Samuel Fritz

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Samuel Fritz (born April 9, 1654 in Trautenau , Bohemia ; † March 20, 1728 in Jéveros in Maynas state, diocese of Chachapoyas , today Peru) was a Bohemian Jesuit missionary who was the first to map the Amazon .

Life

Samuel Fritz had entered the Jesuit order in 1673 , completed theological studies and obtained his master's degree from Charles University in Prague around 1680 . In 1684, just 30 years old, he appeared in the Mayba mission on the upper Amazon . Fathers Heinrich Wenzeslaus Richter (1653–1696) from Prossnitz and Wenzel Breyer (or brewer) from Eich worked together with Samuel Fritz . In the Jesuit chronicle of the order historian Carlos Sommervogel ( Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jesus , Brussels / Paris 1896) a letter written in German on June 18, 1699 in Laguna from a missionary to a confrere is reproduced, which is the oldest document that the work of Fritz documented in South America. Samuel Fritz is considered to be the most outstanding figure among the German-speaking Jesuit missionaries in the Amazon region.

In his mission area 38 (according to other sources 40) Indian settlements, including 6 cities, were created, in which the Indians were settled, trained for work and brought up to a Christian life. The Maynasstaat included in its heyday 161 villages with 100,000 inhabitants. The city of Yurimaguas on the lower reaches of the Huallagua River in Peru has survived to this day . The city of Taffé also arose at the mouth of the Jurua. In the “green hell” on the Amazon, Father Fritz converted no less than 29 Indian tribes to Christianity, including the Omagua , who live in what is now Brazilian territory.

In addition to religious conversion work, the missionaries also taught the Indians farming and showed them how to plant rice, manioc, sugar cane, cocoa, tobacco and sweet potatoes. In addition, the missionary pupils were trained in various crafts, and singing and music were cultivated.

Father Fritz used the extended mission trips on the Amazon and its tributaries to draw a map of the upper and middle reaches of the river basin. During a stay in the Jesuit college in Belém do Pará , forced by a severe malaria disease in 1688 , he was able to complete the cartographic work on the 5,300 km long river thanks to the preparatory work of his friar Father Aloys Konrad Pfeil, who came from Constance . On this map, the Marañón is shown as the main stream for the first time . The map was first printed in Quito in 1707 as Mappa Geografico del Rio Marañon hecha por el Padre Samuel Fritz de la Compañia de Jesus, Missionario em este mismo Rio Amazonas - El año 1691 , with considerable deviations from the hand-drawn original .

literature

  • Renée Gicklhorn:  Fritz, Samuel. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 632 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Josef and Renée Gicklhorn: In the fight for the Amazon river. The research fate of Father Samuel Fritz . Noebe, Prague 1943.
  • Ernst Bartsch, Evamaria Grün (ed.): The conquest of Peru. The conquest of the Inca Empire by Pizarro and other conquistadors. The eyewitness accounts of Celso Gargia, Gaspar de Carvajal and Samuel Fritz. Complete through and abridged new edition. Erdmann, Stuttgart / Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-522-61330-9 , pp. 285–336 (free retelling).
  • Viktor Hantzsch :  Fritz, Samuel . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 49, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1904, pp. 156-159.
  • Rudolf Robert Hinner: About the work of Sudeten German missionaries in the Amazon region in the 17th and 18th centuries , in: Staden-Jahrbuch, Volume 11/12 (1963/64), Instituto Hans Staden, São Paulo 1964, pp. 181-190 (there further references).
  • Luis Hernán Ramírez: Samuel Fritz (1654-1725), defensor de la peruanidad en el territorio amazónico. In: Alma Mater 13/14 (1997), UNMSM , Lima 1997, pp. 29-33 (online publication, Spanish).

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ^ Georg Petersen, Hartmut Fröschle : The Germans in Peru . In: Hartmut Fröschle (ed.): The Germans in Latin America. Fate and achievement . Erdmann, Tübingen 1979, ISBN 3-7711-0293-6 , pp. 696-741, here p. 698.
personal data
SURNAME Fritz, Samuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bohemian Jesuit missionary
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1654
PLACE OF BIRTH Trautenau , Bohemia
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1728
Place of death Jéveros in Maynas State, Diocese of Chachapoyas , today Peru