Hans Wolfgang Braun

Hans Wolfgang Braun ( 1609 - after 1653) from Ulm was a German cannon founder. He was one of the first Germans to stay in Japan .

Life

Replica of a mortar produced by Hans Wolfgang Brown (The Hirado Dutch Trading Post Museum [1] )

Braun was the son of a well-known foundryman who had also worked for Kepler . In 1635 he became a gunsmith for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and in 1638/39 came to Hirado , the Japanese port for international traffic. There, François Caron commissioned him to cast cannons for the shogunate. On June 21, 1639, a test shooting took place on a meadow in the district of Azabu ( Edo ), which was to the satisfaction of the Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu . The Tokugawa Jikki records this in a short note. Between 1647 and 1653 Braun was again in the service of the VOC, but his trail is lost in Batavia .

A mortar cast by Braun (25 centimeters in diameter and 85 centimeters in length) was located in the Yasukuni Shrine in the 1930s , but was melted down during World War II.

literature

• Peter Kapitza: Japan in Europe, Volume I. iudicium Verlag. Munich, 1990. ISBN 3-89129-990-7 . P. 517.
• Till Weber: Hans Wolfgang Braun von Ulm - German pioneer in Japan 1639/40 . In: 言語 文化 研究 紀要 Scripsimus . No. 13 , October 2004, p. 25–43 ( u-ryukyu.ac.jp [accessed March 7, 2015]).