Moritz Benjowski

Moritz August Graf von Benjowski

Count Moritz August Benjowski ( Hungarian Benyovszky Móric Ágost , Slovak Móric August Beňovský ; born September 20, 1741 or 1746 in Vrbové , then Kingdom of Hungary ; † May 23, 1786 in Madagascar ) was a nobleman with Hungarian, Slovak and Polish ancestors. He became a soldier, adventurer, travel writer and self-proclaimed king in Madagascar.

Name variants

• German: Moritz (August) Benjowsky / Benyowski, Moritz August Graf von Benjowski
• Slovak: former spelling Beňowský / Benyovszky u. Ä .; full name in modern spelling Matúš Móric Michal František Serafín August Beňovský
• Hungarian: Benyovszky Móric Ágost
• Polish: Maurycy August Beniowski
• French: Maurice Auguste de Benyowsky / -ski
• English: Maurice (Matthew) Benyowsky / Benovsky
• Latin: Mauritius Auguste de Benovensis

The name "Beňovský" literally means "from Beňov".

Year of birth 1741 or 1746

To this day, these two different years of birth appear again and again in the literature. Oddly enough, there are primary sources for both . There is a confirmation document for the year of birth 1741, which allegedly was written and signed by the priest Pavol Maczunda from Vrbové on May 26, 1777 and which is now in the French National Archives in Paris. Benjowski had given this document to the French authorities in 1777, probably on request, as proof of birth. Its editor relied on this document in the foreword of the first edition of his travel story (1790, see literature ) and was copied in good faith by many subsequent authors.

For the year of birth 1746 there is also a birth entry of the Catholic Church of Vrbové. This document is now in the State Archives in Bratislava / Slovakia.

As the Slovak historian Viera Pawliková-Vilhanová (1944–2019) explained in 1986, when he filled out the confirmation of birth (with the year of birth 1741) for Benjowski in 1777, Father Maczunda was allegedly already seriously ill (and unable to write) that he had already made no more entries in his own church registry. The priest died on January 26, 1778. According to Viera Pawliková-Vilhanová, it must be assumed that the confirmation of birth for 1741 was at least an error, perhaps even a deliberate misstatement, and that the actual date of birth was September 20, 1746.

Life

His father was the Slovak nobleman Samuel Beňowský, an imperial general whose family came from Beňov (today in Bytča ). His mother was the Hungarian Rozália Révay. The Révay family was an important noble family in the Kingdom of Hungary, who came from the area around Sirmium and had owned large estates in the Turz since the 16th century . Móric Beňowský is entered in the register of the St. Georgen grammar school ( Svätý Jur - a suburb of Bratislava ) as a "Slovak nobleman from Vrbové in Neutra County". His uncle was a Pole.

According to those encyclopedias that give 1741 as the year of birth, Moritz Benjowski is said to have fought as an Austrian lieutenant in the Seven Years' War until 1758 . Then Benjowski inherited the Starostie of his Polish uncle in Lithuania . In 1765 he tried to settle any inheritance disputes with his brothers-in-law in Slovakia without authorization by means of a military coup, which is why Maria Theresa had him expelled from Austria. He then stayed in Hamburg , Plymouth and Amsterdam , where he devoted himself to shipping. In 1767 he joined the Polish Confederates , in 1768 he was appointed Colonel and Quartermaster General. In the fight against the Russians in 1769 he was taken prisoner of war and was first exiled to Kazan , after an attempt to escape that first ended in St. Petersburg, then to Kamchatka .

According to his own statements, he made himself useful there by arranging for the construction of a schoolhouse and also for the further expansion of the south of the peninsula. Here he managed to win the favor of the governor Nilow. His own account, according to which he married his daughter Afanassia, is doubted by other sources. What is certain is that he planned a conspiracy with the other exiles. On April 26, 1771 there was an uprising. The governor was murdered, the crown treasury plundered - a booty of 1.5 million piasters that he had stolen from the Bolsheetsk fortress ( Bolscherezki ostrog ) - and between 65 and 96 insurgents, depending on the source, reached the mouth of the Bolshaya River on a raft . They arrived in Chekawinski on May 11, 1771 and drove from there on a galleon via Japan and Formosa to Macau , which they reached on September 24, 1771. Benjowski sold the galley to the Portuguese governor there and sailed to France on two French ships via Mauritius and Madagascar .

Once there, he made the French government an offer to conquer Madagascar and establish a colony. Louis XV agreed, and Benjowski began an expedition with about 250 French soldiers. He reached the island in February 1774. By diplomatic skill he succeeded in winning the trust of some indigenous tribes, and he was elected their king in 1776. Still, the expedition was a failure; most of the participants died. Also met in the same year a commission of the new French king Louis XVI. one whose report was unflattering. At the end of the same year he returned to France to revise this impression, which he succeeded in doing. He was highly decorated and endowed with the pension of a brigadier general. Only his plans fell on deaf ears.

So he did not return to Madagascar at first. He met Kazimierz Pułaski and Benjamin Franklin , who was the US envoy to France at the time. In 1778/79 he returned to the Austrian service and fought against Prussia in the War of the Bavarian Succession . After several stays in America, Benjowski started a second expedition to Madagascar from Baltimore in 1783 . It should serve the slave trade . After arriving in 1785, there were skirmishes with locals, later also with French troops sent by the government from Mauritius , in which Benjowski was seriously wounded on May 23, 1786 and died shortly afterwards.

His wife, Countess Susanne Benyovszky, died on March 1, 1826 in Vieszka (today the municipality of Považany , Slovakia), in the immediate vicinity of her husband's birthplace.

Aftermath

His life was the model for the 1791 drama The Conspiracy in Kamtschatka by August von Kotzebue and the two-act opera Beniowski (libretto by Gaetano Rossi , music by Pietro Generali , Venice 1831). The entertainment writer Luise Mühlbach dedicated a four-volume historical novel (1865) to the adventurous life of Benjowski. In 1975 the four-part series The involuntary journeys of Moritz August Benjowski with Christian Quadflieg , Nicole Heesters , Sky Dumont , Heinz Weiss and Klaus Schwarzkopf was broadcast on the Second German Television . The 2017 novel Le Tour du monde du roi Zibeline by Jean-Christophe Rufin also has the life of the Count as its content and draws from his memoirs.

Honors

• In 1961, the Benjowskigasse in the Aspern district of Vienna was named after him.
• A street in Budapest is named after him (Benyovszky Móric utca).
• In the Malagasy city of Antsirabe a street is named after him (Rue Benyowsky).
• In 1996, a 200 Korún silver commemorative coin was minted in Slovakia on the occasion of his presumably 250th birthday. On the front you can see a historical sailing ship, on the back the inscription MÓRIC BENOVSKY / 200 Sk and the bust of the world traveler three quarters to the right.

Fonts

• Nicholson (Ed.): Autobiography. 2 volumes, London 1790.

literature

• The Memoirs and Travels of Mauritius August Count de Benyowsky, Magnate of the Kingdom of Hungary and Poland. One of the Chiefs of the Confederation of Poland. Consisting of his Military Operations in Poland, his Exile into Kamchatka, his Escape and Voyage from that Peninsula through the Northern Pacific Ocean, Touching at Japan and Formosa, to Canton in China, with an Account of the French Settlement, he was Appointed to Form upon the Island of Madagascar. Written by Himself. Translation from the Original Manuscript. London-Dublin, William Nicholson, 1790.
• Count MA von Benjowsky, Hungarian and Pohlnian magnates' fates and journeys, described by himself , Cotta, 1791, digitized
• Moritz Benjowski . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon . 4th edition. Volume 2, Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 694.
• v. Berg [Berkh, Vasilii Nikolaevich]: Count Benjowski's flight from Kamchatka to France , in: New general geographical and statistical ephemeris, Vol. 12, Weimar, 1823, pp. 247-290 ( limited preview in Google book search).
• Constantin von Wurzbach : Beniowsky, Moriz August Graf von . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 1st part. University book printing company L. C. Zamarski (formerly JP Sollinger), Vienna 1856, pp. 272–274 ( digitized version ).
• Friedrich Wilhelm Hermann Wagener, State and Society Lexicon , 1860, p. 591, digitized
• Juliusz Słowacki : Beniowski . A poetry. Translated and edited by Hans-Peter Hoelscher-Obermaier. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-518-41093-8 ( Polish Library ).
• Theodor Heuss : The Emperor of Madagascar , in: Ders .: Shadow conjuring. Figures on the margins of history. Wunderlich, Stuttgart / Tübingen 1947; Klöpfer and Meyer, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-931402-52-5 .

Web links

Commons : Moritz Benjowski  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Moritz Benjowski in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Moritz Benjowski  in the German Digital Library
• “Citizen of the World” , exhibition page of the American Philosophical Society , Philadelphia / USA on the occasion of the 200th year of death of Moritz August Benjowski in 1986. [Contains reproductions of original letters. Pages that are at least not identified with the name of the author should be treated with caution, as they are too uncritical about Benjowski]

Individual evidence

1. ↑ German: Werbau in Nyitra County , Kingdom of Hungary as part of the Habsburg Monarchy , now Slovakia .
2. ↑ In Kamchatka , after his companion Ivan Riumin, he always appeared as a Hungarian , see v. Mountain . Against this background, at least his ethnicity and his own feelings are not certain. Since the family correspondence took place in Latin or Slovak, Slovak historians give Slovak priority, see Viera Pawliková-Vilhanová: Archival Sources Concerning Count Morice Benyowsky's Activities on the Island of Madagascar and elsewhere , an article ( Memento of May 30, 2011 on the Internet Archive ) for the American Philosophical Society on the occasion of the 200th year of Benjamin's death in 1986.
3. ↑ The reason for the origin of the name is given by a descendant of Benjowski that, towards the end of the 14th century, two of her ancestors, Benjamin and Urban, took part in the war against the Turks ( Battle of Nikopolis , 1396) and that of King Sigismund of Luxembourg at Thanks to two villages, Benov and Urbanov, and acceptance into the Hungarian aristocracy was rewarded, cf.Matilda Benyovszky-Pibernik Novkovic: Words from the History of the Slovak Branch of the Benyovszky Family , a contribution ( memento of the original dated May 30 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. for the American Philosophical Society on the occasion of the 200th year of Benjamin's death in 1986. [The author has a triple name. Born as Matilda Benyovszky-Pibernik, she married Milan Novkovic and kept her maiden name as part of the name.] At the beginning of the 19th century, the bearers of the names listed for 1807, 1825 and 1830 in Austria were all Benyowsky v. Benyow and Urbanow mentioned , see yearbook of the kk Heraldische Gesellschaft Adler , edited by Ed. Gaston Graf Pöttickh von Pettenegg, 17th year, Vienna: self-published by the kk Heraldische Gesellschaft Adler 1907, p. 3f. 
4. ↑ Memoirs and Travels of Mauritius Augustus Count de Benyowsky: Consisting of His Military Operations in Poland, His Exile into Kamchatka, His Escape and Voyage from that Peninsula through the Northern Pacific Ocean, Touching at Japan and Formosa, to Canton in China, with an Account of the French Settlement He Was Appointed to Form upon the Island of Madagascar . In: World Digital Library . 1790. Retrieved July 6, 2013.
5. ↑ State Archives Bratislava, Matriky è. 2731; rímsko-katolícka matrika pokrstených 1741–1809, p. 33. Another copy of this document is in the Hungarian National Archives (in German) ( Memento of the original dated December 6, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (MOL = Magyar Országos Levéltár ) in Budapest (MOL, Libri regii, akty è.1634 / 1778). The exact wording is: “ Anno D 1746. Baptisati sunt: ​​1746. Mense Septembri 20, Matthaeus, Mauritius Michael, Franc. Seraph. Parentes Ill mus Colonellus Benyovszky [Samuel] et Rosa Baro Revaj ”, reproduced by Ján Čaplovič: Etnografia Slovákov v Uhorsku [Ethnography of the Slovaks in Hungary] , ed. by Rudolf Brtáň, Bratislava 1997. 
6. ↑ cf. Viera Pawliková-Vilhanová: Archival Sources Concerning Count Morice Benyowsky's Activities on the Island of Madagascar and elsewhere , a contribution ( memento of May 30, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) for the American Philosophical Society on the occasion of the 200th year of Benjamin's death in 1986.
7. ^ ^{A b} Scott Hamish M: Scientific Migration from Eastern Europe . In: The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Northern, Central and Eastern Europe . Longman, 1995, ISBN 0582080711 , p. 336.
8. ↑ Beňová, Jana: K Móricovi Beňovskému sa hlásia tri Národy. SME, August 24, 2006 p. 33.
9. ↑ Brockhaus 1837 , Pierer 1857 , Meyers 1885 and Meyers 1905
10. ↑ earlier Beckovská Vieska; Hungarian: Vágújfalu; German: Kleindorf an der Waag. For the different naming of this village over the centuries, see Exonyms - Forgotten Place Names NG ( Memento from March 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
11. ↑ Count Johann Berenyi (ed.): The great age of Franz I, Emperor of Austria , Pesth, 1831, Chapter XVIII, p. 46.
12. ^ Mühlbach, Luise, Graf von Benjowsky , 4 volumes, Costenoble, Jena / Leipzig 1865.
13. ↑ [1] (French)
14. ↑ Móric Beňovský - 250th výročie narodenia (Slovak)