De Achttiende Eeuw 34 (2002) nr.2
Willem Frijhoff
'Prince Henry of Prussia in the Republic, 1768'
In the summer of 1768 prince Henry of Prussia, general, art collector and the brother of king Frederick the Great, undertook a journey to the Northern and Southern Netherlands. Although there is no journal, the trip is very well documented in the prince's French correspondence and in the society press of the day. While prince Henry's incognito journey to the Southern Netherlands was made for mainly personal reasons, including tourism and enhancement of his strategic understanding of past battlefields, his journey to the Republic had a threefold aim: his status of high-ranking nobility required such a Bildungsreise, he wished to explore a country still regarded as prominent in Europe, and he was to make a dynastic visit to his niece Wilhelmina of Prussia who had just been married to Stadholder William V. In spite of protocol problems, the prince remained in the Republic for a couple of months, acquainting himself with the sea, court culture, country houses and garden architecture, art and natural history collections, and visiting new tourist attractions like Zaandam and Broek in Waterland. All in all, prince Henry's journey is a good example of the way in which the personal position of an important visitor affected the customary itinerary.
omhoog
Gerrit Verhoeven
'Les délices de la Suisse: the influence of Dutch travel guides
on the early 18th-century image of Switzerland'
Early modern travel guides, such as the Délices de la Suisse, provide rich sources for gaining a better understanding of image transformations in the past. In the early eighteenth-century Dutch guides the traditional, negative image of Switzerland was discarded. The old stereotypes of monsters, ugly panoramas and hazardous roads were entirely rescinded. The author of the Délices, A. Ruchat, also put paid to the image of the wild, uncivilised and uncultured people of the mountains. These negative depictions were replaced with more constructive views. Mythical stories about werewolves and dragons were countered by focusing on the legend of Wilhelm Tell, thus emphasising the freedom and political sovereignty of the Swiss.
The apparent, physical inaccessibility of the mountain country was qualified by the description of relatively safe routes that would take the traveller far into the Swiss interior. Ruchat also tried to counteract the deeply felt aesthetic distaste for mountain scenery. For this purpose he sketched a picture of a very fertile country, an image which, in the light of the classical ideal of beauty, would lead to a positive assessment. But Ruchat also transcended this traditional framework by pointing out to his readers the specific, rugged beauties of a number of valleys and mountain tops.
The transformations are most striking, however, in relation to the general cultural image. Here again, Ruchat made creative use of elements from the traditional standards of appreciation. He emphasised the regular layout of the cities, the beauty of the houses and the presence of art collections. Remains from antiquity, which attracted large groups of travellers in Italy and France, were highlighted by the Swiss author. In this way Délices de la Suisse opened the road to a more positive image that was to enjoy great popularity from the middle of the eighteenth century.
omhoog
Louis Ph. Sloos
'Innocent readers then and now: A ghostwriter for Frederick the Great
in the Netherlands and the dissemination of canards of Mes
rêveries by Maurice de Saxe'
A lack of attention to bibliographical and book historical research can have far reaching effects on the results of a historical research project. The history of the origin, first publication and dissemination of the Rêveries by Hermann Moritz von Sachsen (1696-1750), otherwise known as Maurice de Saxe, maréchal général of France, is a case in point.
The first publication of this important military handbook, which never saw an édition originale, was made by the well-known publisher Pieter Gosse junior of The Hague in 1756. The title of this edition is: Les rêveries ou mémoires sur l'art de la guerre de Maurice comte de Saxe, duc de Courlande et de Semigalle, maréchal-général des armées de S. M. T. C. &c. &c. &c. dediés à messieurs les officiers généraux .... This edition was edited by the army officer C. de Bonneville (Lyon 1710-?), a charlatan who used an inadequate copy of De Saxe's Rêveries for the purpose.
A year later, when in Amsterdam and Leipzig the firm of Arkstée and Merkus published a second French edition B the best B by abbé Pérau, Gosse marketed his edition with a new frontispiece and a supplement containing corrections and additions amounting to fifty-four major improvements, based on Pérau's work.
Meanwhile, the first edition from 1756, however, had already caused much confusion. In 1757 a further three inadequate French publications were based on it, two in Dresden and one in Mannheim, and finally one in Berlin/Potsdam in 1763. The first German edition appeared in Leipzig in 1757, followed by a second one in Frankfurt/Liegnitz in 1767. Rêveries for the English-speaking world were produced consecutively in London (1757) and Edinburgh (1759 and 1776). Out of a total of twelve editions between 1756 and 1776 only two were reliable, Pérau's 1757 edition and the supplemented one by Gosse from 1758.
omhoog
Jan Schillings
'Nouvelle Bibliothèque germanique (1746-1760): An untypical
scholarly journal'
Originally, both management and editing of the Bibliothèque germanique were in the hands of ministers of the Huguenot refuge in Berlin. In 1733 the young theologian and assistant preacher J. H. S. Formey was taken on to the editorial staff. He was to develop into the central figure of the magazine. From 1738 the editors were almost entirely dependent on the numerous contributions by his hand. This situation remained unchanged, even when the periodical had to be continued under the name of Journal littéraire d'Allemagne between 1741 and 1743.
In 1746, when the magazine again rose from its own ashes under another name, Nouvelle Bibliothèque germanique, Formey was almost at the apex of his career. He had taught rhetoric and philosophy at the French College in Berlin and he had made a name for himself in the Republic of Letters as a writer and a journalist. Because of all these activities he had been forced to relinquish his religious duties as early as 1739. In 1744, at the reorganisation of the Berlin Academy of Science he was immediately made a member and he functioned as the secretary of the philosophy class and historiographer of the Academy. His appointment to secrétaire perpétuel in 1748 was the crown to his career.
After J. de Pérard, the director, retired in 1749, Formey held sole and full responsibility for the publication of the scholarly journal to which he was also the only contributor and single editor. In contrast to preceding editorial boards, for years he succeeded in publishing the periodical in accordance with the agreed time scheme. This was not only due to his surprisingly rapid way of working. In his position as secretary to the academy he had early and full access to all the scientific activities and developments of his time. The focus there was radically different than that of the more introverted circles of Berlin preachers. But also in comparison with the rest of the French language scholarly press published in the Republic until that time, the Nouvelle Bibliothèque germanique proved to be an interesting exception to the rule.
omhoog
Fred van Lieburg
'The life of Jacob Abas (1748-1787). A triptych of Judaism, Christianity
and Enlightenment'
Jacob Abas was a Jewish merchant and a reader in the synagogue of the Asjkenazic funeral college in Amsterdam. After a serious illness he began to have religious doubts by reading some philosophical writings of Naphtaly Herz Ulman (1731-1787), pioneer of Jewish Enlightenment, whose work had been translated from German and was published in Dutch in 1769. Abas received moral and material support from Gerrit Willem van Oosten de Bruyn (1727-1797), a Reformed merchant in Haarlem and a philosopher in his own right. Several letters from Abas to De Bruyn are still extant. Having secretly adopted the Christian faith, Abas fled to London. He later returned home, only to leave his wife and daughter once again. In 1780 he even spent time in jail. After travelling through Germany, he finally arrived in the town of Zutphen. There he was baptised on 26 March 1782, after a public interrogation by the Rev. Joannes Florentius Martinet (1729-1795) on the main topics of the Jewish-Christian debate and on Calvinist doctrine. Martinet, representing the typical Dutch Christian Enlightenment as a physico-theologian, had Abas=s confession printed in Amsterdam, possibly as a conversion model of a rational, reasonable or anti-Pietist nature. Two Hebrew letters of Abas, written to Sebaldus Ravius (1725-1818), Professor of Oriental Languages in Utrecht, reveal his interest in classical Jewish philosophy and his search for a better life. He was employed as a lay pastor (comforter of the sick) by the Dutch East Indian Company in 1785, but died shortly after arrival in Batavia, not yet 40 years old.
omhoog
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