Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall

Template:More footnotes needed Template:Infobox person/Wikidata Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall (Template:Langx;<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 9 June 1774 – 23 November 1856)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> was an Austrian orientalist, historian and diplomat. He is considered one of the most accomplished orientalists of his time.

Life

Born Joseph Hammer in Graz, Duchy of Styria (now Styria, Austria), he received his early education mainly in Vienna. Entering the diplomatic service in 1796, he was appointed in 1799 to a position in the Austrian embassy in Istanbul, and in this capacity he took part in the expedition under Admiral William Sidney Smith and General John Hely-Hutchinson against France. In 1807 he returned home from the East, after which he was made a privy councillor.Template:Sfn

In 1824 he was knighted and thereafter styled himself as Ritter Joseph von Hammer.

For fifty years Hammer-Purgstall wrote prolifically on the most diverse subjects and published numerous texts and translations of Arabic, Persian and Turkish authors.Template:Sfn He was the first to publish a complete translation of the divan of Hafez into a western language.<ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> By traversing so large a field, he laid himself open to the criticism of specialists, and he was severely handled by Heinrich Friedrich von Diez (1751–1817), who, in his Unfug und Betrug in der morgenländischen Litteratur, nebst vielen hundert Proben von der groben Unwissenheit des H. v. Hammer zu Wien in Sprachen und Wissenschaften (1815), devoted to him nearly 600 pages of abuse. He also came into friendly conflict on the subject of the origin of The Thousand and One Nights with his younger English contemporary Edward William Lane.Template:Sfn

Medal Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall 1847

Hammer-Purgstall supported the foundation of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and became the academy's first president (1847–1849). The Austrian Oriental Society, founded in 1959 to foster cultural relations with the Near East, is formally named 'Österreichische Orient-Gesellschaft Hammer-Purgstall' in recognition of Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall's accomplishments.

In 1847 he received a medal commissioned by a friend of his, Ludwig August von Frankl. The reverse references some of his works in pictures.<ref>http://hdl.handle.net/10900/100742 S. Krmnicek und M. Gaidys, Gelehrtenbilder. Altertumswissenschaftler auf Medaillen des 19. Jahrhunderts. Begleitband zur online-Ausstellung im Digitalen Münzkabinett des Instituts für Klassische Archäologie der Universität Tübingen, in: S. Krmnicek (Hrsg.), Von Krösus bis zu König Wilhelm. Neue Serie Bd. 3 (Tübingen 2020), 38f.</ref>

He died in Vienna on 23 November 1856.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Views

Hammer considered the Greeks of his time to culturally belong with the Orient on linguistic and political grounds,<ref>Template:Citation</ref> rather than following the philhellenic trend of equating the Greeks with their classical legacy.<ref>Template:Citation</ref> In this regard, he seems to have stayed faithful to a late eighteenth-century intellectual tradition.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>

Works

Hammer-Purgstall's principal work is his Template:Lang (10 vols., Pest, 1827–1835; revised edition in 4 vols., 1834–1836; reprinted 1840). Among his other works are:

• Aḥmad ibn ʻAlī ibn Waḥshīyah, Ancient Alphabets and Hieroglyphic Characters Explained; With an Account of the Egyptian Priests, Their Classes, Initiation, and Sacrifices, ed. and trans. J. Hammer (London, 1806)
• Template:Lang (Vienna, 1815): vol. I, vol. II
• Template:Lang (Vienna, 1818)
• Template:Lang (Pest, 1818)
• Template:Lang (Vienna, 1819)
• Template:Lang (Pest, 1822)
• Template:Lang (St Petersburg, 1825)
• Evliya Çelebi, Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa in the Seventeenth Century by Evliya Efendi (Evliya Çelebi), trans. J. von Hammer (2 vols., 1834–1850) - an English language translation of the first two volumes of Template:Lang: vol. I.1, vol. I.2, vol. II <ref>Template:Citation</ref>
• Template:Lang (in English as The History of the Assassins trans. O. C. Wood; London, 1835)
• Template:Lang (1836)
• Template:Lang (Pest, 1840)
• Template:Lang (2 vols., Darmstadt, 1842)
• Template:Lang (4 vols., Vienna, 1847–1851) – a four-volume biography of Melchior Klesl
• Template:Lang (7 vols., 1850–1856) – unfinished: vol. I, vol. II, vol. III, vol. IV, vol. V, vol. VI, vol. VII
• Template:Lang (Vienna, 1856)
• Template:Lang, ed. Reinhart Bachofen von Echt (Vienna, 1940) – memoirs.

For a comprehensive list of his works see Constantin Schlottmann, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Zurich 1857.

For a biographical account of Hammer's life, see Walter Höflechner, Template:Lang, Graz 2021.

Family

Hammer married Caroline von Henikstein (1797–1844), the daughter of Austrian Jewish financier Joseph von Henikstein in 1816. In 1835, upon inheriting the estates of the Countess Purgstall (née Jane Anne Cranstoun), the Edinburgh-born widow of his late friend Gottfried Wenzel von Purgstall, he acquired the title Freiherr and changed his family name to Hammer-Purgstall.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Countess Purgstall's sensationalist portrayal by her fellow Scotsman Basil Hall in Schloss Hainfeld; or, a Winter in Lower Styria (1836), an account of his visit as an invited guest to the Purgstall estates in 1834, may have served as an inspiration for the eponymous vampire protagonist of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>

See also

• Baphomet
• Alamut (Bartol novel), likely inspired by von Hammer's nonfiction History of the Assassins
• Among the Oriental Manuscripts of the Leipzig University Library are workbooks and drafts by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall.

Sources

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External links

• Template:Gutenberg author
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