Johann August Miertsching

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Johann August Miertsching (1854)
The brothers' house in Kleinwelka (center), where Miertsching lived as a young man.

Johann August Miertsching ( Upper Sorbian Jan Awgust Měrćink ; born August 21, 1817 in Gröditz , † March 30, 1875 in Kleinwelka ) was a Sorbian missionary and interpreter .

Life

Miertsching was born on August 21, 1817 in Gröditz near Weißenberg . He spent his youth in Kleinwelka near Bautzen . There he learned the shoemaker's trade and was accepted into the Moravian Brethren , a Protestant religious community . Called to the missionary service at the age of 27 , he traveled via London with the mission ship Harmony to the north of Labrador , to the Moravian mission settlement Okak.

Miertsching taught the children in Okak reading and writing, but also geography and music. He himself learned Inuktitut , the language of the Inuit , and also gave sermons in this language. After five years of service in Labrador, Miertsching came on vacation to his family in Gröditz for the first time.

There he received the request for a new mission. On behalf of the British Admiralty , he was to accompany a ship expedition to the Arctic as an interpreter in order to find the Franklin expedition, who had been missing for three years while searching for the Northwest Passage . The details of this expedition 1850-1854 on the sailing ship HMS Investigator under Captain Sir Robert John Le Mesurier McClure (1807-1873), during which the Northwest Passage was discovered, he recorded in his travel diary, which he published afterwards. Today it is one of the standard works in German polar science.

Two years after his return from the Arctic, Miertsching left Upper Lusatia again after he had married shortly before and stayed for 12 years for the Moravian Mission in South Africa , where he mainly looked after trade in the stations in Elim and Genadendal .

Of the couple's six children born in South Africa, only two daughters survived. At least the gravestones of the daughter Anna Helena (1862–1864) and the son Hermann August (1865–1867) have been preserved in Genadendal. As usual with the Moravian missionaries, the eldest daughter was separated from her parents when she was still at school and sent to the girls' institution in Kleinwelka. In 1869 Miertsching left South Africa with his wife and their second daughter, who was then just nine months old, and returned to Germany .

Miertsching's grave on the Gottesacker in Kleinwelka

The family settled in Kleinwelka. However, Miertsching's wife died there after just a few months. His half-sister then supported him as a widower with housekeeping and childcare in Kleinwelka.

57-year-old died Miertsching surprisingly on 30 March 1875 in Kleinwelka and was at the local cemetery of the Moravians buried. His tombstone, which was renewed in 2005, is still preserved today. His descendants live widely spread across Canada , the USA , Suriname and Germany. One of his grandchildren was the teacher and writer Hans-Windekilde Jannasch .

Appreciation

For his extraordinary achievements Miertsching received the Arctic Medal donated by Queen Victoria .

The philatelic working group on polar philately honored Johann August Miertsching's 200th birthday and his participation in the Franklin search expedition with a plus letter and a matching special cancellation from the Germans at the stamp exhibition Rhein-Ruhr-Posta'17 from March 31 to April 2, 2017 in Leverkusen Post AG with the motif of the HMS Investigator and the portrait of Miertsching.

literature

  • Johann August Miertsching: travel diary of the missionary Johann August Miertsching, who accompanied the North Pole expedition to visit Sir John Franklin on the ship Investigator as an interpreter. In the years 1850 to 1854 , Verlag der Unitäts-Buchhandlung Leipzig , Gnadau 1855 ( digitized version ).
  • LH Neatby: Johann August Miertsching (1817–1877) . In: ARCTIC . Volume 35, No. 2, 1982, pp. 334-335 ( PDF ; 1.11 MB, English).
  • Mechtild Opel: A toast in honor of Johann August Miertsching , Trimaris, August 20, 2017 [1]

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tombstone Anna Helena Miertsching 1862–1864 in Genadendal
  2. ^ Gravestone Hermann August Miertsching 1865–1867 in Genadendal
  3. ↑ Restored, renewed and new Sorbian monuments
  4. ^ Plus letter and special cancellation from April 1, 2017

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Miertsching, Johann August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Měrćink, Jan Awgust (Sorbian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sorbian-German missionary and interpreter
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1817
PLACE OF BIRTH Gröditz
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1875
Place of death Kleinwelka