Otto Sperling (doctor)

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Otto Sperling (born December 30, 1602 in Hamburg , † December 26, 1681 in Copenhagen ) was a German doctor and botanist.

Life

Otto Sperling was the son of the rector of the learned school of the Johanneum in Hamburg Paul Sperling (1560–1633). The theologian Paul Sperling (1605–1679), the last teacher at the Princely School of Bordesholm and one of the first professors at Kiel University after 1666 , was his younger brother.

Otto Sperling attended the Johanneum and the Academic Gymnasium in Hamburg , where his father held the professorship for eloquence and poetry in addition to the rectorate at the Johanneum. From 1617 he studied medicine at the University of Greifswald and from 1619 in Leiden . In 1621/1622 he traveled to the Netherlands and Denmark and continued his studies in the winter semester of 1622/1623 at the University of Rostock . In the following summer of 1623 he traveled to Schonen , Halland , Blekinge and Gotland with the Copenhagen doctor Jens Bielke to create a herbarium for this region of Scandinavia. He spent the winter in Hamburg and then traveled to Italy in 1624. In 1626 he created the botanical garden in Venice for the Venetian Senator and later Doge Nicolò Contarini . In 1627, Sperling received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Padua . In January 1628 he returned to Hamburg.

In the spring of 1628, Sperling wanted to travel by ship from Rotterdam to London; however, due to adverse weather in the North Sea, the ship had to go to a port in Norway. This stroke of fate moved him to settle down as a doctor in what was then Christiana . In Norway he married the doctor's widow Margarethe Andreae, who owned the Jernlös estate on the main Danish island of Zealand from her father, Canon Andreas Schwendy in Roskilde . The Sperling couple moved there in 1634 and Otto Sperling was initially a doctor at the orphanage in Copenhagen in 1637, court botanist and inspector of the Royal Gardens at Rosenborg Castle in 1638 and a city ​​physician in Copenhagen in 1641 with the title of personal physician to King Christian IV of Denmark. In 1644 he cared for the king after he was seriously wounded in the sea ​​battle on the Kolberger Heide .

As a doctor, he accompanied the Danish court master Corfitz Ulfeldt several times during his time in Copenhagen on his legation trips to England, the Netherlands and France, and on all of these trips he pursued his botanical interests. After the death of Christian IV. Ulfeldt came into conflict with his successor Friedrich III. of Denmark, and so Otto Sperling was also suspected of being involved in an alleged plot by Ulfeldt against the life of the king. As Dina Vinhofvers claimed, he should have mixed the poison with which the king was to be murdered. Although Dina Vinhofvers was executed for perjury in 1651, although this proved the suspects' innocence, Sperling had to leave Denmark in 1652, losing his office.

Sperling followed Ulfeldt to the Netherlands and initially worked as a doctor in Amsterdam for two years . From there he accompanied him to the court in Stockholm , where he was appointed personal physician to King Charles X Gustav of Sweden. After the death of his wife in 1654 he returned to Hamburg, where he was accepted into the Collegium Medicum and received a vicarie at the Hamburg Cathedral , which was subordinate to the Swedish king in his capacity as Duke of Bremen-Verden . He stayed in contact with Ulfeldt, who was now considered the worst enemy of the Danish state, and represented his interests while he was abroad. The Danish authorities, who were hostile to Sweden, therefore remained suspicious of Otto Sperling. When he came to Glückstadt on a trip to Glückstadt in August 1658 , he was arrested for the first time by the Danish commandant Glückstadts Ernst Albrecht von Eberstein as a Swedish agent and only released in March 1659 on the orders of the Danish king.

On April 16, 1664, Sperling was lured away from Hamburg by a Danish officer, bound and gagged and taken to Copenhagen as a prisoner. The reason was his still existing connections to Corfitz Ulfeld, whose son Leo grew up in Sperling's house. Sperling was imprisoned in the Blue Tower in Copenhagen . He was found guilty of libel and remained in Danish custody for 17 years until his death, despite all diplomatic protests from the Hamburg Senate and the Swedish King, and although Ulfeldt died while trying to escape in 1664. In prison he corresponded with Leonora Christina Ulfeldt , Corfitz's wife, who was also imprisoned in the Blue Tower for decades, and wrote an autobiography for his children.

His son of the same name Otto Sperling (1634-1715) was a lawyer and most recently a professor at the Knight Academy in Copenhagen, which existed for a short time from 1690 to 1710 .

Fonts

  • Hortus christianeus , 1642 (Catalog of the Copenhagen Royal Garden)
  • Catalogus plantarum indigenarum , 1662

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Richard Hoche:  Sperling, Paul . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 35, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1893, p. 138.
  2. ↑ Richard Hoche:  Sperling, Paul . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 35, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1893, p. 138 f.
  3. ↑ In Rostock Matrikelportal undetectable.
  4. ↑ Dr. med. Otto Sperling's Selvbiografi, 1602-1673 . Translated into Danish in 1885, edited by S. Birket Smith.
  5. ↑ VIAF = 59989592
personal data
SURNAME Sperling, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor and botanist
DATE OF BIRTH December 30, 1602
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH December 26, 1681
Place of death Copenhagen