Otto Blau (orientalist)

Ernst Otto Friedrich Hermann Blau (born April 21, 1828 in Nordhausen ; † February 26, 1879 in Odessa , Russia ) was a German orientalist .

Live and act

Blau was born as the son of the high school teacher and later superintendent Christian Friedrich Blau. He received his first lessons from his father and entered the Pforta State School as a 14-year-old alumnus .

In the spring of 1848 Blau began briefly to study theology and philosophy in Halle , but soon turned to the oriental languages , which he continued to study in Leipzig . In Halle he became a member of the Fürstenthal fraternity in 1848 . On the mediation of the envoy from Wildenbruck , whom he knew , Blau came to the Prussian embassy in Constantinople as an attaché in 1852 . In the following years he toured part of Asia Minor and the Greek islands.

In 1855, Blau became Vice Chancellor of the Legation. In 1857 he went on an expedition to Persia to represent the interests of the customs union and to explore trade opportunities. In 1858 he became the Prussian consul in Trapezunt (Trabzon) . In 1864 he came to Sarajevo in the same capacity . In 1870 he received the post of Consul General for Bosnia and Herzegovina .

After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, he was appointed to the Foreign Office and headed the general verification office for those who were wounded or sick in the field. After the end of the war he returned to Sarajevo, but was called back to Odessa in 1872 , where he was entrusted with the management of the first German consulate general on site.

The regions in which he worked as a diplomat, he tried to capture ethnographically, botanically, epigraphically and numismatically, as his numerous writings bear testimony. His extensive collection of oriental coins is now in the coin collection of the Leipzig University Library .

Otto Blau committed suicide in Odessa in 1879.

Fonts

• Chronicle of the Sultâne of Bornu . In: Journal of the German Oriental Society . tape 6 , 1852, pp. 305-330 .
• De numis Achaemenidarum aramaeo-persicis . Leipzig 1855.
• Commercial states of Persia . Berlin 1858.
• Letter from Dr. O. Blau to the executive board of the D. Morgenländische Gesellschaft . In: Journal of the German Oriental Society . tape 13 , 1859, pp. 256-260 .
• Bosnian-Turkish language monuments . Leipzig 1868.
• Travel in Bosnia and Herzegovina . Berlin 1877, urn : nbn: de: bvb: 355-ubr05322-7 .
• Gleanings of Oriental Coins I . In: Numismatic Journal . tape 6-7 (1874-1875) , 1876, pp. 1–21 ( archive.org ).

bibliography

• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 7: Supplement A – K. Winter, Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-3-8253-6050-4 , pp. 96-97.
• Carl Ernst : Dr. Otto Blau †. In: Numismatic Journal. Volume 11, 1879, pp. 443-446 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
• Paul Blau: Life and Work of a German Abroad in the Last Century. Memories of Dr. Otto Blau. Leipzig 1928.
• Viktor Hantzsch :  Blue, Otto . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 47, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1903, pp. 12-14.
• Stefan Heidemann: The oriental coins in the university library in Leipzig - a rediscovery for research. In: Reiner Cunz (ed.) In connection with Rainer Polley and Andreas Röpcke: Fundamenta Historiae. History in the mirror of numismatics and its related sciences. Festschrift for Niklot Klüßendorf for his 60th birthday on February 10, 2004 (= publications of the prehistoric collections of the State Museum in Hanover. 51), Hanover, pp. 339–352.
• Stefan Heidemann, Christoph Mackert: State bulletins on coins - numismatic documents from the Orient are available for research again after 60 years. In: Journal - University of Leipzig. 7, 2003, ISSN  0947-1049 , pp. 39–41 [with biography of Otto Blaus] ( full text ; PDF; 113 kB).

Web links

Wikisource: Otto Blau  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Viktor Hantzsch :  Blau, Otto . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 47, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1903, pp. 12-14.