Ignaz Pfefferkorn
Ignaz Pfefferkorn SJ (born July 31, 1726 in Manheim , today's district of Kerpen, † June 16, 1798 in Siegburg ) was a German Jesuit , missionary and naturalist . He is the author of the first country description of the state of Sonora in Mexico .
Life
Pfefferkorn came on the feast day of St. Ignatius von Loyola , after whom he got his name, was born as the son of the Electoral Palatinate court and government councilor Johannes Pfefferkorn. About his mother Gudula, born Eschenbrender, he is a great-nephew of the Cologne canon and official Andreas Eschenbrender .
At the age of 16, on October 21, 1742, Pfefferkorn entered the Jesuit order in Trier . It is possible that his uncle Pantaleon Eschenbrender, also a member of the Jesuit order, encouraged him to take this step. In 1756 he arrived in Sonora ( New Spain , today Mexico) to work there as a missionary for his order. First he went to the destroyed mission station Sonoita , where he buried the body of the missionary Heinrich Ruhen, who was killed in an attack in 1751 . After a stay in Atil , he moved to the Guevavi mission station in 1761 . From there he visited the missions of the Pimería Alta . Raids by Apaches and high mortality among the Pima Indians, who were employed in the silver mines of the Spanish crown, made his work difficult. In 1763 Pfefferkorn went to Cucurpe , where he collected extensive material for his geographical work on Sonora.
In the course of the dissolution of the Jesuit order in Spain and its provinces in 1767 , he and his confreres were arrested and shipped via Vera Cruz to Cádiz in Spain in 1768 . It was not until 1777 that his sister Isabella, the wife of the court chamber councilor Theodor Berntges, succeeded in getting Pfefferkorn free from the Spanish government through an intervention by the Archbishop of Cologne, Maximilian Friedrich von Königsegg-Rothenfels . After his return to the Rhineland he was vicar at the St. Pantaleon Church in Unkel for a year . He then began, possibly with an annuity, to write his three-volume work on Sonora. Two volumes of the work, which has both autobiographical and regional characteristics, were published in 1794 and 1795. I.a. Pfefferkorn provides one of the few descriptions of the Onza , a big cat in Central America that is now extinct. A planned third volume, which was nonetheless available in the manuscript, was not realized after Pfefferkorn's death.
Pfefferkorn as the protagonist of the novel
The American novelist and writer Florence Byham Weinberg has so far published three historical crime novels for PublishAmerica and Twilight Times Books , in which Ignaz Pfefferkorn as the main character investigates mysterious deaths:
- Florence Byham Weinberg: Sonora Wind, Ill Wind (2002) ISBN 978-1588519870
- Florence Byham Weinberg: I'll Come To Thee By Moonlight (2002) ISBN 978-1591296058
- Florence Byham Weinberg: The Storks of La Caridad (2005) ISBN 1-933353-21-X
The setting for the first two books is Sonora. The plot of volume three is set in the La Caridad Premonstratensian Monastery in Spain. Weinberg is currently working on a fourth Pfefferkorn novel, the plot of which is to take place in the Rhineland, among other places.
literature
- Ignaz Pfefferkorn: Description of the Sonora landscape with other strange news from the inner parts of New Spain and a journey from America to Germany. Reprint of the Cologne edition, Langensche Buchh., 1794 / ed. and with an opening vers. by Ingo Schröder. Holos, Bonn 1996, 2 vols., Size / format: 455 u. 447 p. (Contributions to the history of research: Amerika, Vol. 1) ISBN 3-86097-362-2
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Pfefferkorn, Ignaz |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Pfefferkorn, Ignaz SJ |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Religious, missionary and natural scientist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 31, 1726 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Manheim |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 16, 1798 |
| Place of death | Siegburg |