Nicolaus von Tornauw

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Baron Nicolaus von Tornauw , also Tornau and incorrectly Thornau , complete Nicolai Konstantin von Tornauw , Russian барон Николай Егорович Торнау Nikolai Egorovič Tornauw (born December 10, 1811 in Riga ; † April 29, 1882 in Dresden ) was a Russian-Imperial German -Imperial Baltic origin and author of one of the first presentations of Islamic law in German.

Live and act

Tornauw came from the branch of the originally Mecklenburg noble family of Tornow, who had come to Courland via Pomerania . He was the son of the Riga State Council and Livonian governorate postmaster Georg von Tornauw († 1825). After attending the elite school Lyceum Tsarskoje Selo , he entered the Russian civil service in 1829. He was promoted by Karl Robert von Nesselrode , who appointed him secretary of the Russian legation in Persia .

A little later he switched from foreign to administrative service and was deployed for five years as Vice-Governor of the Caspian Province in Transcaucasia . Here he studied Islamic law from the sources and presented it in a comprehensive study in Russian. This was shortlisted for the Demidow Prize in 1851 . In 1855 the work was published in German in Leipzig, where Tornauw was a member of the German Oriental Society , with the help of two editors who were friends, the Livonian government councilor Arnold von Tideböhl and the court judge Theodor von Boetticher . In 1863 he was accepted as an honorary member of the Natural Science Society ISIS Dresden .

From 1848 to 1851 he was the office director in the civil administration of the Baltic Sea Governments . He later worked at the Imperial Chancellery and as Senior Procurator of the Senate in St. Petersburg.

Tornauw played an important role in the beginning oil industry in and around Baku , for which he resigned from the civil service from 1858 to 1862. In 1857 he founded the Trans-Caspian Society for Trade with Asia with Vasily Kokorev (1817–1889) and later Pyotr Ionowitsch Gubonin (1825–1894) . In addition to the trade with Persia, their purpose was to obtain luminous oil from bituminous materials . The model was the German production of Photogen , a light mixture of light oils in Bitterfeld . To this end, the consortium built a refinery based on Justus von Liebig's plans near the eternal flames of the Ateschgah of Baku . The first distillation experiments were not with oil but with so-called Kir ( erdwachshaltigem asphalt cakes made). However, the yield was very inefficient at 15-20%. After experiments by Liebig's assistant Moldenhauer sent to Baku, Wilhelm Eichler (1823–1891) introduced production from crude oil in 1860, thereby making the company viable. This is how the first refinery came into being under the Bakusche Naphtha Company . In 1862 Tornauw retired from management and returned to the civil service.

From 1863 he worked with Julius Zeibig to translate the Gabelsberger shorthand into Russian and belonged to a commission that prepared the introduction of shorthand in the Russian Empire. From 1867 to 1870 he was President of the Court in Kharkiv . Senator since 1867, he became a member of the State Council in 1875 . In 1878 he said goodbye due to illness . He spent the last years of his life in Dresden.

He was married to Clara Julia Elisabeth Helene von Boetticher (born March 15, 1822 in Mitau ; † February 3, 1888 in Dresden ), niece of the Baltic German general of the Imperial Russian Army Gustav von Boetticher (1782-1848).

Works

  • Izoženie načal musul'manskago zakonověděnija. Sanktpeterburg: Tip. II Otd. Sobstv. EIV Kanceljarii 1850
Digitized copy of the copy from the Bavarian State Library
German edition: The Muslim law presented from the sources. Leipzig: Dyk 1855
Digitized copy of the copy from the Bavarian State Library
Reprint: Amsterdam: Rodopi 1970
French edition: Le droit musulman exposé d'après les sources. Paris: Cotillon 1860 ( digitized version )
  • (with Julius Woldemar Zeibig): Transfer of the Gabelberger system to Russian. Dresden, 1863. 2nd edition 1864
  • The property right under Muslim law. In: Journal of the German Oriental Society (ZDMG) 36 (1882), pp. 285–338 ( digitized version of the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt )

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Das Inland: a weekly for the daily history of Liv, Esth and Courland 20 (1855) Col. 783
  2. ^ Das Inland 17 (1852), col. 158
  3. ↑ Meeting reports 1863. Dresden: Kuntze 1864, p. 55
  4. ↑ The trail blazers , page by Lukoil
  5. ↑ Hans Höfer von Heimhalt : The petroleum and its relatives: history, physical and chemical composition, occurrence, origin, discovery and extraction of petroleum. 3rd edition, Braunschweig: Vieweg 1912, p. 19
  6. ↑ See Julius Zeibig: History and literature of the Geschwindschreibkunst. 2nd edition, Dresden: Dietze 1878, p. 128


personal data
SURNAME Tornauw, Nicolaus von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tornauw, Nicolai Konstantin von; Tornauw, Nikolai Egorovič Baron von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Imperial Russian administrative lawyer, author of a presentation of Islamic law
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1811
PLACE OF BIRTH Riga
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 1882
Place of death Dresden