Johann Konrad Rätzel

Johann Konrad Rätzel (* around 1672 in Alsleben , Saxony-Anhalt ; † November 10, 1754 in Halberstadt ; also Johann Conrad Raetzel ) was a German pharmacy laboratory assistant , later council chamberlain in Halberstadt, who, during his long stay in East Asia, had a sensational natural history collection at the time had gathered.

Life

Rätzel was born around 1672 in Alsleben an der Saale and was baptized Protestant. He himself writes that he learned the "apothecary art" from Reinhold Gerhardt, a magistrate pharmacist in nearby Aschersleben , and that his stories inspired him to travel to foreign countries. After completing his apprenticeship, he was initially employed by Conrad Schrecke in the Ratsapotheke in Magdeburg in February 1693 , but gave up this position in May 1694 and, despite his parents advising against him, started Wegeleben and many friends in July together with his brother Johann Joachim on the way to the Netherlands. In Amsterdam , where they arrived on September 12th, they fell to one of the notoriousSoul seller in the hands. Even the German pharmacist Nicolaus Domsdorff, whom they sought out, could offer them little help. So they persevered in their "foul lodging" until they enlisted as soldiers with the Dutch East India Company (VOC) on December 12th ("a foreigner rarely achieves a higher quality"). Her ship, the Voetboog , left Texel on the 31st of that month. In mid-April Rätzel reached the Cape of Good Hope, where u. a. the "Hodmadots or Hottentots" stood out. But there were also few good words about the “miserable life” and the “miserable” treatment of the soldiers. On July 20, 1695 they finally reached the Rheede of Batavia . Fortunately for him, he found an advocate in Andreas Cleyer , "a native of Hesse, Medicinae Doctor, Ober Kauffman and Justitien Rath", so that he was able to work as a laboratory assistant. Five years after his arrival, on February 9, 1700, Rätzel married Anna Kugel, a 26-year-old Amsterdam Lutheran. She was the niece of Bartel Jansz van der Valk, the most prominent map maker ("engineer and surveyor") in the city, so that Rätzel gained access to the better circles of the company. However, she died in May 1702 after a long illness. Raetzel spent his time in East India almost exclusively on Java, so his description of Batavia is correspondingly detailed. Among the customs of the locals, he particularly noticed betel chewing , and he also brushed against various plants. One looks in vain for particularly dramatic events, such as those other travelers like to spread, in his manuscript.

When the second contract expired, he decided to travel home. Saying goodbye to “so many good friends”, to his “patron” Abraham van Riebeeck , to his relatives, including van der Valk in particular, was not easy for him. On December 1, 1706, the Grimmenstein lifted anchor. In the rank of second accountant he fared better than on the outward journey. After almost nine months, they reached Texel on September 20, 1706 and were acquitted. Since Rätzel's ship belonged to the Rotterdam Chamber, he sailed with him to Rotterdam , and there received the goods he had brought with him. To regain his strength, he stayed in Amsterdam for a few weeks with Johan Heyde from Brandenburg. When he arrived in Halberstadt by stagecoach on December 14th, his “boxes and packs” were already in the house of the Eltzen pharmacist. In contrast to many East Indiamans, Rätzel had made good provisions for the second half of his life with these treasures and 2041 guilders.

The reintegration into civil society went without any discernible difficulties. Rätzel bought a house in the "Breitenwegische Neighborhood". Since 1719 he was the hereditary interest bearer of the "Commiss = brewery". In 1741 he became city treasurer, and until 1945 posterity could read his name under the rose window of the church of the Holy Spirit Hospital: “Johann Conr. Raetzel: Camer. et Provis. "

At the beginning of the 1740s he summarized his experiences as the "East Indian Diary". The manuscript also includes some drawings of seashells . It later passed into the possession of Heinrich Ernst zu Stolberg-Wernigerode and was supplemented by HE Raßmann in 1778 with further drawings and comments.

collection

Anyone who, like Rätzel , had to do with Materia Medica at work accumulated a wealth of organic and inorganic substances that were examined, processed, preserved and sorted. Almost all of the “materialists” in Rätzel's time did not stop there. Medically useless natural products filled the house, as well as artefacts of all kinds. In the art chambers, chambers of curiosities, natural objects or rarities cabinets, one could admire the diversity, the beauty of God's creation as well as the skill and imagination of man. Collecting instincts intersected here with exorcism and a desire for representation, and in quite a few cases also the urge to grasp, order, and catalog the cosmos. Even the smallest farmer, wrote the Giessen professor Michael Bernhard Valentini in 1714 in his “Unpredictable Bedencken von Kunst = und Naturalien = Chambers in general”, would apply his diligence to the prognosis of the future harvest, the weather, considering the nature experienced every day to set up.

First publication of Konrad Rätzel's collection catalog in Michael Bernhard Valentini's Museum Museorum , Volume II, Appendix, p. 61ff.

Title page of Rätzel's collection catalog

Rätzel had brought his boxes safely through tropical storms and the restrictive inspection of the East India Company. It took time to assemble and organize. When the scholar Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach came to Halberstadt in 1709, he did not meet anyone “who had a library or a cabinet”. But as early as 1714 Michael Bernhard Valentini inserted a nine-page list from Rätzel's pen in the second volume of his work Museum Museorum, which was printed in folio format :

Mr. Johann Conrad Rätzels zu Halberstadt Specification of many from the Regno Animali, vegetabili and Minerali, rare colligated Natural- also some Artificial-Cabinet = pieces / All with great effort and expense from Japonia, China, Ceram, Amboina, Banda, Tirmor, Macassar, Java majore & minore, and many other islands lying around there in a 12 year time in Asia with all diligence colligiret.

It was probably this recognition by a renowned scholar that spurred Rätzel to publish his catalog himself in a more manageable format. The first edition appeared around 1730 by the Halberstadt printer Schildbach:

Catalogus Or a specification divided into neat classes of many from the Regno Animali, Vegetabili and Minerali, rare Colligated Natural- Also some Artificial-Cabinet = pieces [,] All with great effort and expense from Japonia, China, Ceram, Amboina, Banda, Timor , Macassar, Java majore & minore And many other alda lying around islands in a 12 year old time in Asia with all diligence colligiret [...] by Johann Conrad Rätzeln

The demand was evidently brisk, because a few years later, probably around 1735, another edition was printed in Halberstadt, "Bey der Verwittbeten Bergmännin". At the beginning of the book Rätzel put an "Avertissement", which shows his willingness to "broadly distribute the rarities specified in the catalog to the" curious and inclined reader, along with a one-handed, detailed description of each piece "in his apartment Halberstadt ”for consideration - travelers passing through at all times, those who lived in the city or nearby, Tuesday and Friday in the afternoon from two to four o'clock. If a bookseller or other gentlemen made a corresponding decision, he was also ready to borrow the objects for a new edition illustrated by copperplate engravings and to provide his “East Indian Travel Description” so that “Germany as well as the Dutch and others Nations could boast of such a curious Scripti in his language ”. Rätzel shied away from the financial risk, but he seemed so successful in his “treatise” that he praised it as a guide, “like all the precious land and sea rarities, now and then in royal, princely, yes also probably inferior class - and private persons, art and rarities chambers scattered in the greatest disorder and lying around without a name, could easily be brought into proper order in the future.

The catalog of his objects from the realm of animals, plants and minerals as well as the "artificial" pieces is divided into forty-six classes. Especially the numerous shells and snails arranged Rätzel from the point of view of the shape (pointed, smooth, twisted, rounded, single-shell, double-shell etc.), occasionally also the drawing and color. Rätzel counts a total of around two hundred and fifty types of mussels and snails grouped according to their shape, six types of sea ​​urchins , eleven of corals , plus various insects. His exotic butterflies were so numerous that he left out their names "before this meal", in order to "make use of the costumes". Significant transport problems are likely in alcohol conserved lizards , buntgefleckten snakes and fish , a two Ellen have raised long. Hermit crabs and their “stolen, colorful little houses”, about which one will read in more detail in his “Oriental Rarities Cabinet”, can also be shown in almost a hundred different varieties, also preserved with alcohol. Yes, he even owned a "Crocodilus or Cayman, of quite a size". This also included horns, teeth, eggs, bezoar stones , all sorts of minerals and "curieus cut pretieuse Asian stones", gold and silver coins. In addition to all the natural history objects, there were also "artificialia and rare cabinet pieces" such as Japanese lacquer work, square and round lacquered cans, tea bowls, a metal mirror, fans, paper, furniture and dishes, and even a painting of Batavia by the Swedish painter Johann Hendrik Austermann .

“A walnut veneered box [cupboard] with glass window doors including all the curious and valuable porcelain dishes that belong in it, as large and small Japanese, blue, red and gold-painted bowls, candles, butter and sugar bowls with their lids, plates, etc. . as well as many kinds, dozen and half-dozen large and small, with and without ribs, coffee and tea bowls, item tobacco pipes etc., plus the same types of Chinese porcelain with beautiful blue Chinese figures, landscapes, flowers etc. structured, including some particularly fine, transparent tea bowls, made 80 and more years ago and no longer made today, item two porcelain gilded pictures of the Virgin Mary, quite a lot of porcelain pyramid bottles, so everywhere in the casket between the bowls and small bowls etc. stand around in a nice order, and then four Japanese cast from ore A smoothly polished round mirror, including a large, precious Japanese essay that is still from memory on top of the cupboard, artistically painted with figures and colors; and finally there is still a large box, which is veneered with beautiful and rare East Indian Bimeneser wood, in which most of the rarities are in neat little drawers, etc. (smooth writing) "

Many of the exhibits in the collection were, as a brief comment in the catalog suggests, provided with detailed descriptions. Among the visitors who commented on the collection in writing, we find the royal Prussian government councilor and fiscal advocate Johann Heinrich Lucanus, who describes Rätzel and its treasures in his manuscript Thorough description of the old praiseworthy principality of Halberstadt . The exotic mussels in particular caused a stir. The north house pastor Friedrich Christian Lesser (1692–1754), a committed member of the Leopoldina , even found evidence of God's existence here as a supporter of physics theology :

Testaceo-theologia, or, Thorough proof of the existence and the most perfect qualities of a divine being from natural and spiritual contemplation of the snails and shells for the due glorification of the great God and the promotion of the service due to him.

One of Lesser's correspondence partners was Friedrich Lorentz von Jemgumer Closter, council secretary in Schwäbisch Hall and collector with a large collection of natural objects. He in turn received detailed information about Rätzel's mussels thanks to a travel letter drawn up on May 17, 1747 by the physician Franz Ernst Brückmann (1697–1753):

Epistola Itineraria LXVII. Sistens Conchothecam Rätzelianam, Ad Virvm Celeberrimvm Consvltissimvm Atqve Doctissimvm Dominvm, Dominvm Frid. Lorentz von Jemgvmer Closter, Consilii Secretioris et Consistorii Halae Svevorvm Secretarivm Dignissimvm, Amicvm in Pavcis Maxime Colendvm.

Nothing is known about the whereabouts of this enormous collection, which Rätzel included in an article in Christian Gottlieb Jöcher's famous lexicon of scholars. After his death, many objects were presumably passed into the possession of contemporary collectors in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt.

Works

• East Indian diary or days book This recently contains what Johan Conrad Rätzeln came to think of on the same trip. [after 1742] University and State Library Saxony-Anhalt, Halle. Signature: Stolb.-Werner Zi 9 (handwriting)
• Catalogus or a specification divided into neat classes of many from the regno animali vegetabili and minerali, rare colligated natural pieces as well as some artificial cabinet pieces / Rätzel, Johann Konrad. Halberstadt: Schildbach, [approx. 1730] (48 pp, octavo)
• Catalogus or a specification divided into neat classes of many from the regno animali, vegetabili and minerali, rare colligated natural pieces as well as some artificial cabinet pieces. Halberstadt: Bergmann, [approx. 1735] (46 pp, octavo)

literature

• Wolfgang Michel: Johann Conrad Raetzel (1672–1754) - First traces of a traveler to the East Indies and collector of rarities . Studies in Languages ​​and Cultures (Kyushu University), No. 4, pp. 1-14 (1993). ( Digitized in the Kyushu University Institutional Repository ; PDF; 16.2 MB)
• Roelof van Gelder: The East Indian Adventure - Germans in the service of the United East India Company of the Netherlands 1600-1800. Convent, Hamburg 2004. (Translation from Het Oost-Indisch avontuur. Duitsers in dienst van de VOC (1600-1800). SUN, Nijmegen 1997)

Remarks

1. ↑ These landlords take advantage of the situation of the mostly destitute comers, providing accommodation and food until they are hired. The hired people then had to hand over part of their hand money and their transport letter worth around 150 guilders. The name is derived from the Dutch cedeel or ceel , d. H. Debt note, off.
2. ↑ Riebeeck, son of the founder of the Cape Colony, became Governor General in East India a few years later
3. ↑ G. Arndt: On the local history of Halberstadt. Halberstadt 1910, p. 119f.
4. ↑ Stolb.-Werner Zi 9, fol. 75, 88-95
5. ^ Michael Bernhard Valentini: Museum Museorum. Tomus II, Frankfurt am Main 1714. p. 1.
6. ^ Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach: Strange journeys through Lower Saxony, Holland and Engelland. Part 1, Ulm and Menningen 1753, p. 152
7. ^ Michael Bernhard Valentini: Museum Museorum . Frankfurt am Main 1714, Vol. 2, Appendix XIX, pp. 61-69.
8. ↑ Michel, 1993.
9. ↑ M. Blochberger, Leipzig 1744, p. 59.See also van Gelder (2004), p. 196
10. ^ Reprinted in Franz Ernst Brückmann: Epistolarum itinerarium Centuria prima et secunda. Wolfenbüttel, 1742, pp. 702-723.
11. ↑ General scholars = Lexicon [...] by Christian Gottlieb Jöcher. Leipzig 1750ff., Volume VI.