Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall

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Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, lithograph by Joseph Kriehuber 1843
Signature Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall.PNG

Joseph von Hammer , from 1835 Baron Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (born June 9, 1774 in Graz , Styria , † November 23, 1856 in Vienna ), was an Austrian diplomat and orientalist . He became known as a translator of oriental literature and is considered the founder of scientific Ottoman studies and an Austrian pioneer of oriental studies .

biography

Hammer jr. was the son of 1791 ennobled Austrian Gubernialrates Josef (from) hammer. Up to the age of 14 he attended the lower classes of the grammar school in Graz; In 1787 his father brought him to Vienna, where he completed his preparation training at the Barbarastift for admission to the Oriental Academy , to which he was accepted in 1789. Hammer completed this training with great success, where he was called in as an "apprentice" and "language pupil" and, among other things, experienced the aged State Chancellor Kaunitz .

After completing his training in 1794, since there was no vacancy in Constantinople , Hammer stayed at the Academy in Vienna, worked on manuscripts in the court library and learned an important mentor and supporter from the Swiss historian Johannes von Müller, who was then working at the Vienna State Chancellery know.

In 1799 Hammer went to Foreign Minister Thugut, passing over his superiors, and successfully asked for a posting to the Orient, to Persia. In the summer of 1799 he arrived at the Internunciature (Austrian embassy) in Constantinople as a "language boy" , was soon allowed to wear the interpreter's costume, intensified his command of Turkish and Arabic and, in connection with Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in February 1800, was used to visit the Austrian consulates sent to the Levant . He got into Egypt with the help of the commander of the British blocked fleet. In this context he finally served this William Sidney Smith in the Royal Navy , after the British landing also the commander-in-chief in Egypt as an "Austrian traveler" privately as an interpreter and secretary. In the wake of the campaign he got to know Lower Egypt up to the heights of Saqqara . He continuously reported on this venture in detail about the international uniatura to Vienna, acquired manuscripts and small "antiquities" which, like those that Hammer later received from or via Claudius Rich from Mesopotamia, can be found in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna or in the Joanneum in Graz and also in Copenhagen. In the autumn of 1801 he went to England with William Sidney Smith with the permission of Internuntius, where he also visited Oxford and Cambridge and returned to Vienna via Cuxhaven and Dresden in early April 1802.

On the basis of the qualifications he had demonstrated in the first mission, Hammer was appointed legation secretary at the International University in the summer of 1802 , where he worked on Siret Antar, Hajji Chalfa (who had already dealt with in Vienna), Arabian Nights and Baki , so that in 1804 he wrote his encyclopedia An overview of the sciences of the Orient according to Hajji Chalfa and other authors appeared. Not least because of the tension with the Internuntius Stürmer, Hammer became a consular agent in the spring of 1806. H. appointed Austrian chargé d'affaires , in the Ottoman Danube Principality of Moldova and consequently went to Jassy / Iaşi. This happened in the initial phase of the Russo-Turkish war , in which in November 1806 Russian troops marched into Moldova and then into Wallachia , which made the Austrian consular agent an unpleasant disruption and exposed Hammer to various slanders, against which he vigorously defended himself continued, which led to his recall to Vienna in the early summer of 1807. He remained in the service of a consular agent until 1811. During this time he went to Paris on his own initiative in 1809 to retrieve manuscripts stolen by the French from Vienna, which he succeeded in doing with the help of his pen pal, the French Arabist Silvestre de Sacy he was in Paris at the time of Napoleon's wedding to Archduchess Marie Louise .

In 1811 he was appointed court interpreter for the oriental languages ​​and councilor in the State Chancellery. In 1817 he was appointed court counselor. From 1807 he was hardly used in his employment and so he himself referred to his service as a sinecure (he had to take care of the Turkish post every two weeks and look after ambassadors from the Orient, which did not bother him very much); Metternich , his boss since 1809, openly explained to him that he would never appoint him as a diplomat because Hammer was too open, too knowing, too direct and therefore useless. This was an essential factor in Hammer's existence, which led him to demand with certainty that scientific merits should be valued no less than political services (according to the time in the form of awards). The relationship between Hammer and Prince Metternich, who was practically the same age, was at times difficult, but ultimately supported by mutual respect, whereby Metternich himself got into difficult situations , not least because of his tensions with and ultimately his restriction by Kolowrat , as well as his personal constitution. which in 1839 led to Hammers being dismissed as court interpreter, but not (at Metternich's instigation) as councilor (now “in special use”).

Hammer was a disciplined, efficient and excellent organizer. In addition to ancient Greek and Latin, he mastered French, English, Italian, modern Greek, Arabic, Turkish (these two also in everyday language) and Persian in spoken and written and read Spanish. His interests were not limited to "Orientalist" in the narrower sense, but also related to geography , ethnology and scientific and technical aspects. In his early years he cultivated his poetic inclinations, which then faded into the background under pressure from Johannes von Müller in favor of history, even though poetry in the sense of Herder remained indispensable for him as one of the most essential sources for capturing a culture. His goal in dealing with the Orient was to capture the whole of oriental culture (s), with the "oriental clover leaf" (Arabic, Persian, Turkish) in the foreground; Friedrich Rückert , who learned Persian at Hammer, got to the point very aptly when he wrote to Hammer in 1823: "[...] the actual philological trivia is my business, since your direction is more the higher scientific." aptly stated, as may be recognizable at first glance: Hammer came from the culture of the late enlightened polyhistorians of the 18th century, broke the preoccupation with the Orient from the theologically determined Bible-centered view and transferred it to a modern, more free view. In doing so, however, the all-dominating Classical Philology , which was approaching its heyday, soon got in the way, which very quickly "overwhelmed" the oriental area and transformed it into primarily language-oriented disciplines, which was not Hammer's business - at best it could have been assigned to Boeckh's technical philology. He was criticized by up-and-coming young philologists from Hermann's word philology school, such as Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer , not unjustified, but also on an inadequate basis and with differing views on the nature of translation (Fleischer, however, very soon accepted Hammer's comprehensive, universal activity and honored).

Scientific work

Hammer's achievement consists essentially in the discovery and making accessible of an abundance of manuscripts and thus of hitherto unknown or only known in fragments texts, and of material of all kinds, thereby expanding the spectrum and also expanding the possibilities for comparison. In many cases, as Fuat Sezgin aptly recognized, he anticipated what was possible at his time. He has also undertaken to use this expanded source base to provide comprehensive general historical and literary-historical overall representations in the field of the oriental clover leaf (but also beyond), works that are still in use today and are valuable aids such as B. his two-volume history of the state and constitution of the Ottoman Empire and his subsequent ten-volume history of the Ottoman Empire.

In the field of literary history are his numerous editions such as the Diwans des Hafis and his comprehensive first accounts of Persian, Turkish and Arab literary history. Since his encounter with Hajji Chalfa, Hammer increasingly included scientific literature under literature. His examination of his encyclopedia has occupied him all his life and was to determine him in his literary history of the Arabs, which was conceived in twelve volumes (of which the sixth volume was the last to appear in the year he died), which his young critic Wilhelm Ahlwardt in 1859 as a "stake "Branded it forever and the Turkish orientalist Fuat Sezgin, who worked in Germany, called it" grandiose "at the end of the 20th century.

Another significant achievement was the founding of the world's first long-term orientalist magazine, the Treasure Trove of the Orient , which he set up in 1809 with the help of the Polish Count Wenzeslaus Rzewuski and continued under the most difficult conditions until 1820. This long before the Journal asiatique of the Société asiatique in Paris and the Journal of the (Royal) Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1823) in London, and also not nationally conceived like these, but also open to all areas (with the exception of theology in narrow sense and politics). The older journals of the Asiatic Society of Bengal , founded in Calcutta in 1784, the first volume of which, the Asiatic researches or transactions of the Society instituted in Bengal, for inquiring into the history and antiquities, the arts, sciences, and literature, of Asia appeared in 1788, were probably not yet familiar to him in 1809 or could not appear as a central discussion organ for Europe.

Between 1809 and 1815, Hammer organized, edited and published the treasure troves of the Orient almost on his own with six volumes. In addition, he has published 7200 printed pages of literature on the Orient in the Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur, which testify to the lively international exchange of ideas, especially with the British Orientalists in Fort William in Calcutta and Julius Mohl , President of the Société asiatique whether their value wanted to be printed separately and some of which have also been adopted in British organs. Hammer attempted to go the opposite way by translating Marcus Aurelius' “self-contemplations” from Greek into Persian - as a counterpart, as it were, for what was received from the Orient.

Hammer corresponded with scholars such as Champollion , du Ponceau , Grotefend , Silvestre de Sacy, Horace Hayman Wilson and Claudius James Rich, the resident of the East India Company in Baghdad, the Hammer with the Asian societies on the Indian subcontinent (Bombay, Calcutta and Madras) in Brought contact, of which he became a member - like later the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland; through her he obtained literature from this area, and he also published an interesting source on Arab seafaring in the Indian Ocean.

Over 8,000 letters, over 5,000 of which were in his estate, show his networking. We know from interesting correspondence that he gave them away to promote scientific work and that they are probably lost. His catalog of works includes around 1200 titles.

Over the years Hammer has built up a very valuable collection of manuscripts with the help of middlemen in the Orient. 412 manuscripts were included in today's Austrian National Library as a new fund . He supports other orientalists such as B. Bellino and Seetzen . His scientific library with 4728 titles has been bought for the University of Leipzig .

Hammer devoted great efforts to the fight against censorship. From 1810, intensively from around 1835, he founded an academy of sciences in Vienna, he himself was a member of numerous important academies and relevant scientific associations between Philadelphia and Calcutta. In protracted disputes, the founding of the academy was finally announced in 1846, its establishment in 1847 and his election as the first president of the academy. In June 1849 he resigned due to internal disputes, mainly because of the censorship.

Hammer's image in posterity is determined by the bitterness and hardening, especially through the struggle for the academy; and it's obscured by the various anecdotes about his persistence.

In his later years Hammer wrote his very detailed Memoirs of My Life (6000 pages of manuscript, 2800 pages of typescript, available online) and were printed in very abridged form.

Hammer-Purgstall is buried in the cemetery of Weidling (near Klosterneuburg) in a Turkish style grave that he planned himself and built after the death of his wife Caroline in 1844 or later renewed by him.

family

Hammer married Caroline von Henikstein in 1816, the daughter of Josef von Henikstein and Elisabeth born. Zacher von Sonnenstein. The couple had five children: Karl Josef Camillo (1817–1879), Isabella (1819–1872), Rosalie (1820–1824), Eveline (1824–1887), Maximilian (1825–1846).

Countess Jane Anne von Purgstall b. Cranstoun, childless widow of Wenzel Johann Gottfried Graf Purgstall (1772–1812), a friend of Hammer, set Hammer as a universal heir on condition that a Fideikommiss was set up and the name Purgstall accepted . In 1835 Hammer inherited the extinct Styrian line of Count Purgstall. He was raised to the status of hereditary baron by the emperor in 1835 and from then on bore the name Hammer-Purgstall .

Fonts

  • 1804 Encyclopedic Survey of the Sciences of the Orient, translated from seven Arabic, Persian and Turkish works. 2 volumes Leipzig
  • 1806,1813 The trumpet of holy war from the mouth of Mohammed son Abdallah the Prophet ([ams-ad-Dn] Amad Ibn-Ibrhm [an-Kas ad-Dimjt]): Mari al-awq [Ausz., German] after d . Turk. of Abd-al-Bqi transl. by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. With preface and notes by Johannes von Müller, Vienna
  • 1809–1818 treasure trove of the Orient, processed by a society of lovers. 6 volumes Vienna
  • 1812/1813 The divan by Mohammed Schemsed-din Hafis. For the first time fully translated from Persian. 2 parts Stuttgart 1812–1813, xlii + 454 pages
  • 1815 The Ottoman Empire's state constitution and state administration, presented from the sources of its basic laws. 2 volumes Vienna, total volume 1030 pages plus the Roman paginated introduction with 20 printed pages, list of sources
  • 1818 The story of the assassins from oriental sources. Stuttgart and Tübingen
  • 1818 History of the fine art of speaking Persia with a flower harvest from 200 Persian poets. Vienna
  • 1824 Motenebbi, the greatest Arab poet. Completely translated for the first time. Vienna
  • 1825 Baki's, the greatest Turkish poet Diwan. For the first time completely translated into German. Vienna
  • 1827–1835 History of the Ottoman Empire. 10 volumes Pest (volumes 9 and 10 contain the closing speech, extremely valuable overviews, lists, general registers, etc .; the total volume is over 7,100 pages)
  • 1834-1838 Extracts from the Moh'it, that Is the Ocean. A Turkish Work on Navigation in the Indian Seas. in: Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal Vol 3, No. 35 (1834) 545-553; Vol 5, No. 56 (1836) 441-468; Vol 6, No. 70 (1837) 805-817; Vol 7, No. 81 (1838) 767-780
  • 1834-1850 Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa in the Seventeenth Century. 2 volumes London 1834/50 and 1850 [Evliya Celebi]
  • 1835 Via the state administration under the Chalifate. Berlin (It is about the internal administrative history on a regional level)
  • 1836–1838 History of Ottoman poetry up to our time. With a harvest of flowers from two thousand, two hundred poets. 4 volumes, Pest (2200 pages).
  • 1837–1839 Painting room of the biographies of the great Muslim rulers of the first seven centuries of the hidschret. 6 volumes Leipzig and Darmstadt (= attempt at a national history of the Near East)
  • 1838 [Ghazali], O child! Ghazali's famous ethical treatise. Arabic and German as a New Year's present. Vienna
  • 1840 History of the Golden Horde in Kipchak. That is: The Mongols in Russia. With nine additional documents and a family tree, together with a directory of four hundred sources. Pest 1840, 683 pages, plus 30 pages of sources alone.
  • 1842 History of the Ilkhan, that is: the Mongols in Persia 1200–1350: with nine supplements, text excerpts from Wassaf and other documents and 9 family tables of the Mongol rulers; with references and a detailed index of subjects and names. 2 volumes Darmstadt, a total of 1122 pages
  • 1845 The Gallerinn on the Rieggersburg, historical novel with documents. 3 volumes Darmstadt
  • 1847–1851 Khlesl's des Cardinals, directors of the secret Cabinet of Kaiser Mathias', Leben: With a collection of Khlesl's letters, state letters, lectures, reports, etc., other documents almost 1000, except for a few previously unprinted. 4 volumes Vienna
  • 1850–1856 The literary history of the Arabs. From its beginning to the end of the twelfth century of the hidschret. 6 volumes Vienna
  • 1856 History of the Chane of the Crimea under Ottoman rule. Compiled from Turkish sources with the addition of a gasel Scharingerai's [...]. As an appendix to the history of the Ottoman Empire, Vienna
  • 1856 History of Wassaf (Volume 1) - Continuation: History of Wassaf. Edited in Persian and translated into German by Hammer-Purgstall. Newly edited by Sibylle Wentker based on preliminary work by Klaus Wundsam, Vol. 1 Vienna 2010 (= Austrian Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-historical class session reports 802). Volume and publications on Iranian Studies, edited by Bert G. Fragner and Velizar Sadovski, No. 57. Volumes 2 (2010), 3 (2012) and 4 (2016) have been published as a result
  • 1867/68 Aventures dʹAntar, roman arabe […] traduction francaise dʹaprès le manuscrit complet de la Bibliothèque Impériale de Vienne par M. de Hammer. publiée par M. [Jean Joseph Francois] Poujoulat

Hammer also dealt extensively with the problem of the genesis and the translation of parts of 1001 Nights, of which he was able to obtain valuable versions very early in Egypt and did translations, which also led to publications (Zinserling, Trebutien).

Honors, awards

Hammer Purgstall bust in the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Medal Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall 1847

literature

  • Hammer-Purgstall Joseph Frh. Von. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 2, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1959, pp. 165–168 (direct links to p. 165 , p. 166 , p. 167 , p. 168 ).
  • In 2007 Hammer-Purgstall's translation of the Diwan des Hafis was published in German for the first time in 200 years.
  • In 2019 Dirk Stermann published the historical novel Der Hammer about Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall.
  • Wilhelm Baum : Josef von Hammer-Purgstall. An Austrian pioneer in oriental studies. In: Austria in History and Literature Vol. 46 (2002), pp. 224–239 (with bibliography)
  • Wilhelm Bietak: God's is the Orient, God's is the Occident. A study on Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. Europa-Verlag, Vienna 1948.
  • JTP de Bruijn: Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph Freiherr von. Encyclopædia Iranica , Vol. XI, pp. 644-646. Also available as an online article .
  • Baher Mohamed Elgohary: The World of Islam. Received and presented by Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-631-40578-2 ( Islam and Occident. Vol. 3).
  • Baher Mohamed Elgohary: Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856). A poet and mediator of oriental literature. Akademischer Verlag Heinz, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-88099-070-0 ( Stuttgart works on German studies. Vol. 69).
  • Bernd-Ingo Friedrich : Fruits from the garden grove of Schiras. German-oriental books. In: Marginalia. Journal of book art and bibliophilia . Issue 222 (3.2016), ISSN 0025-2948, pp. 24-35.
  • Hannes D. Galter: Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall and the beginnings of oriental studies. In: Karl Acham (ed.): Art and humanities from Graz. Works of nationally important artists and scholars: from the 15th century to the turn of the millennium . Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-205-77706-9 , pp. 457-470.
  • Hannes D. Galter / Siegfried Haas (eds.): Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall: Border Crossers between Orient and Occident . Leykam, Graz 2008, ISBN 978-3-7011-0121-4 .
  • Hasan Sevimcan: Hammer-Purgstall and the Orient . Dissertation. University of Vienna, Vienna 1955.
  • Dirk Stermann : The hammer. Novel. Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-498-04701-6 .
  • Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall: Memories and Letters. Version 1 201107: letters from 1790 to the end of 1819 . Edited by Walter Höflechner and Alexandra Wagner using the works of Herbert König, Gerit Koitz-Arko, Alexandra Marics, Gustav Mittelbach †, Thomas Wallnig a. a. 3 vols. Academic Printing and Publishing Company, Graz 2011, ISBN 978-3-201-01952-1 . ( Online publication , contains, among many other things, a catalog raisonné.)
  • Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall: Memories, Letters, Materials Version 2 2018. Edited by Walter Höflechner, Alexandra Wagner and Gerit Koitz-Arko, 3 volumes in 8 parts, Graz 2018; Academic printing and Publishing House, Graz 2018; ISBN 978-3-201-02030-5 . Book on demand. ( Online publication ).

Bibliographical information

Web links

Commons : Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall  - Sources and full texts

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://gams.uni-graz.at/context:hp
  2. ^ Josef Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall: Memories from my life 1774-1852 . Arranged by Reinhart Bachofen von Echt, with 3 plates Vienna-Leipzig 1940 (= volume 70 of the II. Section of the 'Fontes rerum Austriacarum).
  3. ↑ Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall: Memories, Letters, Materials Version 2 2018. Ed. By Walter Höflechner, Alexandra Wagner and Gerit Koitz-Arko, 3 volumes in 8 parts, Graz 2018; Academic printing and Publishing House, Graz 2018; ISBN 978-3-201-02030-5 . Book on demand. (Online publication) (total volume of the eight volumes as of 2018: 8374 printed pages, plus 2,800 pages of typescript and 6,000 pages of handwritten text by Hammer-Purgstall - ongoing expansion based on the successive processing of currently more than 3,500 letters (as of July 2020) to and from Hammer-Purgstall (from various European archives) as well as files with the assistance of Sylvia Kowatsch –2020).
  4. ^ A b c Constantin von Wurzbach : Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph Freiherr von . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . Volume 7 (1861). Verlag LC Zamarski, Vienna 1856-1891, p. 267ff.
  5. ↑ Stefan Krmnicek, Marius Gaidys: Taught images. Classical scholars on 19th century medals. Accompanying volume to the online exhibition in the Digital Coin Cabinet of the Institute for Classical Archeology at the University of Tübingen (= From Croesus to King Wilhelm. New Series, Volume 3). University Library Tübingen, Tübingen 2020, p. 38 f. ( online ).
  6. ↑ Orden Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts: The members of the order. Volume 1: 1842-1881. Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 1975, ISBN 3-7861-6189-5 ( digitized version ).
  7. ↑ Hans Körner: The Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art and its members. In: Journal for Bavarian State History. Volume 47, 1984, pp. 299-398. Online at: http://periodika.digitale-sammlungen.de/zblg/kapitel/zblg47_kap28
  8. ^ Past Members: J. von Hammer-Purgstall (1774-1856). KNAW, accessed December 15, 2019 .
  9. ^ Historical academy members: Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, accessed on December 15, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Member History: Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. American Philosophical Society, accessed September 20, 2018 .
  11. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed December 15, 2019 .
  12. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724: Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph von. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed December 15, 2019 (Russian).
  13. ↑ Hafez: The Divan . From the Persian by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. Munich: Süddeutsche Zeitung (series of publications Bibliotheca Anna Amalia), ISBN 3-86615-415-1
  14. ↑ Wolfgang Huber-Lang: The hammer: Dirk Stermann with a historical novel about Hammer-Purgstall. In: Small newspaper . September 13, 2019, accessed September 17, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Dirk Stermann: His hammer and the necessity. In: derStandard.at . September 15, 2019, accessed September 17, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph Freiherr von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian diplomat and orientalist
DATE OF BIRTH June 9, 1774
PLACE OF BIRTH Graz , Styria
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 1856
Place of death Vienna