Jürgen Andersen

Jürgen Andersen (* around 1620 in Tondern , † 1679 in Kropp ) was a Hardesvogt and author of a travelogue. This travelogue was published for the first time in 1669 under the title " Oriental travel descriptions " together with the travelogue Volquard Iversens by Adam Olearius .

Live and act

Andersen's first years of life are not documented. Tondern church books from these years are missing. Hence his family members are unknown. His schooling must have been sufficiently good to later be able to work as Hardesvogt. His parents' fortunes were apparently so modest that he had to leave the region in order to earn money.

Andersen served as a soldier and took part in the Thirty Years' War as a musketeer on the German side . He then went to the Netherlands and joined the Dutch East India Company as a sergeant . In April 1644 he boarded a ship to Batavia , where the company's Southeast Asian headquarters were located. In the autumn of 1645 he got a job with a military main command, whose officials regularly visited branches of the company.

The trips with the official took Andersen to India and to the trading centers in the north of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. He also reached Ceylon, Dutch Formosa and Japan. In October 1646 he was one of the few passengers to survive a shipwreck on his way back off the coast of China. He fell into slavery and was brought to the interior of China from Canton. Here Mongols took him prisoner, who transferred him to Mongolia. Andersen fled from there to Persia.

In Persia, Andersen served as an artilleryman for Shah Abbas II and fought against the Mughals of India in 1649. After his departure, he traveled via the Mesopotamia, Damascus, Crete, Malta and Rome, which he reached in early July 1650, back to his home region in Lübeck. From there he planned to move to a brother in Narva . Superintendent Meno Hanneken recommended him, however, to the court of the Gottorf Duke Friedrich III. to go. He is very interested in information about foreign countries and can certainly support him, says Hanneken.

Andersen therefore went to Gottorf in November 1650 and told the duke about his travels. He asked him for a comprehensive written report based on the notes he had with him. The Duke initially employed Andersen as a mounted servant ("Einspänner"). In 1654 he appointed him Hardesvogt von Kropp, whose position had become vacant. As a ducal local clerk, Andersen took over responsibility for justice and administration from Kropperharde and held this office until 1677.

Andersen's term of office probably ended, like that of other officials of the Gottorfischer Hof, after the King of Denmark had sequestered the ducal portion of Schleswig and dismissed the officials. The writer Eberhard Werner Happel , who was very interested in travel reports from foreign countries and was personally acquainted with Andersen, dated the year of his death to 1679 and wrote that he had died in Kropp.

Andersen married a woman of unknown name on May 8, 1654. He had at least one documented son named Nicolaus, who died on May 9, 1686. He worked from 1679 to 1684 as Hardesvogt von Kropp.

Travel report

As far as possible, Andersen carefully recorded all place names and travel times during his trip. Based on this, he wrote a report. As he was afraid of being criticized unjustifiably, he refrained from publishing it on its own. Instead, Adam Olearius took care of the publication and added his own travelogues and reports by Johann Albrecht von Mandelslo .

After Volquard Iversen from Husum , who was also subordinate to the Duke, returned from Southeast Asia, Olearius took this as an opportunity to publish the reports in 1669. Iversen's return had also enabled him to examine Andersen's accounts. The travel reports were considered to be the first documents of a German who had visited China and Inner Asia. The work was published in Dutch in 1670.

literature

• Julius Löwenberg:  Andersen, Jürgen . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 429 f.
• Dieter Lohmeier: Andersen, Jürgen . In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Volume 10. Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1994, pp. 17-18.
• Jürgen Andersen, Volquard Iversen: Oriental travel descriptions in the adaptation of Adam Olearius. Reprint of the Schleswig 1669 edition, edited and commented by Dieter Lohmeier, Verlag Niemeyer, Tübingen 1980; Reprint by Verlag De Gruyter 2018.
• The travel descriptions by Jürgen Andersen and Volquard Iversen, edited by Adam Olearius, Schleswig 1669 edition, are made available on the Internet by: Bayerische StaatsBibliothek digital / Münchener DigitisierungsZentrum - Digital Library: [1] , accessed on March 24, 2019