Vincenzo Dandolo

Vincenzo Dandolo, portrait-like sketch Le comte Dandolo , in: M. Jarry de Mancy: Portraits et histoires des hommes utiles bienfaiteurs et bienfaitrices de tous pays et de toutes conditions qui ont acquis des droits à la reconnaissance publique , Lebrun, Paris 1833, p. 257-262.

Vincenzo Dandolo ( October 22, 1758 in Venice , † December 12, 1819 in Varese ) was a Venetian chemist and pharmacist , enlightener and politician, and agricultural scientist .

Life

Origin, education, until returning to Venice

Vincenzo was born the son of the pharmacist Abram Uxiel on Calle del Cristo in the Venetian sestiere of San Polo . His father was a Christian converted Jew who took the name Marc'Antonio Dandolo because his godfather was a member of the extensive noble family of Dandolo . His mother was Laura Steffani. Marc'Antonio heard readings on chemistry at the Ateneo Padovano , which greatly influenced his son. When the parents died, he and his older brother Giacomo went their separate ways. The orphans were garzoni in various stores. Vincenzo went to Padua in 1792 and still remembered in his will the misery ("più squallida miseria") in which his parents had died.

The dominant figure in the agricultural sector at this time was Professor Pietro Arduino , who taught in Padua and maintained a botanical garden. Padua was a center of the Physiocrats , who assumed that agriculture was the basis of the wealth of their societies. Dandolo heard chemistry from Marco Carburi , who was also a Freemason . In 1775 Dandolo passed the exam as a farmacista in Padua.

Republic of Venice (until 1797): publication activity

He then returned to Venice to work there. In 1778 he also passed the pharmacist exam there. At the same time he looked for contacts with the Enlightenment circles in the city. Their communication took place on the one hand in scientific periodicals, gazettes, literary magazines, but above all in casinos, cafes and salons. For Dandolo, the Spezeria di Adamo ed Eva on Campo San Fantin, not far from the Teatro La Fenice, became central, which he acquired in 1781 with the help of loans that friends gave him.

In 1791 Vincenzo Dandolo brought out the Trattato elementare di chimica by Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier . This was related to the fact that he was an advocate of the "new chemistry" coming from France, which he showed great interest in spreading. In addition to other works by the French, he brought out the Esame delle affinità chimiche di tutti relativi sistemi de 'piu celebri chimici d'Europa by Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau in 1791 , then the Filosofia chimica o Veritá fondamentali della chimica moderna by Antoine François Fourcroy , a publication , which followed several editions. These Venetian publications were followed by the Saggio di statica chimica by Claude-Louis Berthollet, which appeared in Como in 1804 . The culmination of his work in this regard, however, are the Fondamenti della scienza chimico-fisica applicati alla formazione de 'corpi ed ai fenomeni della natura. Esposti in due dizionari che comprendono il linguaggio nuovo e vecchio, vecchio e nuovo de 'fisico-chimici , published in Venice in 1793. He contributed significantly to the spread of the new chemical terminology , but also to the implementation of the knowledge from the work of Giuseppe Saverio Poli (Venice 1793). The revised version was sold more than 18,000 times in three editions between 1793 and 1796. In addition, he dealt with the improvement of the drinking water supply, for which the numerous municipal wells, the pozzi , were of central importance.

In 1792 Dandolo already had a fortune of around 20,000 ducats. He earned considerable sums of money, especially with his cinchona bark production in the years 1781 to 1783, which he had produced in a modern laboratory. He also published on this topic. There was later an enormous need for the anti- malarial agent , and numerous Turks were among his customers. Another Carburi student, Alberto Fabris, supported him in this work.

From around 1790, the ideas of the Enlightenment spread from France, to which Dandolo increasingly adhered. The librettist Francesco Apostoli , always in need of money, was a frequent guest at Adamo ed Eve , and so he was able to spy on the city's Jacobins for the Supreme Court of Venice . In 1793 Antonio Fabris helped Vincenzo Dandolo with the new edition of the five-volume Elementi di fisica sperimentale by Giuseppe Saverio Poli . The most important friend, however, was Giuseppe Compagnoni , who had come to Venice in 1787 as a secretary in the entourage of the Ferrarese Marchese Carlo Bentivoglio . He frequently visited the Salon of Cecilia Zen Tron, as well as the house of Francesco Donà , the official historiographer of the Republic of Venice since 1775, where they met twice a week to discuss and discuss. Dandolo and Compagnoni met through friends at the Accademia dei Rinnovati . In 1788 Compagnoni left the Bentivoglio and became director of the Anmerkungie del Mondo , a newspaper published by Antion Graziosi; In 1795 he published the high-circulation La chimica delle donne .

Dandolo soon made contact with other representatives of the Enlightenment, such as in Milan . In 1795 Dandolo was so respected in the city that Pepoli considered him the most suitable person to run the Nuova Enciclopeda italiana of Alessandro Zorzi . In the same year he became a member of the Accademia delle Scienze of Turin and of the Economic-Agararian Academy of the Dalmatian, at that time Venetian Zara , in 1796 of the Accademia di Scienze e di Belle Lettere of Mantua . Giuseppe Compagnoni left Venice and openly became a supporter of the French Revolution , while Dandolo stayed in Venice and acted so cautiously that there is no evidence of his friendship with the French in the sources.

When the Republic of Venice was dissolved, he joined the provisional government that was constituted on May 12, 1797. President was Nicolò Corner , who led 60 men, 12 of whom came from the nobility. Apparently Dandolo was a supporter of Robespierre at the time .

Napoleon, Austrian rule in Veneto

After the republic was dissolved in the face of the French army under Napoleon , Dandolo was one of the first "uomini nuovi" to head the provisional government. He became a member of the Comitato di salute pubblica (Committee for Public Health). He intervened several times in the debates about economics and finance, was known for his eloquent force, for his verbal extremism and for his fierce anger against the "tyranny" of the ceded aristocracy . On October 14, 1797, he and Gaetano Benini represented the city of Venice at the Venetian National Congress. Shortly afterwards he was entrusted with the negotiations for the peace of Campo Formio , but he did not succeed in dissuading Napoleon from ceding Veneto to Austria . On a mandate from the city, he planned a trip to Paris at the end of October to change the mind of the directorate again. When stopped near Milan, there was a violent dispute with Napoleon, but Dandolo could not persuade the young general to change his position either. Nevertheless, the relationship between Dandolo and Napoleon was characterized by appreciation and trust.

After the end of the Republic of Venice , Dandolo participated in political events under French rule and had to leave the city in the Peace of Campo Formio as an opponent of a cession to Vienna after the Austrian takeover . He went to Milan, the capital of the Cisalpine Republic , then to Varese , where he bought land and made his villa l'Annunciata a meeting place for scientists and politicians. In Milan he was accepted into the Corpo legislativo on November 9, 1797 . He became secretary of the Gran consiglio , worked on his idea of ​​an efficient, well-organized state based on a broad consensus of the people. Therefore, he campaigned for the freedom of the press and for the transfer of citizenship to persecuted Italian patriots. Also forced loans from wealthy citizens, a fair fiscal system, the sale of church property, the prohibition of excise duties and free trade, beyond the establishment of a new system of public education and the division of communal property were on his agenda.

Faced with the counter-offensive under General Alexander Wassiljewitsch Suvorov , Dandolo fled to Genoa in 1799 , then to Paris. Only after the Battle of Marengo did he return to Milan. With Compagnoni, who mainly wrote the work, he published Les hommes nouveaux, ou, Solution duprobleméme, comment d'après les principes posés dans la nouvelle régéneration politique, peut-on, dans la pratique, opérer parmi les individus une régéneration morale? (Paris 1799). However, Dandolo only provided the basic idea and the title.

The Battle of Marengo and with it the reorganization of the second Cisalpine Republic led Dandolo back to Milan. On January 12, 1802 he was elected a member of the electoral committee, the Collegio elettorale dei dotti della Repubblica italiana , on October 5, a member of the Istituto nazionale . Perhaps because of the opposition to Francesco Melzi d'Eril , the first president of the republic, Dandolo's influence remained small overall. He increasingly concentrated on his economic activities in connection with his estate complex around Annunciata in Varese.

In 1802 he brought merino sheep to his land, crossed them with native breeds and tried to convince the institutions of the state of his project. He also wrote several works on this subject with its influence on the Lombard textile industry. At the Brera exhibition in 1805 the first successes were seen, but there were no long-term results. With Sulla coltivazione dei pomi di terra (Milan 1806) he campaigned for the first time for the introduction of the potato , then for the privatization of the common good ( Dei mali economici, politici e morali che derivano alla Nazione dall'esistenza dei beni comunali , Milan 1806); commented on the use of fertilizers and industrialization ( Sui letami, Sulla necessità di creare nuove industrie nel Regno , Milan 1806). He published these works together in 1806 in the extensive Discorsi on the subject of Sulla pastorizia, sull'agricoltura e su vari altri oggetti di pubblica economia .

Governor of Dalmatia (1806–1809), Varese (1809–1813), end of Napoleon

In 1806 Dandolo was given to Napoleon , who had said “il ya en Italie dix-huit millions d'hommes, et j'en trouve à peine deux, Dandolo et Melzi” ('There are 18 million men in Italy and I can hardly find two, Dandolo and Melzi '), promoted to governor of the province of Dalmatia , an office which he held from July 1806 to December 1809. During this time he introduced the potato there and founded agricultural schools and academies. He began with reforms of the legal system and the fiscal system, had roads built, and reformed the education system. In addition, Dandolo founded Il Regio dalmata , a newspaper in Italian and Croatian with a focus on economics. However, his work did not go undisturbed, for example by General Marmont or the brigands being promoted by the Austrian side. Dandolo regularly informed Napoleon about all this and about the activities of the Fifth Coalition . Some of these monthly and annual releases have been edited by Fabio Luzzatto , some are unpublished.

From 1809 to 1813 Vincenzo Dandolo took care of his sheep and his estates again, because neither Eugène de Beauharnais nor Francesco Melzi d'Eril placed any value on his cooperation. In Nuovi cenni sulla coltivazione dei pomi di terra e applicazioni a vantaggio sì delle famiglie che dello Stato , Dandolo again propagated potato cultivation in 1810 and wrote further proposals. and dealt with oenology . These publications were so successful that they appeared again in a compendium in Modena in 1819 under the title Istruzioni pratiche sul modo di ben fare e conservare il vino costantemente buono e di farlo viaggiare senza pericolo di alterazione . Despite support from the authorities, France's protectionist policies, contrary to all these efforts, continued to block the economic development of Lombardy.

When Napoleon's rule was coming to an end, Dandolo took on the task of researching the attitude of the population towards the regime in the Marche , in the départements named after the rivers Tronto , Musone and Metauro , from November 1813 to February 1814 . He was supposed to uncover secret societies, improve supplies for Joachim Murat's troops, improve administration, monitor tax payments and pay the troops. Dandolo formulated numerous suggestions for improvement, but these have been lost. On April 17, 1814, Dandolo demanded direct negotiations with the allies against Melzi, who wanted to transfer the crown to Eugène Beauharnais. However, this did not protect him from an attempted attack, the charge of friendliness to the French and the plundering of his Vares estate.

Retreat to Varese (1814), push for modernization, silk farming

There, however, his persistence in progress earned him respect, and his advice was soon sought. At the same time, the restored freedom of trade raised concerns about an unbridled supply of agricultural goods. So grain came from the Black Sea , prices fell. In Sulle cause dell'avvilimento delle nostre granaglie e sulle industrie agrarie riparatrici dei danni che ne derivano , a work that was only published posthumously by his son Tullio in 1820, Dandolo painted a broad picture of the agricultural economy of the Kingdom of Italy. He believed in new cultures, such as flax , hemp , silk , potatoes, but also new developments in animal breeding, and paved the way for them. In the run-up to the famine years of 1816 and 1817, he repeated his call of reason for the broadest possible cultivation of the potato .

But in the years between 1815 and 1819, the mulberry moth proved to be the greatest profit maker in the Lombardy economy. Dandolo had founded a school for breeding these silk producers, and had also published on this topic. His Dell'arte di governare i bachi da seta , published in Milan in 1815, was reprinted twice in 1818 and 1819 with improvements. But Dandolo was already thinking ahead and concerned with more efficient processing into threads and fabrics. In 1819, the year Dandolo died, his Brevissimi cenni sulla nuova filanda del sig appeared. Locatelli e sul metodo di migliorare la tiratura della seta . His son Tullio Dandolo reported about experiments and that his father was still busy with machines in agriculture. His two other sons Emilio and Enrico Dandolo fought for the unity of Italy.

Publications (selection)

• Enologia ovvero l'arte di fare, conservare e far viaggiare i vini del regno , Milan 1812. ( digitized, part 1 , part 2 )

literature

• Ivana Pederzani: I Dandolo. Dall'Italia dei Lumi al Risorgimento . FrancoAngeli, Milan 2015, p. 31 ff. (Chapter Nella Venezia dei lumi ).
• Paolo Preto: Dandolo, Vincenzo. In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani . Volume 32, Rome 1986 ( online ).

Remarks

1. ↑ Figure ( digitized version ).
2. ↑ Vincenzo Dandolo: Trattato elementare di chimica , vol. 2, 2nd edition, Venice 1792 ( digitized version ).
3. ↑ As an example, Vol. 3, Naples edition 1800 ( digitized version ).
4. ^ Antoine François Fourcroy: Filosofia chimica o Veritá fondamentali della chimica moderna , Padua 1793 ( digitized ).
5. ^ Claude-Louis Berthollet: Saggio di statica chimica , Como 1804 ( digitized version, part 1 ).
6. ↑ Vincenzo Dandolo: Fondamenti della scienza chimico-fisica applicati alla formazione de 'corpi ed ai fenomeni della natura. Esposti in due dizionari che comprendono il linguaggio nuovo e vecchio, vecchio e nuovo de 'fisico-chimici , Venice 1795 ( digitized version ).
7. ^ Giuseppe Compagnoni: Memorie storiche relative al conte Vincenzo Dandolo e a 'suoi scritti , Milan 1820, p. 12, note 1 ( digitized version ).
8. ↑ Vincenzo Dandolo: Breve ragguaglio sopra i pozzi del lido e le cisterne di Venezia compreso in due Memorie presentate a SE il nu Giacomo Nani provveditore alle Lagune e ai Lidi, da Ferretti e Dandolo , Curti, Venice 1796.
9. ↑ Ivana Pederzani: I Dandolo. Dall'Italia dei Lumi al Risorgimento , FrancoAngeli, Milan 2015, p. 34.
10. ↑ Vincenzo Dandolo: Memoria o dissertazione sopra la nuova china china del regno di S. Fè nell'America meridionale cioè alcune riflessioni sopra la medesima fatte dal dottore don Felice Asti protofisico, ed ora capo della regia medica delegazione di F Mantova , 2nd edition Venice 1791 ( digitized version ).
11. ↑ Ivana Pederzani: I Dandolo. Dall'Italia dei Lumi al Risorgimento , FrancoAngeli, Milan 2015, p. 66.
12. ^ Nani Mocenigo: Del dominio napoleonico a Venezia (1806-1814). Note e appunti , Venice 1896, p. 21.
13. ↑ Vincenzo Dandolo: Del governo delle pecore spagnuole e italiane edei vantaggi che ne derivano , Milan 1804 ( digitized version ), Ders .: Delle malattie delle pecore, de 'mezzi di prevenirle e degli indizi delle loro malattie , Padua 1806, as well as the small work Dell'introduzione dei merini nel Regno d'Italia, del miglioramento delle pecore indigene e dell'influenza di questo miglioramento sull'interesse dei coltivatori e sull'aumento dei prodotti d'industria agraria e manifattrice , Milan 1813.
14. ↑ Vincenzo Dandolo: Sulla pastorizia, sull'agricoltura e su vari altri oggetti di pubblica economia , Milan 1806 ( digitized version ).
15. ↑ Vincenzo Dandolo: Nuovi cenni sulla coltivazione dei pomi di terra e applicazioni a vantaggio sì delle famiglie che dello Stato , Milan 1810 ( digitized version ).
16. ↑ Vincenzo Dandolo: Cenni sulla fabbricazione dello sciroppo d'uva , Como 1810.
17. ↑ Vincenzo Dandolo: Enologia ovvero l'arte di fare, conservare e far viaggiare i vini del regno , Milan 1812, 2nd edition 1820 ( digitized, first part ).
18. ↑ Vincenzo Dandolo: Istruzioni pratiche sul modo di ben fare e conservare il vino costantemente buono e di farlo viaggiare senza pericolo di alterazione , Milan 1819 ( digitized version ).
19. ↑ Vincenzo Dandolo: Sulle cause dell'avvilimento delle nostre granaglie e sulle industrie agrarie riparatrici dei danni che ne derivano , Milan 1820 digitized .
20. ↑ Grido della ragione per la più estesa coltivazione dei pomi di terra , Milan 1815 ( digitized version ), followed in 1817 by Della coltivazione dei pomi di terra considerata nei suoi rapporti colla nostra agricoltura, col benessere delle famiglie coloniche, dei possidentie dello stato .
21. ↑ Vincenzo Dandolo: Dell'arte di governare i bachi da seta , Milan 1815 ( digitized ).
22. ↑ Vincenzo Dandolo: Brevissimi cenni sulla nuova filanda del sig. Locatelli e sul metodo di migliorare la tiratura della seta , Milan 1819 ( digitized ).