Maria Cunitz

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Urania propitia , 1650
Memorial plaque for Maria Cunitz in Schweidnitz
Maria Cunitz monument in Schweidnitz

Maria Cunitz , also Maria Kunitz and latinized Maria Cunitia (born May 29, 1610 in Wohlau , Duchy of Wohlau , † August 22, 1664 in Pitschen ) was one of the most important astronomers of the early modern period in Europe.

Year of birth

Even in the first major German-language publication on Maria Cunitz in 1798, speculations were made about her year of birth. Because neither an entry in a church register nor an occasional poem about her baptism was and can be proven to this day. There is also no printed funeral sermon from which this information could have been taken. Paul Knötel was probably the first to bring the year 1604 into play. Many other German authors (Arndt, Guentherodt) later followed this statement. Since Maria Cunitz describes herself as the eldest daughter in her book and her parents married in 1603, this year was understandable. In contrast, English-language publications in particular named 1610 as the year of birth - but without ultimately being able to prove this. An anthology found by Ingrid Guentherodt with congratulatory poems on Maria Cunitz's first wedding in connection with a letter from Elias a Leonibus to Johannes Hevelius from 1651 then provided evidence that she was actually born in 1610.

Life

Maria Cunitz was born in 1610. Her parents were Dr. med. u. phil. Heinrich Cunitz , who worked as a doctor in the small town of Wohlau , and Maria von Scholtz, the daughter of the ducal Liegnitzer-Brieger council Anton von Scholtz in Raischmannsdorf. As a little girl, Maria kept "completely away from puppetry" and rather urged her parents to be allowed to attend the lessons of the older brother. She could read perfectly by the end of the fifth year of life and in this way also acquired a basic knowledge of Latin grammar. Her father then no longer allowed any more extensive language lessons. Rather, Maria was now trained in domestic handicrafts. It was only through her own initiative that she was able to improve her knowledge of the Latin language. At the age of eleven she received music lessons and taught herself how to handle sheet music. A year later she started making pen sketches. At the age of 13, she began to learn French without outside help.

In 1615 her family moved from Wohlau to Schweidnitz / Silesia. Her father worked there again as a doctor. At the age of 13, Maria was married on September 26, 1623 to the lawyer David von Gerstmann, who came from a Bunzlau councilor family. The latter was apparently benevolent towards the thirst for knowledge of his very young wife, so Maria was able to improve her French, studied Greek, learned to play the lute on her own and also began to be interested in astrology . Gerstmann died after a few years and she returned to her parents' house.

A little later she met the doctor, mathematician and astronomer Elias von Löwen , who became her teacher from then on. At the beginning of 1629 Schweidnitz was occupied by six companies of foot soldiers from the then feared Lichtenstein Regiment in order to persuade the evangelical population to convert , not least through the use of force . The Cunitz family therefore left the city. After her father died on August 8, 1629 in Liegnitz , she married von Löwen. The couple then moved to the small town of Pitschen in what was then the Protestant Duchy of Brieg .

To escape the turmoil of the Thirty Years' War , they fled to neighboring Poland . There in Łubnice, close to the border with Silesia, on an estate owned by the Cistercian nuns of the Ołobok monastery , they both had enough peace to deal with a very extensive project. During her studies, Maria Cunitz noticed that the calculation tables of the astronomer Johannes Kepler could not always be used appropriately. She found several new methods to make it easier to predict the orbits of planets. They continued their work in Pitschen, where Elias von Löwen worked as a doctor. In 1650 she completed the work Urania propitia , through which she quickly became known. She documented her many years of research on over 500 pages with a bilingual Latin and German introduction and a second volume with astronomical tables. The publication of her results was not without risk for Maria Cunitz, since the heliocentric worldview was still very controversial at that time.

Her husband died on April 27, 1661 and she on August 22, 1664.

In his book Schlesiens Hoch- und Wohlgelehrtes Frauenzimmer, In addition to distinguished poetesses, So made known through beautiful and well-behaved poetry in the curious world , Johann Caspar Eberti writes about Maria in 1727: “Cunicia (Maria) or Cunitzin, daughter of the famous Mr. Henrici Cunitii, [...]. A learned woman who shines like a queen among the Silesian woman; spoke 7 languages ​​/ German / Italian / French / Polish / Latin / Greek and Hebrew, was well experienced in music and was able to produce a nice painting. She was very devoted to astrology [...]; she had her greatest pleasure in the Astronomical Speculationibus [...] ""

A Venus crater bears the name Cunitz after her .

plant

  • URANIA PROPITIA SIVE Tabulae Astronomicae mirè faciles, vim hypothesium physicarum à Kepplero proditarum complexae; facillimo calculandi compendio, sine ulla Logarithmorum mentione, phaenomenis satisfacientes. Quarum usum pro tempore praesente, exacto, & futuro, (accedente insuper facillimá Superiorum SATURN & JOVIS ad exactiorem & coelo satis consonam rationem, reductione) duplici idiomate, Latino & vernaculo succinctè praescriptum cum Artis Cultoribus communicat MARIA CUNIT. That is: Newe and long-desired / light astronomical tables / through the mediation of which on a particularly agile arth / of all planets movement / according to the length / width / and other coincidences / on all past / present / and future time points is presented. Too good / given to the art lovers of the German nation. Sub singularibus Privilegiis perpetuis, sumptibus Autoris, BICINI Silesiorum, Excudebat Typographus Olsnensis JOHANN. SEYFFERTUS, ANNO M.DCL. ( VD17 Directory of Prints of the 17th Century, VDNummer = 39: 125019N ) ( online )

The Latin-German written work of Maria Cunitz was published by herself, according to the title, in 1650. In its bilingual form, it is considered a unique research activity in the German, “possibly even European” scientific history of its time. The astronomer expanded Johannes Kepler's methods, wrote a 265-page scientific introduction and 286 pages of astronomical tables.

literature

  • Margarethe Arndt: The astronomer Maria Cunitz . In: Yearbook of the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelm University in Breslau . No. 3 , 1986, pp. 87-97 .
  • Johann C. Eberti: Opened cabinet of the learned women's room. In it the most famous of this sex . Iudicium, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-89129-998-2 , p. 25–28 (reprint of the edition of Silesia's well-established women's room , Breslau 1727).
  • Ingrid Guentherodt: Maria Cunitia. Urania propitia; Intended, expected and actual reading audience of an astronomer of the 17th century. In: Daphnis. Journal for Middle German Literature . No. 20 , 1991, p. 311-353 .
  • Ingrid Guentherodt: Early traces of Maria Cunitia and Daniel Czepko in Schweidnitz 1623 . In: Daphnis. Journal for Middle German Literature . No. 20 , 1991, p. 547-584 .
  • Paul Knötel: Maria Cunitia . In: Friedrich Andreae (Ed.): Silesians of the 17th to 19th centuries, Schlesische Lebensbilder . No. 3 . Breslau 1928, p. 61-65 .
  • Elias a Leonibus: Letter of December 2, 1651 to Johannes Hevelius. Original in the Bibliothèque de l'Observatoire de Paris, call number C1, Tome 2, N ° 260 . (German translation by Mrs. Clavuot-Lutz).
  • Klaus Liwowsky: Some news about the family of the Silesian Maria Cunitz . Koblenz, 3rd revised and enlarged edition 2010.
  • Johann Ephraim Scheibel : Messages from the wife of Lewen geb. Cunitzin . In: Astronomical Bibliography, the 3rd section, second continuation, writings from the seventeenth century from 1631 to 1650 from the series Introduction to mathematical book knowledge . No. 20 . Breslau 1798, p. 361-378 .
  • Julius Schmidt: The Lichtensteiners in Schweidnitz 1629 . In: Schlesische Provinzialblätter . No. 116 , 1829, pp. 105-120 .
  • Noel Swerdlow : Urania Propitia, Tabulae Rudophinae faciles redditae a Maria Cunitia Beneficent Urania, the Adaptation of the Rudolphine Tables by Maria Cunitz . In: Jed Z. Buchwald (Ed.): A Master of Science History: Essays in Honor of Charles Coulston Gillispie . Springer, Dordrecht 2012, ISBN 978-94-007-2626-0 , pp. 81–121 (first evaluation and assessment of the calculations from Urania Propitia).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Scheibel, 363.
  2. ↑ "She was probably born in Wohlau in 1604" (Knötel, p. 63).
  3. ↑ Leonibus, p.1.
  4. ↑ See Liwowsky, p. 31.
  5. ↑ See Schmidt, especially pp. 111–113
  6. ↑ onb.ac.at ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ onb.ac.at ( Memento from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ^ Ingrid Guentherodt: Scientific work by Maria Cunitz and Maria Sibylla Merian . In: Gisela Brinker-Gabler (ed.): German literature by women . First volume 1988, pp. 198-199.
personal data
SURNAME Cunitz, Maria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Maria Cunitia
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1610
PLACE OF BIRTH Wohlau
DATE OF DEATH August 22, 1664
Place of death Pitching