Johann Gottfried Wetzstein

Johann Gottfried "Fritz" whetstone ( born February 19, 1815 in Oelsnitz in Vogtland, † January 18, 1905 in Berlin) was a German diplomat and orientalist.

Life

Whetstone learned at the Royal Grammar School in Plauen and completed his high school education at St. Thomas School in Leipzig. He referred in 1836, the University of Leipzig, where he studied Protestant theology and Semitic Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer languages. It was in 1840 Dr. phil. doctorate. In 1843 he went to Oxford to use the resources of the local " Bodleian Library", in 1846 lecturer of Arabic language at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, and from 1849 to 1861 Prussian consul in Damascus.

As such, he lent his hand in the eastern part of the Hauran and the Turkish Government to the conclusion of peace between the Druze of Jabal al-Druze. In 1860 he joined successfully for the persecuted Christians. As a scientist, he held the Syrian- Arab. He was in close correspondence with Paul Ascherson, Alexander von Humboldt, Friedrich Delitzsch, Carl Ritter and Gustav Nachtigal.

He returned to Europe in 1862 and took up his residence in Berlin. As a lecturer he taught from 1867 to 1875 at the Berlin University and the School of Jewish Studies. He also advised the Bismarck government. So he traveled during the Franco-German War of 1870 /71 with explorer Gerhard Rohlfs as a Prussian agent to Tunisia to encourage from there Algerian Berber tribes to revolt against France. The mission failed because the French defense learned early on the intentions as well as the complete misjudgment of the situation on the ground.

Whetstone is located in the cemetery II of Sophie community in Berlin buried. In his honor, the " Dr. Johann Gottfried Wetzstein Foundation " launched. Many manuscripts are now in the Berlin State Library, and the Universities of Leipzig and Tübingen.

Works (selection)

  • Travel report on the Hauran and the Trachonen together with an appendix on the Sabaean monuments in eastern Syria. Publisher by Dietrich Reimer, Berlin, 1860. (Online at Internet Archive )
  • Lectures on the neuarabische language. Berlin 1868.
  • Selected Greek and Latin inscriptions, collected on trips to the Trachonen and around the Haurângebirge. Philological and Historical Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Berlin 1864, pp. 255-368
  • Verbal from the tent camps of the Syrian desert. Leipzig 1868. (Online at the University and State Library Saxony- Anhalt)
  • The batanäische gable Mountains: excursus on Ps 68.16 to Delitzsch Psalmencommentar. Leipzig 1884
Languages of Syria Friedrich Gerhard Rohlfs Friedhof II der Sophiengemeinde Berlin Integrated Authority File
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