Konrad Samuel Schurzfleisch

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Konrad Samuel Schurzfleisch
Title page Opera historica politica , 1699

Konrad Samuel Schurzfleisch also: Schurtzfleisch, (born December 3, 1641 in Korbach , Waldeck, † July 7, 1708 in Wittenberg ) was a German historian , polyhistor and librarian .

Live and act

Konrad Samuel Schurzfleisch was born in Korbach, Waldeck in 1641, the son of the former court preacher of Count von Waldeck and later school principal Johann Schurzfleisch (* 1609 in Wildungen; † 1699 (1669) in Korbach) and his wife Anna Gutta Benigna (née Fulder) . He attended school and high school in his hometown and began studying in 1658 at the philosophy faculty of the University of Giessen . There he attended the lectures of Ludwig Feuerborn , Johann Otto Tabor , Johann Tacke and was particularly encouraged by Johann Konrad Dietrich , in whose house he had been accepted for three years.

Schurzfleisch moved to the University of Wittenberg on April 23, 1662 , where he already acquired the degree of master's degree in October 1662 . After he had obtained his license to teach at universities as Magister Legens in 1663, he held private lectures in Wittenberg. In 1666 he was offered the position of rector of the old state school in Korbach . He seems to have developed so much unconventional and heterodox activity in and outside the school that he soon had to vacate his post, which he allegedly acknowledged with the sentence “haec schola me non capit” (“this school doesn't keep me”) .

This was followed by trips that took him through Germany. In 1667 he went to the University of Leipzig as a supervisor for some students . There he maintained contact with Friedrich Rappolt , Jakob Thomasius , Christian Friedrich Franckenstein and Joachim Feller . He was employed as court master of the young Karl Wiedemann, with whom he went back to Wittenberg in 1668. He devoted himself again to academic life, continued lecturing and was in contact with Aegidius Strauch II and Caspar Ziegler . At that time he wrote his first work, Judicia de novissimis prudentiae civilis scriptoribus , in which he attacked the greats from his field and politics.

The protests of the attacked led to Schurzfleisch becoming known. This in turn strengthened his self-confidence, so that in the spring of 1671 he asked Elector Johann Georg II of Saxony to grant him an extraordinary professorship at the philosophical faculty of the Wittenberg University. However, this undertaking met with rejection from his counterparts. However, Schurzfleisch had developed good contacts to the Saxon court, so that on October 8, 1671 he was accepted as an adjunct at the philosophical faculty and was assigned an extraordinary professorship for German history that same year.

After Samuel Benedict Carpzov went to Saxony as court preacher in 1674, he took over his professorship in poetics and in 1678 switched to the chair of history instead of Georg Green . In addition, in 1685 he took over the chair for the Hebrew language, which had previously belonged to the theological faculty for well over a century and was reassigned to the philosophical faculty. At that time, Schurzfleisch helped shape this chair by slowly developing it into an oriental chair. In addition, with the extraordinary professorship transferred on September 17, 1671, he had also been bound as electoral historian of the House of Saxony, which initially also suited his interest in history. As a critical zeitgeist, however, he turned away from regulated histography and developed, as is not uncommon in this segment of science, a far-reaching interest in history.

For him, not only the special history of Saxony was important, but he also dealt with the historical contexts of Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Lusatia, Prussia and Silesia, specifically with city, church, literary and personal history, as well as with antiques -, Realien- und insignienkunde, also with constitutional and international law. His gaze also turned beyond the borders of Germany and he became a pioneer of East and Southeast European historical research. He mainly dealt with the events in Russia , Hungary , Bukovina and Turkey . He also took part in organizational tasks at the Wittenberg University. He held the dean's office of the philosophical faculty and was rector of the Wittenberg University in the summer semesters 1682 and 1698 .

In 1700 he gave up the chair for the Hebrew language and was given the representative professorship of eloquence, submitting the Greek. Contemporary witnesses described Schurzfleisch as “of the extravagant erudition of this large man enclosed in a very small body”, who earned the Wittenberg Academy a high reputation for his work and had built up an extensive library in the course of his studies. As an excellent Latin, he was able to maintain the university's reputation as a center of philosophy and history in competition with the up-and-coming young academies. In his work he did not let the restrictions of the Lutheran Orthodox deter him from maintaining a neutral point of view, for which he was rated positively even during the Enlightenment.

Schurzfleisch, who had devoted himself to the science of history, was a polyhistor who had roots in the philosophical faculty, not the theological, and thus promoted the general advancement of his faculty. Most intensely and productively he performed his roles as a lecturer and critic of scientific literature, while as an author he was unable to realize many larger projects. The network of his correspondence spanned Central, Western and Southern Europe, and so he was at that time Wittenberg's greatest mediator to the world of scientific luminaries , ministers, officials and diplomats. His own polyhistory enabled diverse connections and action on the stage of European science. Regardless of his preference for the ancient languages, he mostly discussed partly German and partly Latin in the college in order to make himself easier to understand. In his course Notitia Autorum , the books to be discussed were presented to the audience. Immediately after completing a lecture, he sought a personal conversation with the students.

He pursued the acquisition of his large, precious private library as a kind of life's work and did not shy away from trips to foreign auctions for books and manuscripts. In addition, his travels to Holland, England, France, Italy, Austria and to German places, where he had discussions with the scholars of his time, were also useful in evaluating the results with the Wittenberg students. He also conveyed the experience of visiting the coin cabinets to them and was able to convey the experience on site during their studies. Above all, the reference to the source study and the evidence was obvious to him, which approaches Johann Martin Chladni later took up and made the basis of modern history.

Schurzfleisch once said in a letter how history should be treated. In the beginning one reads a lot and diligently for the sake of knowledge Greek and Latin historical works. Then we turn to German history and the historical works of its time, the writings of Johann Pistor , Justus Reuber , Marquard Freher , Simon Schard and Melchior Goldast . Then begin to study the sources edited by Pierre Pithou on medieval history, which are important for future statesmen. Then you should get to know the history of Maximilian I and the related developments abroad from the publications of Johannes Cuspinian , Jacques Auguste de Thou and Francesco Guicciardini .

It is important to understand the political changes, the rise and fall of the states, to look for suitable examples of life and court. In particular, the Germans should get to know their fatherland, including the origins of emperors and princes and of families, alliances, peace agreements, wars, cities, especially imperial and Hanseatic cities. Schurzfleisch concluded under the impression of the recent military and diplomatic successes of Louis XIV with the advice to also study the history of France. Schurzfleisch appeared here primarily as an adviser for those who intended to enter the civil service.

In 1702 Schurzfleisch made sure that his younger brother and substitute Heinrich Leonhard Schurzfleisch took over his professorship in history, but he remained an honorary professor himself. This opened up new perspectives for him in his passion for collecting literature. In 1705 he was appointed by Wilhelm Ernst von Sachsen-Weimar as the first director of the court library in Weimar , with which he had found a supporter of his passion for collecting, even if he did not fully comply with that direction, since he mainly stayed in Wittenberg. His private collection, which he had continued on the basis of his father's collection, was taken over by his brother, who continued it. In 1722 it was transferred to the collection of today's Duchess Anna Amalia Library . Large parts of the collection were destroyed in the devastating library fire on September 2, 2004. His collection of medieval manuscripts in the manuscript department and many of his personal writings, which are in the Thuringian main state archive in Weimar , family estate Schurzfleisch, were not destroyed in the fire .

Schurzfleisch himself died as a result of dropsy. His colleague Gottlieb Wernsdorf the Elder praised his literary knowledge in his funeral speech. He leafed through more books than lived days, read more books than others own and owned more than others know by name. No auction, no book market escaped his attention and he was tireless to increase and supplement his book treasures, as well as to gain access to public libraries and manuscript collections. So he became an oracle for his environment and his learned contemporaries, which was called a living library and a walking museum.

Selection of works

  • Labronis a Verasio [ps.] Satum Sarckmasiana publice detecta, modeste castigata . Teutoburgum Wittenberg 1669
  • Propositiones ad rationem interpretandi pertinentes . Wittenberg 1691 ( digitized in the digital library Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania)
  • Poemata Latina et Graeca . Wittenberg 1702.
  • Silesiam Loquentem . Wittenberg 1705 ( digitized in the digital library Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania)
  • Acta Sarckmasiana ad usum reipublicae litterariae in unum corpus collecta . Edited by Theodor Crusius. o. O. 1711
  • Epistolae arcanae varii argumenti . Edited by Heinrich Leonhard Schurtzfleisch. 2 vols., Halle (Saale) 1711/12
  • Epistolae selectiores (with “Memoria Schurtzfleischii” by Johann Wilhelm Berger). Wittenberg 1712
  • Notitia scriptorum librorumque varii argumenti . 2 vol., Wittenberg 1735/36. - Schurtzfleischiana. Wittenberg 1729
see also: Curiosities of the physical, literary, artistic, historical, past and present, for pleasant entertainment for educated readers. Publishing house HS privel. Landes-, Industrie-Comptoirs, Weimar, 1815, 4th vol. P. 43 ( full text in the Google book search)

literature

Web links

Commons : Konrad Samuel Schurzfleisch  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ other sources also December 18th
personal data
SURNAME Schurzfleisch, Konrad Samuel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schurtzfleisch, Konrad Samuel; Hunenfeld, Huno ab (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian, polyhistor and librarian
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1641
PLACE OF BIRTH Korbach , Waldeck
DATE OF DEATH July 7, 1708
Place of death Wittenberg