Johan Otter

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Johan Otter (French Jean Otter ; born October 23, 1707 in Kristianstad , † September 26, 1749 in Paris ) was a Swedish orientalist and explorer who was active in France .

Life

Johan Otter was the son of a wealthy businessman in Kristianstad. He studied from 1724 three years at the University of Lund , the theology , physics and modern languages. A secret contact with Catholics led him to renounce the Lutheran faith in Stockholm in 1728 . The French ambassador to the Swedish court at the time gave him the opportunity to continue his education in the seminary in Rouen .

Cardinal Fleury was persuaded to employ him at the post office because of Otter's proficiency in English, Spanish, Italian, German, Danish and French, some of which he mastered as well as his mother tongue . For the same reason, Count Maurepas sent him to the Levant in 1734 at the expense of the government , where Otter was supposed to learn the Turkish , Arabic and Persian languages and to restore French trade relations. First he went to Constantinople and in 1736 to Isfahan . He stayed in the latter city and in Basra for several years. He not only acquired a precise knowledge of the languages ​​of the countries visited, but also of everything that had a relationship to their literature, geography, history and political conditions and could serve to promote France's commercial interests in Persia.

Upon his return to France (1744) Otter received a pension. He was also employed by the Royal Library in Paris as an interpreter for the oriental languages ​​and in 1746 appointed royal professor of the Arabic language at the Collège de France . The Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres accepted him in March 1748 as a member. But he died on September 26, 1749 at the age of just 42 years in Paris.

Otter put the results of his many years of careful research and observations down in the work Voyage en Turquie et en Perse, avec une relation des expéditions de Thamas Kouli-Khan (2 vols., Paris 1748; German translation by Georg Friedrich Casimir Schad under the title Reisen to Turkey and Persia, together with a message about the undertakings of Thomas Kouli Chan; with a few notes, a complete register and the author's life , 2 vols., Nuremberg 1781–89). Otters reports are bare-bones and mostly a bit dry, but instructive. From his processing of the oriental manuscript sources in the royal library to a critical history of the Arabs, there are some fragments in the Mémoires de l'Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres (vol. 21, p. 111 ff. And p. 125 ff. ). He also began a French translation of Olof von Dalin's Svea rikes historia in 1748 .

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ So z. B. Article Otter, Johan , in: Nordisk familjebok , 3rd edition, vol. 20 (1914), col. 1095; according to Christopher Toll ( Otter, Johan (Jean) , in: Svenskt biografiskt lexikon , vol. 28 (1992-94), p. 428) Otter died on September 26, 1748.


personal data
SURNAME Otter, Johan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Otter, Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish-French orientalist and explorer
DATE OF BIRTH October 23, 1707
PLACE OF BIRTH Kristianstad
DATE OF DEATH September 26, 1749
Place of death Paris