Joseph Planta

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Joseph Planta

Joseph Planta (born February 10, 1744 in Castasegna , † December 3, 1827 in London ) was a British librarian, historian and Romance scholar of Swiss origin.

life and work

childhood

Planta was born in Graubünden and grew up in Franconia until he was eight , where his father Andreas von Planta (1717–1773) was first court master at the court of Friedrich III from 1745 to 1752 . (Brandenburg-Bayreuth) and Wilhelmine von Prussia (1709–1758) was in Bayreuth , then (as a doctorate) associate professor of mathematics at the University of Erlangen and at the Carolinum grammar school in Ansbach , and his uncle Martin Planta from 1745 to 1748 tutor of the Seckendorff family . Eight-year-old Planta came to London in 1752.

The librarian and scholar

Planta studied at the Universities of Utrecht and Göttingen and became secretary to the British ambassador in Brussels around 1768. From 1773 he made a career as a librarian at the British Museum , first (in succession to his father) as assistant librarian, from 1775 as sub-librarian, and finally from 1799 until his death as library manager. From 1774 Planta was a member (temporarily also secretary) of the Royal Society , from 1815 of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen .

The Romanist

On November 10, 1775, Planta gave a lecture at the Royal Society with the title An account of the Romansh language , which appeared in print in 1776 and was translated into German in the same year and T. History of the Romance language (Chur 1776; new ed. by Harald Haarmann , Hamburg 1983).

In Planta, “Romansch” roughly means Vulgar Latin . He spoke of "Gallic Romansch" and "Bündner Romansch" and compared the language of the Strasbourg oaths with Rhaeto-Romanic . Planta knew almost all Romance languages and had “an intuition from the entire romance” (Lüdtke 2001, p. 22).

Fonts

  • An account of the Romansh language, in: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 66, January 1, 1776, pp. 129-159; Menston 1972; German: History of the Romance Language , Chur 1776; ed. by Harald Haarmann, Hamburg 1983
  • History of the Helvetic Confederacy , 2 vols., London 1800, 1807
  • A catalog of the manuscripts in the Cottonian library deposited in the British Museum , London 1802
  • A View of the Restoration of the Helvetic Confederacy. Being a sequel to the history of that republic , London 1821
  • The history of Switzerland, from the conquests of Caesar to the abdication of Buonaparte , London 1825 (short version of History of the Helvetic Confederacy , London 1800, 1807)

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Planta, Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British librarian, historian and Romance scholar of Swiss origin
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1744
PLACE OF BIRTH Castasegna
DATE OF DEATH December 3, 1827
Place of death London