Johann Friedrich Bachstrom

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Johann Friedrich Bachstrom (also Johann Friedrich Bachstrohm , Jan Fryderyk Bachstrøm , u. A .; * December 24, 1686 in Rawicz , Poland-Lithuania ; † June 1742 in Nieśwież , Poland-Lithuania) was a Lutheran theologian , physician and scholar. He lived in Poland , Konstantin Opel , Saxony and the Netherlands and wrote several medical, scientific and enlightened writings, including healthy eating, and a utopian novel about a society with equal rights for all.

Origin and education

Bachstrom was born in 1686 as the son of a German Lutheran goldsmith in the Greater Poland town of Rawicz on the border with Silesia . Until 1709 he attended the St. Elisabeth High School in Breslau .

From 1710 Bachstrom studied Protestant theology in Jena with the moderate theologian Johann Franz Buddeus . He then worked as an informator ( private tutor ) in the Lower Silesian parish of Stroppen . He was refused an offer as a preacher in the Duchy of Oels by the consistory there.

Activities as a teacher and preacher

Thereupon he received the prestigious position of extraordinary professor at the grammar school of the royal Prussian city of Thorn in 1717 . After he had sharply criticized the customs and conditions in the city several times in his sermons, he was expelled from it in 1720. He got a job as a pastor in the traditional German community in Wengrow in Mazovia . During this time he published a medical dissertation in Copenhagen in 1723  (!). In 1724 he had to leave Wengrow again, under pressure from the Jesuits, and went to the Prussian embassy in Warsaw , where he worked as a preacher and was protected from further attacks. He was committed to coming to terms with the executions of Thorn in 1724.

From 1729 Bachstrom stayed in Constantinople and founded a printing company there and tried to spread the ideas of the Enlightenment in an academy . He also worked on a translation of the Bible into the Turkish language and left Constantinople again in 1730 or 1731.

Universal studies

In the following years Bachstrom worked in Breslau, Görlitz, Freiberg, Dresden and Leiden, where his writings appeared in the early 1730s. He devoted himself to medical, theological and geological studies. He traveled, visited and described the Silesian mines at his own expense and in 1733 visited London.

In many of his views he seems to have been ahead of his time. He suggested that women should be allowed to study medicine in order to become doctors. He recommended swimming lessons to seafarers. In his writing L'Art de Nager (German: The Art of Swimming ) Bachstrom deals with methods of saving life and describes his invention of a life jacket made of cork .

In one of his most famous writings, he called for the use of fresh fruits and vegetables to cure scurvy .

The Inquirans

In 1736 Bachstrom published a novel under the pseudonym ABC that describes a utopian society founded by shipwrecked religious dissidents (the Inquirans), in which there is absolute religious freedom . The novel seems to have been inspired by his own experiences in Constantinople, but also by French and English novels such as Montesquieus Lettres persanes and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe .

Arrest and death

From 1737 Bachstrom worked as a doctor at the court of Princess Anna Radziwill in Lithuania . Presumably for his liberal views on religion, he was imprisoned. He died in jail in Nieśwież (now Njaswisch in Belarus ) in June 1742 . The exact date and cause of his death are unclear.

Honors

In 1959, the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee , the British committee for the recommendation of geographical names in the British Antarctic Territory , named the headland Bachstrom Point on the southwest coast of the Antarctic Peninsula after Johann Friedrich Bachstrom.

Works (selection)

  • Observationes circa scorbutum: ejusque indolem, causas, signa, et curam, institutæ, eorum præprimis in usum, qui Groenlandiam & Indiam Orientis petunt. Leiden, Conrad Wishoff, 1734 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  • Nova aestus marini theoria . Wishoff, Leiden 1734. ( digitized version )
  • Kurtze and resolute declaration of a faithful Schweitzer, Auff the false accusation Christiani Democriti, sincere Protestants, and orthodox annihilatoris, or destroyers of the microcosmic new creation for the prelude of a new heaven and a new earth. Frankfurt / Leipzig 1734. urn : nbn: de: gbv: 9-g-4881901
  • For two hundred years unknown, but now discovered excellent land of the Inqvirans: From the narration of an elder of this blissful land who died after a long illness in our regions, according to all its customs, customs, regulations, worship, sciences, arts, advantages and arrangement complicated described, and communicated to the common being for the best . Frankfurt / Leipzig 1736 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  • L'Art de Nager, ou Invention à l'aide de laquelle on peut toujours se sauver du Naufrage; &, en cas de besoin, fair passer les plus larges Rivières à les Armées entières. Zacharie Chatelain, Amsterdam 1741 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  • The art of swimming, or invention, by means of which one can always save oneself from a shipwreck, and if need be, bring entire armies across the broadest rivers , Berlin 1742 ( digitized and full text in the German Text Archive , Text Archive - Internet Archive ).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ so the articles in the ADB and NDB , the German National Library (DNB) erroneously states 1688 in its entry
  2. ↑ according to the ADB and NDB , an English lexicon entry states that the father's profession is barber ( barber ) - unlikely. Hugh James Rose: A New General Biographical Dictionary . Volume 2. London 1857, Text Archive - Internet Archive
  3. ↑ a detailed account of the conflict in Thorn in the Prussian Temple of Death, in which deceased people of all kinds ... 1740, p. 108, books.google.de
  4. ^ Christian Siegemund Thomas: Old and New on the State of the Evangelical Lutheran Churches in the Kingdom of Poland. 1750. p. 130
  5. ^ Johann III Bernoulli : Archive on modern history, geography, knowledge of nature and people . Georg Emanuel Beer Publishing House, Leipzig 1787.
  6. ^ Book Fair List New York 2007: Advance Proof Copy. (PDF; 324 kB) (No longer available online.) Susanne Schulz-Faster Rare Books, London UK, archived from the original on July 26, 2007 ; Retrieved on September 1, 2018 (English, Book Description Bachstrom on page 6).
  7. ^ Bachstrom Point in the Geographic Names Information System of the United States Geological Survey
personal data
SURNAME Bachstrom, Johann Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bachstrohm, Johann Friedrich; Bachstrom, Jean Frédéric; Bachström, Jan Fryderyk; Bachstrom, Ioannes Fridericus; Bachstromio, JF; ABC (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lutheran theologian, medic, author, writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1686
PLACE OF BIRTH Rawicz , Poland-Lithuania
DATE OF DEATH June 1742
Place of death Nyasvish , Poland-Lithuania