Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen

Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen ( born August 25, 1791 in Korbach, † November 28, 1860 in Bonn) was a Prussian diplomat.

Biography

Training

His parents were the court clerk Heinrich Christian Bunsen (1743-1820) and his second wife Eleonore Johanette, born Brocki ( 1750-1819 ).

Bunsen began after graduating from high school in 1808 ( Old country school Korbach ) in Marburg to study theology and put it already in 1809 in Göttingen with theology and philology continued. He financed his studies by teaching. At the conclusion of his studies, he traveled to Paris, Leiden and Copenhagen.

At the Prussian Legation in Rome

He began his career in Rome as assistant to the ambassador Barthold Georg Niebuhr there. There he began to be interested in the decipherment of the hieroglyphs by Champollion.

As Niebuhr accepted an appointment as a professor at the University of Bonn as a historian, he succeeded him as ambassador in Rome at the Vatican. In 1829 he was one of the founders of the Instituto di corrispondenza archeologica.

Bunsen had brilliant international connections. So he learned from Karl Richard Lepsius, who happened to be in Paris. Bunsen, Lepsius invited to continue the study of hieroglyphs where Champollion had stopped. After initial hesitation, Lepsius agreed and came to Rome. Because of the Catholic subjects of Prussia in the Rhine Province occurred in mixed marriage dispute ( Cologne turmoil ) to a rift with the Vatican and Bunsen had to resign.

As an ambassador in London

After a short stay in the UK and Switzerland, he was accredited in 1841 as ambassador to London. He immediately got in touch with the British Egyptologist and began his work "Egypt's place in world history " ( 1844 to 1857 in six volumes ) to write.

His dismissal from Rome, he could not get over and he wanted revenge. This he would thereby realize he proved that the religion of Egypt have more resembled the Protestant and the Catholic denomination. In this context, he struggled to the establishment of a bishopric in Jerusalem, which should be managed jointly by Protestants and Anglicans. To this end, he sought the equipment of an expedition to Egypt. The Prussian king and the minister of culture could be won and Lepsius was commissioned to lead.

Lepsius came to London and prepared together with the Bunsen expedition in the British Museum before. The expedition was a resounding success, which helped Lepsius to a chair in Berlin. When the British government in 1849 a German scientist was looking for, who was to accompany the missionary and abolitionist James Richardson on his expedition through the Sahara, mediated by Bunsen, with the support of Alexander von Humboldt and the classicists geographer Heinrich Barth ( 1821-1865 ), under the line should get the West Africa expedition to one of the most important expeditions of all time.

However, Bunsen began a Prussian- British alliance against St. Petersburg to prepare, which led to his renewed Demissionierung and final retirement in 1854 during the Crimean War without backing from Berlin.

His person acts in retrospect perhaps a little strange, but it was enormously effective in establishing an Egyptological network.

Florence Nightingale

Christian von Bunsen is granted significant influence on the Florence Nightingale's decision to devote her life to nursing. The two first met in 1842, presumably mediated Richard Monckton Milnes acquaintance. Bunsen introduced her to the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Schleiermacher and inspired by him, she sat down with David Friedrich Strauss ' sensational writing apart The life of Jesus, critically edited. Bunsen himself had comparative religion scientific studies and operated his thinking characterize also Florence Nightingale's much later published writing Suggestions for thought. Bunsen had influence on Florence Nightingale's immediate considerations as they should shape their future life. During his service in Rome Christian von Bunsen had founded a Protestant hospital, the patients were cared for in this faith without the proselytizing by members of Catholic nursing order to be exposed. And immediately after his accreditation as ambassador to London, he began to collect funds for the establishment of a hospital that would provide targeted members of the large German community in London. The hospital, which opened in the district of Dalston in October 1845 in East London, is almost certainly the first hospital, the Florence Nightingale visited. Bunsen was also the first time in October 1846 zusendete her a yearbook Emperor Diakonieverband and thus contributed to their decision to begin an education.

Works

  • Description of the city of Rome, 3 vols 1840-43.
  • The basilicas of Christian Rome, 1843.
  • The Constitution of the Church of the future. 1845
  • Egypt's place in world history, 5 volumes, 1844-57.
  • Ignatius of Antioch and his time, 1847.
  • The German Federal Constitutional and her peculiar relation to the constitutions of England and the United States. Send letter to the appointed meeting with the German parliament, in 1848.
  • Proposal for the immediate formation of a Full Constitution during the Verweserschaft, to raise the internal proprieties and to vigorous representation of a German foreign countries against. Second Epistle to the appointed meeting with the German parliament, in 1848.
  • Hippolytus and his Age, 2 vols 1852 / 53rd
  • Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History. London 1854
  • Christianity and Mankind. 7 Bde 1855
  • The signs of the times, 2 volumes, 1855 ( engl: Signs of the Times 1856).
  • God in History or The progress of the belief in a moral world order, 3 volumes, Leipzig 1857/58.
  • General Protestant song and prayer book for church and home use, 1833.
  • Complete Bible work for the community, 9 volumes, 1858-70.

Sources and early reception

  • Letters to Bunsen of Roman cardinals and prelates, German bishops and other Catholics from 1818 bis 1837. Edited with notes by Heinrich Reusch. Leipzig: F. Jansa, 1897
  • Abeken, H.: The Protestant Bishopric in Jerusalem. Historical background with certificates. Berlin 1842 [ in the sense of Bunsen ]
  • Dollinger, Ignaz von Hg: Hippolytus and Callistus, or the Church of Rome in the first half of the third century: with regard to the writings and treatises of the HH. Bunsen, Wordsworth, Baur and Gieseler. Regensburg: Manz, 1853
  • Steel, Friedrich Julius: Against Bunsen. Berlin 1856
  • Frances Bunsen: A Memoir of Baron Bunsen, 2 vols. London. German Works 1868 and expanded by Frederick William Franz Nippold 3 volumes 1868-1871 Volume One online
  • Ranke, Leopold von: From the correspondence Friedrich Wilhelm III. with Bunsen. Leipzig 1873 (Google undownloadbar )

Lexicon entries and Literature

  • Reinhold Pauli: Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias Freiherr v. In. General German Biography (ADB ). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig, 1876, pp. 541-552.
  • Walter Bussmann: Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias, Baron von. In: New German Biography ( NDB ). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2, pp. 17 f ( digitized ).
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz: Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias, Baron von. In: Biographic- bibliographic church encyclopedia ( BBKL ). Volume 1, Bautz, Hamm 1975. 2, unchanged edition Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-013-1, 811-812 Sp. (Articles / Articles beginning possibly in the Internet Archive )
  • Mark Bostridge: Florence Nightingale, Penguin Books, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-14-026392-3
Diocese James Richardson (explorer of the Sahara) Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton Diplomatic accreditation Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie Neue Deutsche Biographie Albrecht von Bernstorff Integrated Authority File
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