Johann Friedrich von Waldeck
Jean Frédéric Maximilien de Waldeck (born March 16, 1766 in Prague , † April 30, 1875 in Paris ) was a French antiquarian, cartographer, painter and explorer who was the first European artist to capture the buildings of the classical Maya culture in pictures.
Life
Waldeck was a dazzling figure: he alternately claimed to be a duke, count or baron, citing Prague , Paris and Vienna as his place of birth and Germany , Austria and Great Britain as his homeland . I.a. In the meantime he called himself Johann Friedrich Graf von Waldeck.
Waldeck studied art in Paris, according to his own, unverifiable statements, accompanied Napoleon on his Egypt expedition and undertook research trips to South Africa , Chile , Guatemala and Mexico . He painted watercolors of the local art monuments. In 1825 he was hired as an engineer by a British silver mining company in Mexico. After leaving this place, he explored and documented the pre-Columbian ruins of the country, including Palenque , where he stayed for two years, and Uxmal .
His book Voyage pittoresque et archéologique dans la province d'Yucatan, Amérique centrale, pendant les années 1834 et 1836 , published in 1838, contained the first description of the Mayan ruins of Uxmal in words and pictures, whereby the pictures partly reflect the archaeological conditions in great detail. however, they sometimes interpret them very arbitrarily or falsify the structural reality. Waldeck loves it z. B. to provide the represented figures with Phrygian hats, probably to underpin the thesis that was widespread in the 19th century that the roots of Mayan culture are to be found in the Mediterranean or the Orient. Accordingly, he recognizes portraits of elephants, where the builders of Uxmal had depicted the rain god Tlaloc. The travelogue, the text part of which documents Waldeck's Eurocentric perspective to a particularly high degree, despite the repeated claim to objectivity, made a great impression on the American explorer John Lloyd Stephens , who was a pioneer of modern Mayan exploration from 1839 to 1841.
Up until his hundredth birthday, Waldeck published numerous lithographs of his discoveries. He was active until his death at the old age of supposedly 109 years. He is said to have had a heart attack after looking after a beautiful young woman in Paris.
literature
- Constantin von Wurzbach : Waldeck, Johann Friedrich Maximilian von . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 52nd part. Imperial and Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1885, p. 176 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Mary R. Darby Smith: Recollections of two distinguished persons: la Marquise de Boissy and the Count de Waldeck . JB Lippincott, Philadelphia (1878), Text Archive - Internet Archive .
- Frank Leinen: Jean Frédéric Waldeck's research trip to Uxmal and the insurmountability of cultural distance . In: Teresa Pinheiro, Natascha Ueckmann (Ed.): Globalization avant la lettre. Travel literature from the 16th to the 21st century . LIT Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-8749-9 , pp. 91-114.
- Ludwig Kalisch : A Count Methuselah in Paris . In: The Gazebo . Issue 39, 1867 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
- The first edition of Frédéric de Waldeck, Voyage pittoresque et archéologique dans la province d'Yucatan (Amérique Centrale), pendant les années 1834 et 1836 . Bellizard Dufour et Co, Paris; J. et W. Boone, Bossages Barthes et Lowell, Londres 1838
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Waldeck, Johann Friedrich von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Waldeck, Jean Frédéric de (Comte); Waldeck, Friedrich; Waldeck, Johann Friedrich Maximilian (Count); Waldeck, Jean Frederick Maximilien |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French antiquarian, cartographer, painter and explorer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 16, 1766 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Prague |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 30, 1875 |
| Place of death | Paris |