Adam Schall from Bell

Adam Schall von Bell in a mandarin robe

Johann Adam Schall von Bell , SJ ( Chinese  湯若望  /  湯若望 , Pinyin Tāng Ruòwàng ; * May 1, 1591 probably in Lüftelberg or Cologne ; † August 15, 1666 in Beijing ) was a German Jesuit , scientist , missionary and mandarin at the emperor's court from china .

Life

Youth and Education in Europe

Schall von Bell came from the Rhenish noble family von Schall zu Bell . Johann Adam was the second son of Heinrich Degenhard Schall von Bell zu Lüftelberg and his fourth wife Maria Scheiffart von Merode zu Weilerswist. His aunt, his mother's sister, Gudula Scheiffart von Merode, was married to Wilhelm Adolf von Kinzweiler zu Müddersheim, his cousin Catharina built the Antonius Chapel (Müddersheim) .

The sources name Lüftelberg (today part of the city of Meckenheim ) and Cologne, where the family maintained a town house at today's Neumarkt 47 , as the likely place of birth. Probably after a first private lesson, he attended the Tricoronatum grammar school in Cologne, which was then run by Jesuits. The decision to apply in Rome in 1607 to primarily study mathematics and astronomy at the Collegium Germanicum could be related to the outbreak of the plague in Cologne. In any case, his parents immediately sent him to Rome, although the application was rejected for a year because Adam was still young. In Rome, a mediation then enabled early access to the college.

Schall completed his training at the Collegium and entered the Jesuit order in Rome in 1611. After the novitiate in 1613 he moved to the Collegio Romano ; There he studied theology , but also continued to study mathematics and astronomy, especially with Christoph Grienberger .

Crossing to Macau

A group of Jesuits under the direction of the procurator Nicolas Trigault started a trip to China on April 17, 1618 from Lisbon , where the Order had a missionary establishment in Beijing. The tour group included the Galileo student Johannes Schreck (Latinized: Johannes Terrentius; 1576-1630), who came from near Constance, Giacomo Rho (1592 / 1593-1638) from Milan and Adam Schall. They traveled on the ship Bom Jesus ( The Good Jesus ) under the captain Johann Suarez Enriquez (until his death in August 1618). A total of 636 people were on board at the start of the journey, including 22 missionaries destined for China. After circumnavigating the Cape of Good Hope, the ship reached Goa on October 4, 1618 .

On July 22, 1619, the group reached China and the small Portuguese colony of Macau opposite the coastal city of Hong Kong . The newcomers had to stay here for four years because the Jesuit missionaries in Beijing had just been expelled from the Chinese court. The group used the stay in Macau to learn the Chinese language.

The group got into an early colonial conflict. A Dutch ship command tried to conquer Macau. The missionaries took part in the military defense; They had sufficient knowledge of weapons technology, repaired four old cannons and, with their use, succeeded in driving out the attackers. Schall is said to have captured the Dutch captain himself.

Life in china

Beijing was interested in the knowledgeable people from Europe. In 1623 the Jesuit group was able to settle in Beijing. From 1627 to 1630, Schall worked as a pastor in Singanfu (now Xi'an ). From 1630 he worked again in Beijing.

That year he published the treatise on the telescope in Chinese . It contains a drawing about the planetary system, in which the earth is in the center, the sun and moon circle around the earth and the planets in turn circle around the sun. This corresponded to the theoretical status of the astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), which was tolerated by the church. However, Schall's knowledge also corresponded to the ideas of Nicolaus Copernicus . It was only because of his empathy for Chinese culture that he did not advocate this knowledge. It was the time when the Vatican threatened Galileo Galilei .

In 1630, Schall, together with Giacomo Rho, was commissioned by the imperial court with the extensive reform of the Chinese calendar , a work that had just been started by Johannes Schreck, but which had been discontinued because of his death. As proof of the legitimate rule of the respective ruler, the calendar had political significance and contained regulations for daily life. For this assignment, Schall had to translate specialist books written in Latin into Chinese, set up a school for mathematical calculation assignments and have astronomical instruments modernized. The fact that the Protestant Johannes Kepler, in contact with Schall , sent his Rudolfinian tablets to Beijing in 1632 to support the calendar work speaks for Schall's Copernican worldview and denominational openness . In 1634, Schall built the first Galilean telescope in Beijing. The calendar work was published in 1635. These are still on site in Beijing today.

Schall and the other Jesuits tried in parallel to the Christian mission of a layer of Chinese citizens and court officials. Many communities were formed here (Beijing was the most important) in which Chinese views, customs and rites entered into a symbiosis with Christian views and ways of life. The coexistence with Confucianism , the retention of ancestor veneration among Christian baptized Chinese and also the term “Tianzhu” (Tien chu, 天主 , Tiānzhǔ  - “Lord of Heaven”) used by the Jesuits - this and more was met with opposition from Beijing, too was staying Dominicans and Franciscans , who reported to Rome that the Jesuits would spread heresies. The rites dispute broke out in the Vatican .

In 1640, Schall translated Georgius Agricola's De re metallica into Chinese and presented the work to the imperial court. In 1642 he directed the production of a hundred cannons for the imperial house, which was attacked by the Manchu . In 1644 he was appointed President of the Imperial Astronomical Institute after a repeatedly successful astronomical forecast. Between 1651 and 1661 he also became one of the most important advisors to the first Manchu emperor Shunzhi , who, when he came to the throne as a child in 1644, Schall had been a father's teacher. Shunzhi even promoted Schall to 1st class and 1st degree Mandarin in 1658 .

When Emperor Shunzhi suddenly died in 1661, Schall initially retained his offices and power. After a temporary calming down, the ritual dispute was rekindled as a result of a Dominican visit to Beijing. Schall was faced with a Roman charge. His political-scientific offices now also aroused considerable criticism: In the Vatican, the position was strengthened that Jesuits should not actually hold secular offices.

In 1664, Schall suffered a stroke , the consequences of which restricted his ability to speak. Opponents at court used this to accuse him of having provoked the death of the ruler at the time: he had deliberately miscalculated the time and place of the burial of a son of Shunzhi. The charges, which also affected other Jesuits, were of high treason, of belonging to a religious community that was incompatible with the right order, and of spreading false astronomical teachings. Schall was imprisoned for the winter of 1664/1665. Jesuits who were not accused were expelled to the canton. On April 15, 1665, Schall was found guilty after a show trial.

Because of his handicap he had to be defended by his brother Ferdinand Verbiest, who was now in Beijing . The Ministry of Justice was responsible for sentencing. Here, with the approval of the imperial regent, the cruelest death penalty provided for by criminal law was decided: Lingchi (dismemberment while fully conscious) . But when a violent earthquake struck shortly before the execution date, this was interpreted by the judges as a divine answer and as proof of Schall's innocence. On May 15, 1665, Schall was released from custody at the instigation of the new Emperor Kangxi . He died in the Jesuit mission in Beijing on August 15, 1666 at the age of 74 years without the church trial having come to an end. Emperor Kangxi rehabilitated Schall and had a splendid tombstone that is still available today personally set for him.

classification

Adam Schall von Bell's importance is ostensibly backed up by the statement that he was the highest-ranking foreigner at court in the history of the Chinese imperial era. For the historical perspective, however, it is more relevant: Schall and the Jesuit group as a whole built on the contacts that helped the image of China in Europe and the image of Europe in China to move away from mutual prejudices in the educational layers of the time. This is represented by the “Novissima sinica” by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , in which China appears as a cultural model, or the weakness for chinoiserie at European courts and in baroque art.

The Jesuits had set out for the mission. They also made strategic plans on how to act as a missionary in adaptation to the customs prevailing in the host country, which section of the population could be particularly susceptible to contact with Christian thoughts, which assimilation one could enter into with Asian world views. Assessing successes and failures is not the task here. Emperor Shunzhi personally learned a lot about Christianity from Adam Schall, but was not baptized. That the Chinese distance from foreigners, but also from power in general, remained a decisive factor is shown by the political and legal treatment that Schall experienced after the emperor, in whose favor he was, died.

Schall and others made a special impression with their astronomical skills in predicting solar and lunar eclipses. Chinese scholars themselves had a good knowledge; the Jesuits were able to convince because of the greater precision of their procedures.

With various decrees, the last one in 1742, the Vatican sealed the rites dispute. In doing so, he de facto deprived the Catholic mission of a permanent opportunity to be received in China, which continued to apply until 1936 when inculturation was prohibited .

Memorial sites

Sculpture Johann Adam Schall von Bells at the Minoritenkirche in Cologne

Sculpture in Lüftelberg

Sound of Bells grave monument is located on the former cemetery of the Jesuits, the under monument protection standing Zhalan cemetery , which today is located on the site of a cadre school of the Communist Party ( English Beijing Administrative College ), ten minutes walk from the subway station Chegongzhuang in Beijing's western district. His predecessor and brother Matteo Ricci (Lì Mǎdòu) was also buried in the Zhalan cemetery.

In Cologne there is a monument for Schall in the Minoritenstrasse on the south side of the Minoritenkirche . In 1992 the Berlin workshop Carlo Wloch acquired it after a foundation by the German China Society. V. designed. A plaque on the base reads: "Johann Adam Schall von Bell / Cologne 1592 - Beijing 1666". A plaque is set in the ground in front of the statue. She shows an astrolabe and teaches about Schall's life. The last two sentences say that Schall “received honors in the Chinese Empire like no foreigner before or after him. He died in Beijing in 1666 and his memory is still alive today in China. ”His statue, which formerly stood at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, was bombed during World War II .

In Lüftelberg, the Lüftelberger Dorfgemeinschaft e. V. has been working since autumn 2012 to erect a monument to Schall von Bell in the village. It was inaugurated as a sculpture on September 14, 2014 in Petrusstraße in Lüftelberg.

In the courtyard of the ancient astronomical observatory in Beijing there is a bust in memory of Schall.

Pictorial representations

A picture in the Catholic Church of St. Petrus in Lüftelberg shows Schall von Bell. A baroque ceiling fresco in the study library of the Jesuit College in Dillingen on the Danube , created around 1737 and made by Joseph Ignaz Schilling , shows Schall together with his friar Christoph Scheiner . The Musée Leblanc-Duvernoy in Auxerre / France preserves an old tapestry depicting Bell's sound.

Streets

In Meckenheim-Lüftelberg, the ancestral home of the Schall family, there is a Schall-von Bell-Weg on the northern outskirts. In Frechen , southwest of Cologne, a street is also named after Schall von Bell. In Cologne, where he went to school for several years, there is also a Schallstraße in the Lindenthal district.

Exhibitions, archives, commemorations

Numerous archival materials, especially writings and maps from Schalls hand, can be found in Rome in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana and in the Palace Museum in Beijing within the Forbidden City . Libraries and archives in Cologne and Bonn, such as the Department of Rhenish State History at the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Bonn , also have holdings .

In 1992 in Cologne and Neuss there were exhibitions for Schall's 400th birthday, in Sankt Augustin near Bonn a scientific congress with international participation. In Lüftelberg, on his 420th birthday on May 1, 2012, speeches and scenes from his life remembered Schall. The series of events “Europe meets China” organized by the Bonn Society for China Studies and the East Asia Institute in Bonn at the beginning of May 2012 in Bonn offered presentations on him.

On May 1, 2017, the radio program WDR 5 made a contribution to Schall von Bell's 425th birthday in the “Zeitzeichen” series. Deutschlandfunk also remembered him on this occasion.

From June 16, 2019, a special exhibition on Bell sound can be seen in the Burg Altendorf mansion in Meckenheim-Altendorf (Rhineland).

At the end of June 2019, Kurt Faßbender's mystery play "Adam Schall von Bell" by the theater association Lüfthildis Mysterienspiele was shown in five performances in the Lüftelberg St. Petrus Church.

Societies

Essen is the seat of the Johann Adam Schall von Bell Society Ruhr Area for the Promotion of German-Chinese Relationships eV It offers lectures, seminars and conferences in the Essen and Düsseldorf area in particular. In Aachen there is an Adam Schall Society for the Promotion of German-Chinese Relations. V., which also has events on relevant topics in its program.

Postage stamps

In 1992, on Schall's 400th birthday, a special stamp of the Deutsche Bundespost with a value of 1.40 DM appeared, in Taiwan a special stamp was also issued for the same occasion and in the same year, but with a different face value and a different motif.

Movies

On May 12, 2008, ZDF published a detailed documentary on Schall's work in China under the title “Mission Forbidden City”.

On July 28, 2018 arte showed the two-part film "The Jesuits and Chinese Astronomy", a French-Chinese production. Schall von Bell's work plays an important role in this.

On May 17, 2019, ORF 2 broadcast the film "In the Empire of Time. China's Emperor and the Stars", which also dealt with Schall von Bell's work at the Chinese court.

Works

• Historica narratio de initio et progressu missionis Societatis Jesu apud Chinenses, ac praesertim in regia Pequinensi. Vienna 1665.
• Historia relatio de ortu et progressu fidei orthodoxae in regno Chinensi per missionarios Societatis Jesu from anno 1581 usque ad annum 1661. Regensburg 1671.

literature

Non-fiction

• Siegmund Günther :  Schall von Bell, Adam . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 30, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1890, p. 556 f.
• Claudia von Collani:  SCHALL, Johann Adam S. von Bell. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 8, Bautz, Herzberg 1994, ISBN 3-88309-053-0 , Sp. 1575-1582.
• Martin Gimm : Life and work of P. Adam Schall v. Bell - chronological overview of its temporal environment. In: Deutsche China Gesellschaft Mitteilungsblatt 2008, issue 2, pp. 24–44.
• Werner Neite (Ed.): Johann Adam Schall von Bell, SJ, 1591-1666. A Cologne astronomer at the Chinese court. Diocesan Library, Cologne 1992 (exhibition catalog).
• Eckart Roloff : Johann Adam Schall von Bell: A Cologne missionary on a risky mission for calendars and cannons, sun and moon . In: Eckart Roloff: Divine flashes of inspiration. Pastors and priests as inventors and discoverers. Verlag Wiley-VCH, Weinheim 2010, ISBN 978-3-527-32578-8 , pp. 93-114 (with references to places of remembrance, archives, associations, etc.). 2nd updated edition 2012 (paperback) ISBN 978-3-527-32864-2 .
• Manfred Spata: Was Adam Schall von Bell (1592–1666) born in Glatz? In: Archive for Silesian Church History, Volume 70, Aschendorff Verlag, Karlstadt (Main) 2012, pp. 285–293, with 3 illus.
• Ernst Stürmer: Master of heavenly secrets - Adam Schall, advisor and friend of the Emperor of China . Verlag St. Gabriel, Mödling 1980, ISBN 3-85264-143-8 .
• Ernst Stürmer: With telescope and Bible to the dragon throne. Adam Schall SJ (1592-1666): astronomer, friend and advisor to the Emperor of China . Tredition publisher, Hamburg 2013.
• Alfons Väth : Johann Adam Schall von Bell, SJ. Missionary in China, imperial astronomer and counselor at the court of Beijing 1592–1666 . (Revision) Steyler Verlag, Nettetal 1991, ISBN 3-8050-0287-4 .
• Martin Gimm , The Prince Rong case in the trial against the Jesuit father Adam Schall in the years 1664/65 in China , Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2018, ISBN 978-3-447-10985-7 .
• Hartmut Walravens : Schall from Bell, Johann Adam . In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , pp. 551 f. ( Digitized version ).

Fiction

• Uli Franz and Atandra Köster: In the shadow of the sky. Novel . dtv premium, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-20739-6 .
• Wilhelm Hünermann : The Mandarin of Heaven. The life of the Cologne astronomer P. Johann Adam Schall at the Imperial Court in Beijing. Theodor Oppermann, Hanover 1954.

Comic

• In 1993, the Kölner Bank published the 24-page booklet “Johann Adam Schall von Bell from 1867” as No. 6 in the “Cöln Comic” series. Mandarin from China ”. The color drawings come from Martin Muster, the texts (in kölsch) from Gérard Schmidt.

Web links

Commons : Johann Adam Schall von Bell  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Adam Schall von Bell in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by and about Adam Schall von Bell in VD 17 .
• Joseph Brucker:  Johann Adam Schall von Bell . In: Catholic Encyclopedia , Volume 13, Robert Appleton Company, New York 1912.
• Chinese National Library (Chinese) ( Memento from July 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
• JA Schall from Bell Gesellschaft Ruhrgebiet
• Adam-Schall Society for German-Chinese Cooperation eV
• Wetzer and Welte's Kirchenlexikon 1881-1903, article: Accommodation dispute; Accessed January 20, 2012
• Feng tian chi yu. Titulus honorificus: Certificate of honor from the Shunzhi emperor to Johann Adam Schall von Bell (Cod.sin. 112)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The assumption that Schall was born in Glatz seems extremely constructed: Franz Volkmer and Wilhelm Hohaus : Memorable Men from and in the County of Glatz . In: Quarterly journal for the history and local history of the County of Glatz , Volume VII 1887/88, p. 53f, give Glatz as the place of birth where Schall first attended the Jesuit college there. The authors relate this information to the fact that a portrait of Bell was located in the Glatzer Jesuit College until modern times, on which Glatz was given as the place of birth. In addition, it was customary to only hang up portraits of those fathers who had emerged from the college.
2. ^ Forerunner of today's Dreikönigsgymnasium
3. ↑ Alfons Väth SJ: Johann Adam Schall von Bell SJ . ISBN 3-8050-0287-4 , pp. 37 ff .
4. ↑ This office remained in the hands of the Jesuits until 1744.
5. ↑ www.lueftelberg.de ; Photos: Monument Adam Schall von Bell Lüftelberg 2014 , Monument Adam Schall von Bell Lüftelberg 2014
6. ↑ Konrad Adenauer and Volker Gröbe: Streets and squares in Lindenthal , JP Bachem, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-7616-1018-1 , p. 142f.
7. ↑ https://www1.wdr.de/mediathek/audio/zeitzeichen/audio-johann-adam-schall-von-bell-astronom-geburtstag--100.html
8. ↑ https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/425-geburtstag-von-johann-adam-schall-von-bell-ein-jesuit.732.de.html?dram:article_id=384990
9. ↑ http://www.general-anzeiger-bonn.de/region/vorgebirge-voreifel/meckenheim/Meckenheimer-Kulturtage-starten-ab-Samstag-article4116547.html
10. ^ Meckenheim Museum Association. Retrieved June 19, 2019 . 
11. ↑ https://www.rheinische-angeboteblaetter.de/mein-blatt/blickpunkt-meckenheim/meckenheim/lueftelberger-adel-in-china-luefthildis-theaterfestspiele-ueber-adam-schall-von-bell-32793248
12. ↑ Festpielwoche: Adam Schall von Bell. Retrieved July 6, 2019 . 
13. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from July 29, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
14. ↑ https://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20190516_OTS0159/im-reich-der-zeit-chinas-kaiser-und-die-sterne-am-17-mai-in-universum-history