Nicolas Notovitch

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nicolas Notovitch

Nicolas Notovitch , Russian Николай Александрович Нотович , Nikolai Alexandrowitsch Notovich , also Nikolas Notovič , Nicolas Aleksandrovich Notovich or Shulim (born August 13th July / August 25th  1858 greg. In Kerch , Russian Empire ), was a Russian journalist after 1916 , Editor and writer .

Life

Notovitch was born the son of a rabbi in Kerch, a port city in the Crimea . His older brother was Ossip Konstantinowitsch Notowitsch (1849-1914), later a doctor of law. Although there is no personal or third-party information about Nikolai Notovitch's childhood and youth, it is assumed that he received a higher education because - following his older brother Osip - he attended the University of St. Petersburg as a young man . In 1873/1874 his brother Osip began to work as a feature editor of the St. Petersburg newspaper Novoje Wremja . Apparently through his preoccupation with contemporary writings from the field of Russian history and politics, Nikolai Notovitch developed a Pan-Slavic understanding of history, an ardent admiration for Russia and a preference for a Russian-French alliance. On the other hand, he took a negative attitude towards his Jewish origins, and like his brother Osip he probably converted to the Russian Orthodox Church. As a volunteer he went to the Serbian-Ottoman War , then to the Russo-Ottoman War . In 1883 he found a journalistic field of activity as an oriental correspondent for Novoje Wremja . In this capacity he traveled to the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia and Persia. In 1887 he went on a trip to India. In 1889 he went to Paris, where he wrote for the newspapers Le Figaro , Le Journal and La science française , among others . In 1893, in connection with the Panama scandal , he drew the wrath of the Russian ambassador, Baron Arthur von Mohrenheim , because he had hinted in a post in Le Figaro that the baron had received bribes. In 1895, Notovitch was arrested while visiting St. Petersburg and taken to the Peter and Paul Fortress . Subsequently, he was sent into exile in Siberia , from which he was allowed to return in 1897 - without a trial, but with reference to his "literary work that was dangerous for the state and society" . In 1897 he traveled to Egypt from Paris. From 1898 he published the fortnightly magazine La Russie in Paris , in which his own articles also appeared. In 1899 he was admitted to the prestigious Société d'Histoire Diplomatique in Paris, of which he is proven to be a member until 1904. There is evidence of a residence in London for 1903, which Notovitch could have had until 1906. As a "Russian agent" in December 1904, he provided the French Foreign Minister Théophile Delcassé and the St. Petersburg palace commandant General Hesse with precise details about the Dogger Bank incident . Notovitch was named as editor and publisher of various newspapers in St. Petersburg until 1916, after which his traces are lost.

The void in the life of Jesus

Notovitch attracted international attention in 1894 with his work La vie inconnue de Jésus-Christ (literally: The unknown life of Jesus Christ ), which was initially published in French and was soon translated into other languages, under the title The Gap in the Life of Jesus in the Same Year also into German. In it Notovitch spread the story that Jesus of Nazareth is said to have left Galilee in his youth and lived in India for a long time . In Indian scholar Jesus was there - in front of his later work as Jesus Christ in Judea to - Buddhism and Hinduism studied. Notovitch relied on a text in two manuscripts ("two thick, cardboard-bound books"), which he would have presented and read out on his trip to India in 1887 by a lama in the Buddhist monastery of Hemis ( Ladakh ). He published this text - divided into chapters and verses - as part of his writing in French under the title La vie de Saint Issa (The Life of Saint Issa) .

The publication caused violent, mostly negative reactions. An Englishwoman, who then visited the monastery of Hemis and its headmaster, inquired about the veracity of Notovitch's claims. Friedrich Max Müller , a respected scholar of linguistics and religion at Oxford University, received from her in a letter dated June 29, 1894, that Notovitch and the manuscripts he cited were completely unknown there. A Russian or a person with the characteristics of Notovitch would not have been in the monastery at all. This information was also given to J. Archibald Douglas, professor of English and history at Government College Agra, who visited Hemis Monastery and its head in 1895. Notowitch later admitted making up the story. The Roman Catholic Church put the work on the Librorum Prohibitorum index . In esoteric and theosophical literature ( Nicholas Roerich , Elizabeth Clare Prophet , Holger Kersten ), in various Hindu circles and by the Ahmadiyya movement ( Mirza Ghulam Ahmad ), however, the work was positively received (→ Yuz Asaf ).

Fonts

  • Mariage idéal , play, St. Petersburg, 1880s
  • Gallia , drama, unpublished, date unknown
  • L'alliance franco-russe et la coalition européenne, par un général russian . Paris 1887
  • Gdě doroga v Indiju (Where is the way to India?) , 1889
  • Pravda ob evrejach (The Truth About the Jews) , 1889
  • L'Europe à la veille de la guerre . A. Savine, Paris 1890
  • L'empereur Alexandre III et son entourage . Paul Ollendorff, Paris 1893
  • La vie inconnue de Jésus-Christ . Paul Ollendorff, Paris 1894 ( digitized version of the French original in the archive.org portal , English translation in the gutenberg.org portal )
  • L'Europe et l'Égypte , 1898
  • Various articles and reports in the magazine La Russie , from 1898
  • La femme à travers le monde, étude, observations et aphorismes , 1901 (?)
  • La Russie et l'alliance anglaise: étude historique et politique . Plon-Nourrit, Paris 1906

See also

literature

  • Norbert Klatt : The book "The gap in the life of Jesus". The falsification of a source by Nikolaus Notovitch . In: Materialdienst 11/1984 ( Evangelical Central Office for Weltanschauungsfragen ), pp. 346–348
  • Günter Grönbold: Jesus in India. The end of a legend . Kösel-Verlag, Munich 1985, ISBN 978-3-46620-270-6
  • Norbert Klatt: Did Jesus live in India? A religious-historical clarification . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 1988, ISBN 978-3-89244-004-8
  • H. Louis Fader: The Issa Tale That Will Not Die. Nicholas Notovitch and His Fraudulent Gospel . University Press of America, Toronto 2003, ISBN 978-0-76182-657-6
  • Norbert Klatt: Jesus in India. Nikolaus Alexandrovitch Notovitch's “Unknown Life of Jesus”, his life and his trip to India . In: EZW texts , orientations and reports No. 13, Stuttgart 1986 ( PDF ); Second edition: Norbert Klatt Verlag, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-928312-32-5 ( PDF )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Norbert Klatt, 2011, pp. 9–39
  2. ↑ The void in the life of Jesus . From the French. Stuttgart, Leipzig, Berlin, Vienna 1894
  3. ^ F. Max Müller : The Alleged Sojourn of Christ in India . In: The Nineteenth Century , 36 (July – December 1894), pp. 515–522 ( article in the portal tertullian.org )
  4. ^ J. Archibald Douglas: The Chief Lama of Himis on the Alleged 'Unknown Life of Christ' . In: The Nineteenth Century , 39 (January-June 1896), pp. 667-677
  5. ↑ Edgar Johnson Goodspeed : Famous "Biblical" Hoaxes . Baker Book House, Grand Rapids 1956, pp. 11 ff.
  6. ^ Robert M. Price: Jesus in Tibet. A modern myth . In: The Fourth R . Volume 14, 3, 2001 ( westarinstitute.org: Tibet ( Memento of June 21, 2008 in the Internet Archive ))
  7. ↑ Douglas T. McGetchin: Indology, Indomania, and Orientalism . Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009, ISBN 083864208X . P. 133
  8. ^ Norbert Klatt, 1986, p. 5
personal data
SURNAME Notovitch, Nicolas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Нотович, Николай Александрович (Russian); Notowitsch, Nikolai Alexandrowitsch (Russian, transcribed); Notowitch, Nikolaj Alexandrowitch; Notovič, Nikolas; Notovich, Nicolas Aleksandrovich; Shulim, Nicolas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian journalist, editor and writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 25, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Kerch , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH after 1916