Florian Bahr

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Florian Joseph Bahr ( Chinese  魏 繼 晉  /  魏 继 晋 , Pinyin Wèi Jìjìn ; born August 16, 1706 in Falkenberg in Upper Silesia ; † June 7, 1771 in Beijing ) was a German Jesuit and missionary .

Life

The Silesian organist's son first studied philosophy in Brno . On October 9, 1726, he entered the Jesuit order and initially taught Latin at the Jesuit college in Liegnitz . In 1736 he began studying theology at the University of Olomouc .

Together with other friars, Bahr embarked as a missionary to China in 1736 , where he arrived in 1739. At the court of Emperor Qianlong , he was given the post of music teacher for the imperial princes.

However, since the Jesuit saw his task in proselytizing the Gentiles and not in “playing the lute and the violin ”, he was grateful when he was relieved of his post due to illness and sent to the St. Joseph mission and parish station in Baoxixian . There he was in close correspondence with Countess Maria Theresia von Fugger , who is now considered an informative document in the history of missions.

In 1748 Florian Bahr returned to Beijing, where he did pastoral and academic work at the Jesuit college. There he worked in particular on the five-language dictionary commissioned by Emperor Qianlong , which was supposed to enable translation between Chinese and the Western languages German , French , Italian and Portuguese . He also wrote a pamphlet published in Augsburg in 1758 , in which he defended the Jesuit mission to China against critics such as Professor Johann Lorenz von Mosheim .

In 1755 Bahr became rector of the college, in 1762 a visitor and in 1768 finally provincial of the East Asian provinces . Like other leading court Jesuits, Bahr remained largely unaffected by the fight against the Christian missionaries, which was established after Pope Benedict XIV's final ban on accommodation ( rite dispute ) in 1744.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Bahr, Florian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bahr, Florian Joseph (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German missionary
DATE OF BIRTH August 16, 1706
PLACE OF BIRTH Falkenberg
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 1771
Place of death Beijing , China