Elias Hesse

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Elias Hesse (* 1658 in Ottendorf near Sebnitz; † after 1689) was a 17th century German traveler to Asia who left a report on his trip to Southeast Asia ( East India ).

Hesse was born the son of the miller Georg Hesse, who married into today's Pietzschmühle in Ottendorf in 1656. He left home at the age of twelve and later worked as a chancellery in Dresden. In 1680 he was taken over by the mining commissioner Dr. Benjamin Olitzsch was recruited as a mountain clerk for an expedition to Sumatra , where he soon set off with a company of 20 miners. There the group was supposed to prospect for gold for the Dutch East India Company in the mines near Sillida (south of Padang ). However, the company was disastrous. After just three years, Dr. Olitzsch and 15 of his miners dead, not a few of the Europeans involved in this company, including Hesse, then returned home. On February 24, 1683 he left Batavia with the ship Goudenstein and reached Texel on October 26, 1683. From 1689 at the latest he lived in Kölln on the Spree. The date of his death is unknown.

Frontispiece by E. Hesse East Indian travel description (second edition, 1690)

In 1687, Hesse published his East Indian Travel Description, or Diarium, which was part of the Elector's Journey. Saxon. Raths and Berg-Commissarii D. Benjamin Olitzschens, in the year 1680 from Dreßden bit in Asiam on the Insul Sumatra something worthwhile proceeding, recorded by Elias Hessen (Dreßden: Günther / Pirna: Stremel). In 1690 a second edition, revised by Hesse himself, was published by Michael Günther in the Leipzig publishing house. The third edition, printed in 1735, is only a reprint of the edition from 1690. The current edition of the travel description is entitled Gold-Bergwerke in Sumatra 1680–1683 (Nijhoff, Den Haag 1931) and is based on the second edition of the year 1690.

Johann Beckmann , author of a two-volume work on travel literature, did not consider Hesse's report to be particularly significant as a literary work and commented on the travel report in 1810: "It is written in a poor way of writing and apart from what has been reported from the mine on Sumatra, little that is worth advertising ”. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that Elias Hesse already knows how to tell the Münchhausen adventure of the tiger and crocodile. The work is useful as a historical source because it contains extensive information, including some first-hand information.

literature

  • Friedrich Ratzel :  Hesse, Elias . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1880, p. 304.
  • Peter Kirsch: Gold mining of the Dutch East India Company on Sumatra 1670 to 1737. The reports of the German miners Elias Hesse and Johann Wilhelm Vogel . Bamberg 1995.
  • Edwin J. Van Kley, Donald F. Lach: Asia in the Making of Europe . Volume 3: A Century of Advance . Book 4: East Asia . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1993, ISBN 0226467562 , pp. 1305, 1362.
  • The Ottendorf miller's son Elias Hesse . In: Sächsische Heimat 1995.
  • Wolfgang Michel: "The East Indian and neighboring kingdoms, brief explanations concerning the most distinguished rarities". New finds on the life and work of the Leipzig surgeon and trader Caspar Schamberger (1623–1706) . Hana-Shoin, Fukuoka 2010, ISBN 978-4-903554-71-6 , pp. 55-57.

Web links

Wikisource: Elias Hesse  - Sources and full texts

Remarks

  1. ↑ At least the preface he had written for the second edition of his travelogue on Cöln ad Spree was dated 1689, cf. Friedrich Ratzel , in: ADB Vol. 12, p. 304.
  2. ↑ Beckmann, Literature of Older Travel Descriptions , Vol. 1, Göttingen 1808, p. 624. Quoted from Ratzel, in: ADB Vol. 12, p. 304.
  3. ^ So Van Kley, Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe , p. 1305.
personal data
SURNAME Hesse, Elias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German traveler to Asia, author of a travel report
DATE OF BIRTH 1658
PLACE OF BIRTH Ottendorf near Sebnitz
DATE OF DEATH after 1689