Andrés Bello
Andrés Bello (* November 29, 1781 in Caracas, Venezuela, † October 15, 1865 in Santiago, Chile) was a South American philosopher, international lawyer, scholar and poet. He created the Chilean Civil Code of 1855, one of the earliest and still pioneering codifications of Latin America.
Life
Andrés Bello in Caracas grew up in the then Spanish Captaincy General of Venezuela, and as a child was an avid visitor which is located near his parents' home libraries. At the University of Caracas, he obtained excellent grades with the completion of a bachelor Artis and started then as a tutor in the families of the upper class of Caracas a name. In 1800 he accompanied Alexander von Humboldt on a part of his trip to South America. For a short time he was also a teacher of Simón Bolívar. His 1800 begun studying law and medicine, he broke off in favor of a civil service career, but was active soon mainly as an intellectual, journalist and poet. He became known in addition to his poetry through translations of parts of the Aeneid and of Voltaire's tragedy Zulime. In 1808 he took over the management of the first printed newspaper in Venezuela, the Gaceta de Caracas.
After the independence of Venezuela in April 19, 1810, he went on government missions to England and worked as a diplomatic representative of Venezuela in London until 1813, where he constantly until 1829 was. Here he met Francisco de Miranda and was a frequent visitor to the British Museum. He also took on diplomatic assignments for Chile and Gran Colombia. In 1822 he was hired as an Legationsrat the Chilean diplomatic mission.
As co-founder of the Society of American Poetry, he worked largely (about El Censor Americano or La Biblioteca Americana ) with at important philological and literary magazines and was editor of the magazine El Repertorio Americano. His most famous poem Silva comes from the 1826.
In 1830 he became rector of a university college in Santiago de Chile and founded the magazine El Araucano. Multiple he was also several government offices in Chile. In 1842 he founded the University of Chile, whose rector he remained until his death. In 1851 he was made an honorary member of the Real Academia Española.
More than 20 years of scholars worked on the codification of the Chilean civil law and handed over the draft of a Civil Code de Chile 1855 Chilean President Manuel Montt Torres, who presented it to the National Congress for adoption. The Code came into force on 1 January 1857. Bello was then appointed Senator in Chile. He is considered a positivist philosophy of law, which became widespread in America partly because of his work earlier than in Europe, and regarded the law as the only source of law with the claim comprehensive and exclusive content validity. The Civil Code of 1855 has been extensively rezipiert in several Latin American countries, taken almost word for word in some cases even (as in Ecuador, Colombia and El Salvador).
As a linguist Bello feared for the Spanish language in the now independent countries of Hispanic America, a similar fate, as it has experienced the Latin with the fragmentation in the various Romance languages. His stated goal was to contribute with his Grammar of the unity of the Spanish language.
In 1988 the Universidad Nacional Andrés Bello was founded in Santiago de Chile, which became operational in the 1990s in the various faculties.
The image of Andre Bellos found since December 1998 on the 20,000 -peso banknote Chile.
In Venezuela, the Andrés Bello Merit ( Orden de Andrés Bello ) will be awarded in several classes.