was published much later . Bunsen also had an influence on Florence Nightingale's immediate considerations about how she should shape her future path in life.

During his service in Rome, Christian von Bunsen founded a Protestant hospital in which patients of these denominations were cared for. And immediately after his accreditation as ambassador in London, he began to raise funds for the establishment of a hospital that would specifically care for members of the large German community in London. This German hospital , which opened in the Dalston district of east London in October 1845, is almost certainly the first hospital that Florence Nightingale visited. It was also Bunsen who first sent her a yearbook of the Kaiserswerther Diakonie in October 1846 and thus contributed to her decision to start training there.

Works

Sources and early reception

  • Letters from Alexander von Humboldt to Christian Carl Josias Bunsen , newly edited by Ingo Schwarz. Berlin: Rohrwall, 2006, ISBN 3-9806685-6-8 .
  • Letters to Bunsen from Roman cardinals and prelates, German bishops and other Catholics from the years 1818 to 1837. Edited with explanations by Heinrich Reusch. F. Jansa, Leipzig 1897.
  • H. Abeken: The evangelical diocese in Jerusalem. Historical representation with documents. Berlin 1842 [in the sense of Bunsen].
  • Ignaz von Döllinger (ed.): Hippolytus und Kallistus, or the Roman Church in the first half of the third century: with regard to the writings and treatises of HH. Bunsen, Wordworth, Baur and Gieseler. Manz, Regensburg 1853.
  • Friedrich Julius Stahl : Against Bunsen. Wilhelm Hertz, Berlin 1856, digitized .
  • Leopold von Ranke : From Friedrich Wilhelm IV's correspondence with Bunsen. Duncker & Humblot , Leipzig 1873 digitized .
  • Christian Carl Josias, Baron von Bunsen. From his letters and from his own memory, described by his widow . German edition, increased by communications from Friedrich Nippold . FA Brockhaus , Leipzig ( A memoir of Baron Bunsen, late Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary of His Majesty Frederic William IV. An the Court of St. James. By his widow Frances Baroness Bunsen in two volumes (London 1868) is based on the foreword of Editor based this work).

Lexicon entries and literature

Web links

Commons : Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Augustus John Cuthbert (1834-1903): The life and letters of Frances Baroness Bunsen , Vol. 1, G. Allen, London, 188 ?, pp. 166-167 archive.org
  2. ^ Member entry by Karl Freiherr von Bunsen at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on December 19, 2016.
  3. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 53.
  4. ^ Bostridge, p. 84
  5. ↑ Bostridge, pp. 84, 85
  6. ^ Bostridge, p. 85
predecessor Office successor
Barthold Georg Niebuhr Prussian envoy in Rome
1827–1838 		Ludwig August von Buch
Theodor Rochus von Rochow Prussian envoy in Bern
1839–1841 		Karl von Werther
Heinrich von Bülow Prussian envoy in London
1841–1854 		Albrecht von Bernstorff
personal data
SURNAME Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias from
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian ambassador
DATE OF BIRTH August 25, 1791
PLACE OF BIRTH Korbach
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1860
Place of death Bonn