Heinrich Friedrich von Diez

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Heinrich Friedrich von Diez

Heinrich Friedrich Diez , from 1786 von Diez (born September 2, 1751 in Bernburg (Saale) , † April 7, 1817 in Berlin ) was a Prussian envoy , orientalist , bibliophile and private scholar of the Goethe era.

Life

Diez was the son of Christian Friedrich Diez, a textile merchant from Bernburg, and Maria Elisabeth Zollicoffer from Magdeburg . He only spent the first few months of his life in his hometown before the family moved from Anhalt to Magdeburg in Prussia. After completing school in Magdeburg, he moved to the law faculty of the University of Halle in 1769 and, after completing his studies, entered the Prussian judicial service in Magdeburg as a trainee lawyer, where he soon became head of the office.

Tired of being a legal official again after a few years, he personally applied to Frederick the Great in 1784, with unexpected success, for the position of Prussian business agent in Constantinople that had just been advertised . After two years of successful work in the diplomatic service, he was raised to the nobility in 1786 . The Russo-Turkish War led to his recall in 1791 with the title of secret legation councilor , but he translated in 1791 during negotiations with the Ottoman special envoy Ahmed Asmi Efendi in Berlin. In the same year appointed prelate of the cathedral monastery in Kolberg , he lived there until the beginning of the siege of Kolberg in 1807 . He then continued his life as a private scholar, free thinker and book collector in his villa on the banks of the Spree in Stralau near Berlin. It was mainly through his oriental studies that he attracted the attention of the scholarly world of that time, and personalities such as Goethe and Gleim soon became part of his large circle of friends.

Since 1814 he was an honorary member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and since 1816 a foreign member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

When he died in 1817, he left a significant fortune and a valuable library of over 17,000 volumes, which he bequeathed to the Prussian State Library .

Works (selection)

  • Apology of tolerance and freedom of the press , o. O. (Dessau) 1781
  • Archives of Magdeburg Rights , Magdeburg 1781
  • Benedikt von Spinoza based on Life and Teachings , Dessau 1783
  • About the German language and writing style , Dessau 1783
  • About the royal book (Fables of Bidpai) , Berlin 1811
  • [Ex. Ghābus nāmeh ] Book of Kabus , Berlin 1811. Also: ed. Turgut Vogt. Spur, Zurich 1999
  • Memories of Asia in Arts and Sciences. 2 vols. Berlin 1811–15
  • [Ex.] Rasmi Achmes Efendi's history of the war between the Ottomans and Russians 1768-1774 , Berlin 1813.

Literature (selection)

  • Franz Babinger : An orientalist advisor to Goethe: Heinrich Friedrich von Diez . In: Goethe-Jahrbuch 34, 1913, ISSN  0323-4207 . Pp. 83-100.
  • Curt Balcke: Heinrich Friedrich von Diez and his legacy in the Prussian State Library . In: Gustav Abb (Ed.): From books and libraries . The first director of the Prussian State Library Privy Councilor Dr. phil. Ernst Kuhnert as a farewell gift offered by his friends and colleagues. Struppe & Winckler, Berlin 1928.
  • Katharina Mommsen : Goethe and Diez. Source research on poems of the Divan epoch. 2nd supplemented edition. Lang, Bern et al. 1995, ISBN 3-906755-17-7 ( Germanic studies in America 67).
  • Christoph Rauch / Gideon Stiening (ed.): Heinrich Friedrich von Diez (1751–1817). Freidenker - Diplomat - Orientkenner , Berlin: De Gruyter [2020] (work profiles; 12), ISBN 978-3-11-064583-5 .
  • Johann Albrecht Freiherr von Reiswitz:  Diez, Friedrich von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , p. 712 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Bernd G. Ulbrich : The life's work of Heinrich Friedrich von Diez . In: Communications from the Verein für Anhaltische Landeskunde 11, 2002, ISSN  1430-3647 , pp. 117-139
  • Ursula Winter: The European manuscripts of the Diez library. 3 volumes. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1986–1994, ISBN 3-447-03471-8 (Vol. 1/2), ISBN 3-447-03430-0 (Vol. 3), ( The manuscript directories of the German State Library in Berlin NF 1, 1-3).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Members of the previous academies. Heinrich Friedrich von Diez. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities , accessed on March 14, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 68.
personal data
SURNAME Diez, Heinrich Friedrich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Diez, Heinrich Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian civil servant and private scholar
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1751
PLACE OF BIRTH Bernburg (Saale)
DATE OF DEATH April 7, 1817
Place of death Berlin