Hans Dernschwam

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hans Dernschwam (* 1494 in Brüx , Bohemia , † 1568 /69 in Schattmann village , Habsburg Monarchy ) was a Fugger merchant.

He was mainly active in today's Hungary and today's Slovakia and from 1553 to 1555 took part at his own expense in the trip of a delegation from King Ferdinand I to Sultan Suleyman I to Constantinople and on to Amasya . He wrote an extensive diary about this.

Life

Hans Dernschwam, born 1494, died around 1568/69 probably in Schattmannsdorf, today's Častá in Slovakia, was the son of a respected and wealthy patrician family in Brüx in Bohemia, today's Czech Most.

At the age of thirteen he began his studies in Vienna in 1507 in the artist faculty , moved to Leipzig and graduated there in 1510 as a baccalaureate . He was in Rome for some time around 1513 and was in the service of the Italian humanist Girolamo Balbi (Hieronymus Balbus) (1450–1535) from 1514 to 1517 . From 1520 he traveled a lot in Hungary and the neighboring countries and collected Roman inscriptions .

In 1525 Dernschwam entered the service of Anton Fugger (1493–1560) and worked for him primarily in mining and ore trading. In the massive conflicts with the Hungarian king and the magnates, Dernschwam successfully represented the interests of the Fugger family. In Neusohl / Banska Bystrica he was active as a factor in the 1530s and 1540s and during this time bought an estate in Častá (Schattmansdorff) in today's Slovakia. During this time he also had a commemorative coin made, which is the only surviving portrait of Dernschwam. Around 1547–1548, at the age of 50, he quit his service with the Fugger, according to Franz Babinger (1923, reprint 1986, document 1, p. XXIII) mainly out of disgust for financial transactions with the imperial and royal courts.

In 1553, at the age of 59, he joined an embassy from King Ferdinand I at his own expense , which was to deliver the annual interest to Sultan Suleyman I , "the Magnificent", and to negotiate a new armistice with him. Heads of the embassy were at the beginning of the Bishop of Fünfkirchen Antun Vrančić (Antonius Verantius) and the captain general of the Danube fleet Franz Zay . In 1555 the high-ranking Habsburg diplomat Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq took over the management. The embassy first traveled from Vienna to Constantinople in the early summer of 1553. There the members of the embassy were treated for about a year and a half more like prisoners than diplomats in the modern sense. On the orders of the sultan, the delegation then traveled on to his war camp in Amasya in March 1555 . After (unsuccessful) negotiations with the Sultan, most of the delegation, including Dernschwam, returned to Vienna and finally arrived there on August 11, 1555. Dernschwam wrote a detailed diary about this trip, which will be discussed in more detail below.

Little is known about Dernschwam's further life. From documentary evidence, Babinger concludes that Dernschwam stayed mainly in the so-called Hungarian mining towns, especially in Neusohl (Banska Bystrica) and Kremnitz ( Kremnica ) and probably spent the last years of his life in Kremnica . There he worked until 1567 as "Oberzimenter" ( mint master ) for the calibration office. He probably died around the turn of the year 1568/69 in Častá (Schattmansdorff). In February 1569, his nephew Dernschwam sold Dernschwam's famous humanistic library, which contained around 2,000 volumes, to the court library in Vienna for 500 guilders.

Diary of the delegation's trip 1553–1555 to Constantinople and Amasya

Dernschwam wrote his diary in early New High German with occasional Latin inserts. In the original it comprises about 815 pages, usually written on one side, with numerous drawings and inscriptions in both Latin and Greek. As Hattenhauer / Bake rightly emphasize, the diary contains thematically and stylistically two clearly different, but interwoven parts in the text sequence.

On the one hand, it is a classic diary with specific, chronologically ordered reports and observations. Dernschwam records his observations and experiences on the days of travel and stay in detail, in particular on geographical conditions, the locations, the construction, the customs and habits of the residents, including the eating and drinking habits, clothing, religious customs, the relationship between Men and women and the like. As a businessman with many years of experience, he also notes prices of food and goods as well as working methods in agriculture and in the handicrafts. During his one and a half year stay in Constantinople, Dernschwam worked extensively on the Byzantine and Turkish buildings still in existence. Konstantin Jireček , an expert on European travelogues about the Ottoman Empire, emphasizes Dernschwam's “richness of material”. In intrinsic value, all earlier and later travel reports would be surpassed by his conscientiously made daily records. Dernschwam not only records his specific travel observations, but he keeps dealing with overarching issues, which goes far beyond the usual diary entries. For example, he deals with the legal and economic constitution of the Ottoman Empire, with the situation of Europeans who have been captured or dug up in the context of the so-called boy reading and subsequently enslaved, with the Jews or with the relationship between Islam and the Christian religions, whereby he distinguishes sharply and often also polemically between Catholics and Protestants. Dernschwam comes to far-sighted judgments, for example in questions of the economic constitution, when he criticizes the fact that in the Ottoman Empire there is no bourgeois class and no urban self-government, overall no free development of the individual in his profession and class and everything there is slavishly to the orders of the sultan and subject to his kadis.

At the same time, however, there are also misjudgments and for certain topics a presentation that is often difficult to bear for today's reader. This is especially true of his often repeated sweeping judgments about the Turkish men, their wives, the papists and the Jews. Here he unconcernedly follows the patterns of thought of his world, as can also be found in the Christian pamphlets of the time directed against the Turks, and often uses a coarse expression that is difficult to be expected today, but which for the 16th century was the "Age of the Brutalism ”was not atypical. Hattenhauer / Bake point out that when evaluating these passages, the personal character of the diary should be taken into account. Dernschwam wrote his text as a private recording, which he did not edit and in this form was certainly not intended for publication, but this is what makes the source so particularly valuable.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ So far there is no biography of Dernschwam. Biographical information can be found in: Hans Hattenhauer / Uwe Bake (eds.) A Fugger businessman in the Ottoman Empire. Report of a trip to Constantinople and Asia Minor 1553–1555 by Hans Dernschwam, 2012, pp. IX ff .; Franz Babinger (ed.), Hans Dernschwam's diary of a trip to Constantinople and Asia Minor (1553/1555) according to the original in the Fugger archives and explained by Franz Babinger, 1923, reprint 1986, pp. XIII ff .; Marianna D. Birnbaum, The Fuggers, Hans Dernschwam, and the Ottoman Empire, in: Südost-Forschungen, Volume L (1991), pp. 119-144; Christof Jeggle, The foreign world of the enemy? Hans Dernschwams report of a trip to Constantinople and Asia Minor 1553–1556 (!) In: Marlene Kurz et al. (Ed.), Das Ottmanische Reich und die Habsburgermonarchie, 2005, pp. 413–426; Wolfgang F. Reddig, Journey to the arch enemy of Christianity. The humanist Hans Dernschwam in Turkey 1553-1555, 1990, p. 15 ff.
  2. ^ The manuscript of his inscription collection, "Inscriptiones Romanae lapidibus in territoriis Hungariae et Transilvaniae repertis a. (Nno) 15 (2) 0 - 1530 collectae", which he continued until 1530, is now in the National Library in Vienna.
  3. ↑ Dernschwam describes this time in the “Extract from the description of Mitternhauß, located in Neusohl, by Hansen Thurnschwamb (!), Messrs. Fugger were factors there, together with other things that happened in the Kron starvation, written in Ein Thaußend Five Hundred Three and sixtieth year "; in Johann Christian Engel, History of the Hungarian Empire and its neighboring countries, Part 1, Halle 1797.
  4. ↑ The portrait is shown in Hattenhauer / Bake (see document 1) as an illustration on the cover.
  5. ↑ See Franz Babinger, 1923, reprint 1986, pp. XXV ff.
  6. ↑ On his library cf. Jenö Berlász (ed.), The Dernschwam Library. Book inventory of a humanist in Hungary, 1984; Wolfgang F. Reddig, Journey to the arch enemy of Christianity. The humanist Hans Dernschwam in Turkey 1553-1555, 1990, p. 27 ff.
  7. ↑ The original is in the Fugger archive in Dillingen. Franz Babinger, 1923, reprint 1986 (record 1) has transferred the manuscript - linguistically unchanged - in print.
  8. ↑ Patrick Breternitz and Werner Eck have the inscriptions in an epigraphic appendix to Hans Hattenhauer / Uwe Bake (eds.) A Fugger merchant in the Ottoman Empire. Report of a trip to Constantinople and Asia Minor 1553–1555 by Hans Dernschwam, 2012 (Document 1), translated and commented.
  9. ↑ Hans Hattenhauer / Uwe Bake (eds.) A Fugger merchant in the Ottoman Empire. Report of a trip to Constantinople and Asia Minor 1553–1555 by Hans Dernschwam, 2012 (reference 1), pp. XIX ff.
  10. ↑ Constantin Jos. Jireček, the military road from Belgrade to Constantinople and the Balkan passes. A historical-geographical study, 1967, reprint of the Prague 1877 edition, p. 118
  11. ↑ so explicitly about Hedwig Heger, Thomas Murner in: Stephan Füssel (ed.) German poets of the early modern times. 1450-1600, p. 303; see also Egon Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit, 2007, p. 318 ff.
  12. ↑ Hedwig Heger, Thomas Murner in: Stephan Füssel (ed.) German poets of the early modern times. 1450-1600, p. 303; see also Egon Friedell, Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit, 2007 (reference 1), p. XXI
personal data
SURNAME Dernschwam, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bohemian Fugger merchant
DATE OF BIRTH 1494
PLACE OF BIRTH Brüx , Bohemia
DATE OF DEATH 1568 or 1569
Place of death Schattmannsdorf , Habsburg Monarchy