Friedrich Carl Andreas

Friedrich Carl Andreas (1920s)

Friedrich Carl Andreas (born April 14, 1846 in Batavia , † October 4, 1930 in Göttingen ) was a German Iranist and Orientalist .

Life

Friedrich Carl Andreas was the son of a former Armenian prince who, after a lost tribal feud, had given up his family name Bagratuni and adopted the name Andreas. He worked as a military doctor in Batavia , the capital of the colony of the Dutch East Indies . There he married the daughter of a north German doctor. Andreas moved to Hamburg with his wife and son in 1852, where Friedrich Carl Andreas received private lessons. He later attended high school in Geneva. Andreas was very talented in languages ​​and already spoke German, English, Dutch, French, Latin and Greek in his youth. After graduating, he studied oriental studies and especially Iranian studies at the universities of Halle, Erlangen , Göttingen and Leipzig . In Erlangen, he was in 1868 with a thesis on contributions to an accurate knowledge of the Middle Persian (Pahlavi-) font and sound system doctorate .

Years of wandering in Persia

After graduation, Andreas stayed in Copenhagen and learned Nordic languages ​​there. From 1870 to 1871 he took part in the Franco-German War as a one-year volunteer . In 1871 he survived the Battle of Le Mans . He then worked as a language teacher. In 1874 he accompanied a Prussian expedition to Persia as an archaeological expert; even after state funding ended, he stayed there and got to know the country. He worked in the postal service, as an alternative practitioner and as a language teacher. Through his knowledge and his reputation he came to the Iranian royal court.

He returned to Germany for the first time in 1882 when he accompanied the Persian prince Ihtisam-ed-daule. In Berlin an eye disease broke out in him that forced him to break off his relations with the Persian royal court and to give up his research work temporarily. Andreas became completely destitute and had to earn his living from language lessons.

Marriage to Lou Salomé

Göttingen memorial plaques for Friedrich Carl Andreas and Lou Andreas-Salomé as well as a sign to the house "Loufried"

During these uncertain years, Andreas met the writer Lou Salomé . He introduced himself to her in 1886 and explained to her his intention to marry her, although he hardly knew her and did not have a sufficient living. After a rejection, Andreas attempted suicide in front of his loved one by ramming a knife into his chest in her apartment. Lou called a doctor, Andreas survived and the next day they got engaged. Lou only consented to a marriage on condition that the marriage was never consummated sexually. On June 20, 1887, Friedrich Carl Andreas and Lou Salomé were married by Pastor Hendrik Gillot, a former admirer of Lou.

The marriage was only possible because Andreas had received a professorship for Persian and Turkish at the newly founded seminar for oriental languages in Berlin in 1887 . However, after a short time there were disputes with the responsible authority in Berlin, which accused Andreas of concentrating too much on his research work and neglecting the language lessons. After a legal dispute with the Prussian Ministry of Culture, Andreas was dismissed in the spring of 1891 and lost his professorial title. In the following years he lived as a private scholar in Berlin and was dependent on the earnings of his wife, who published novels, short stories and poems. The couple lived separately during this time. Andreas took an apartment in Schmargendorf near Berlin because he couldn't stand his wife's affairs. A separation was out of the question because Andreas was financially dependent on his wife.

Work in Göttingen

Grave of Friedrich Carl Andreas and Lou Andreas-Salomé

The situation did not change until 1903 when Andreas was offered a chair for West Asian Languages ​​at the University of Göttingen. He moved here with Lou and worked there until the end of his life. In 1915 he became part of the “Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission”, whose aim was to record the 250 languages ​​spoken among internees in the German POW camps. He died of cancer in 1930 at the age of 84. His grave and that of his wife are in the Göttingen city cemetery .

His extensive estate is now in the Lower Saxony State and University Library in Göttingen .

Friedrich Carl Andreas worked on many topics and areas of the ancient Iranian languages . Among other things, he dealt with the theory of the tradition of the Avesta . However, his specialty was the deciphering of manuscripts and inscriptions. Here he laid the foundation for the scientific investigation of the fragments discovered in Turfan in Central Asia .

literature

• Festschrift Friedrich Carl Andreas on the completion of the seventieth year of life on April 14, 1916 , Leipzig 1916 (with incomplete list of publications).
• Jonathan Groß: A delinquent author and a troubled editor. The correspondence between Friedrich Carl Andreas and Georg Wissowa from the early days of RE . In: Annual issue of the Göttingen Friends of Ancient Literature Association . 9th edition (2010), pp. 10–20 ( doi : 10.5281 / zenodo.3960027 )
• Enno Littmann :  Andreas, Friedrich Carl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 284 ( digitized version ).
• Götz von Selle: Friedrich Carl Andreas . In: Indogermanisches Jahrbuch , Volume 15 (1931), pp. 366–376 (with additions to the list of publications and a portrait).

Web links

Commons : Friedrich Carl Andreas  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Friedrich Carl Andreas  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Friedrich Carl Andreas in the catalog of the German National Library
• TITUS-Galeria: Picture by Friedrich Carl Andreas

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jürgen-K. Mahrenholz: South Asian speech and music recordings in the sound archive of the Humboldt University in Berlin . In: MIDA Archival Reflexicon . 2020, p. 3 ( projekt-mida.de ).