Johann Jacob Saar

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Johann Jacob Saar
Frontispiece to the work East Indian Fifteen Years of War Service by Johann Jacob Saar, 1672 (German Maritime Museum)

Johann Jacob Saar (born November 19, 1625 in Nuremberg ; † August 1, 1664 in St. Gotthard , Hungary ), also called Leichthertz , was a German navigator , soldier and author .

Life

On Easter Sunday 1644, Saar was sent by his father, a merchant and member of the Greater Nuremberg Council, to seek his fortune outside of the city ​​ravaged by the plague and the Thirty Years' War . With the Ordinari-Botten , a stagecoach service, Johann Jacob first drove to Hamburg and from there on to Amsterdam . He stayed in town for half a year, but couldn't find a job there that he liked. Therefore, he signed up as Adelpursch (a simple soldier) with the Dutch East India Company (VOC) for 15 years of service in Asia.

On January 8, 1645, Saar left Europe with the ships Hof von Seeland and Middelburg for Batavia, today's Jakarta . On the crossing he met a black man for the first time in his life. It was the professional of the troop. Saar became friends with him. After six weeks of sailing, they reached the Cape Verde Islands and on April 1st the equator . But then you had to cruise against the wind for four weeks and smallpox broke out on board, from which older travelers in particular died. On July 8th, the ships reached the port of Batavia. In the following years Saar drove through the Malay Archipelago . During the raid on Enggano Island , which was believed to be pirates, many residents were shot and 70 men and women captured as slaves. Saar also fought against locals on Ambon and the Banda Islands . In September 1647 he came to Ceylon (today Sri Lanka ) with an army of the VOC , which was then partly a Portuguese colony. With the support of Rajasingha II , the King of Kandy , the Dutch conquest began and culminated in the seven-month siege of Colombo . On May 10, 1656 the Portuguese had to surrender, the rest of the colony fell to the VOC until 1658. Saar's ability not to let himself get down despite all the suffering and adversity earned him the nickname Leichthertz among the Dutch .

On November 16, 1659 Saar was honorably discharged from service and on December 23 he left Batavia on board the Wilhelm von Seeland . On July 6, 1660 the ship reached Middelburg and via Amsterdam and Hamburg he returned to Nuremberg, where he arrived on August 11. His father had died a few months earlier. But Johann Jacob did not come to rest. In 1664, Saar went to war against the Turks as an ensign of the Frankish contingent of the imperial army . Saar fell at the battle of Mogersdorf at the age of 38.

In 1662 Saar had published a highly acclaimed report on his trip in Nuremberg, which was reprinted in 1672.

plant

expenditure

  • Trip to Java, Banda, Ceylon and Persia. 1644-1660 . New ed. after the 2nd edition from 1672. Nijhoff, Haag 1930
  • Mysterious spice islands. Journey to Java, Banda and Ceylon 1644-1660 . Edited, introduced and explained by Stefan Chr. Saar, Edition Erdmann, Lenningen 2006

literature

Web links

Commons : Johann Jacob Saar  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Johann Jacob Saar  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Hans Holzhaider: Johann Jacob Saar: Der Leichtherzige , accessed on October 27, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Saar, Johann Jacob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leichthertz (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German navigator, soldier and author
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1625
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH August 1, 1664
Place of death St. Gotthard , Hungary