Otto Blau (orientalist)
Ernst Otto Friedrich Hermann Blau (21 April 1828 – 26 February 1879) was a German diplomat and orientalist.[1]
Contents
Biography
Otto Blau was born in Nordhausen, the son of the high school teacher and later superintendent Christian Friedrich Blau. He received his first lessons from his father and entered the Landesschule Pforta as a 14-year-old alumnus.
In the spring of 1848, Blau briefly began to study theology and philosophy in Halle, but soon turned to Oriental languages, which he continued to study in Leipzig. In Halle, he had become a member of the Fürstenthal fraternity in 1848. In 1852, through the intercession of Ludwig von Wildenbruch, an envoy he knew, Blau joined the Prussian legation in Constantinople as an attaché. In the following years, he traveled through part of Asia Minor and the Greek islands.
In 1855 Blau became vice chancellor of the legation. In 1857, he undertook an expedition to Persia to represent the interests of the Zollverein and to explore trade opportunities. In 1858 he became Prussian consul in Trapezunt. In 1864 he went to Sarajevo in the same capacity. In 1870 he received the post of consul general for Bosnia and Herzegovina.
After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, he was appointed to the Foreign Office and headed the General Nachweisbüro for war veterans wounded or ill in the field. After the end of the war he returned to Sarajevo, but in 1872 he was already appointed again to Odessa and entrusted with the management of the first German Consulate General in the place.
His numerous writings testify that Blau tried ethnographically, botanically, epigraphically and numismatically to capture at the regions in which he was active as a diplomat. His extensive collection of oriental coins can be found today in the coin collection of the Leipzig University Library.
Otto Blau took his own life in Odessa, Russian Empire in 1879.
Private life
Otto Blau was married. His daughter Betty (1857–1920) married the orientalist Otto Franz von Möllendorff (1848–1903). His son Paul (1861–1944) was a theologian.
Works
- "Chronik der Sultâne von Bornu". In: Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 6 (1852), pp. 305–30.
- De numis Achaemenidarum aramaeo-persicis (1855)
- "Über die Alterthümer der im Sommer 1854 besuchten Inseln Samothrake und Imbros." In: Bericht über die zur Bekanntmachung geeigneten Verhandlungen der Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Berlin (1855), pp. 601–36.[lower-alpha 1]
- Kommerzielle Zustände Persiens (1858)
- "Schreiben des Dr. O. Blau an den geschäftsführenden Vorstand der D. Morgenländischen Gesellschaft". In: Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 13 (1859), pp. 256–60.
- "Über Rechtschreibung und Deutung Türkischer Ortsnamen, namentlich in Klein-Asie." In: August Heinrich Petermann, Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes' geographischer Anstalt über wichtige neue Erforschungen auf dem Gesammtgebiete der Geographie. Gotha: Justus Perthes (1862), pp. 45–51.
- Bosnisch-türkische Sprachdenkmäler (1868)
- Reisen in Bosnien und der Herzegowina (1877)
- "Nachlese orientalischer Münzen I". In: Numismatische Zeitschrift 6–7 (1874–1875), pp. 1–21.
Notes
Footnotes
- ↑ With Konstantin Schlottmann.
Citations
- ↑ Hantzsch, Viktor (1903). "Blau, Otto." In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). 47 Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 12–14.
References
- Blau, Paul (1928). Leben und Wirken eines Auslanddeutschen im vorigen Jahrhundert. Erinnerungen an Dr. Otto Blau. Leipzig.
- Débarre, Ségolène (2011). "Mapping the 'Sick Man of Europe': German Cartographers in Anatolia, 1836-1890," Imago Mundi, Vol. LXIII, No. 1, pp. 125–26.
- Dvorak, Helge (2013). Biographisches Lexikon der Deutschen Burschenschaft. Band I: Politiker. Teilband 7: Supplement A–K. Heidelberg: Winter, pp. 96–97.
- Ernst, Carl (1879). "Dr. Otto Blau †". In: Numismatische Zeitschrift 11 (1879), pp. 443–46.
- Heidemann, Stefan (2004). "Die orientalischen Münzen der Universitätsbibliothek in Leipzig – Eine Wiederentdeckung für die Forschung." In: Reiner Cunz, Rainer Polley & Andreas Röpcke, eds., Fundamenta Historiae. Geschichte im Spiegel der Numismatik und ihrer Nachbarwissenschaften. Festschrift für Niklot Klüßendorf zum 60. Geburtstag am 10. Februar 2004. Hannover, pp. 339–52.
- Heidemann, Stefan; Christoph Mackert (2003). "Staatsbulletins auf Münzen – Numismatische Dokumente aus dem Orient stehen nach 60 Jahren wieder der Forschung zur Verfügung," Journal – Universität Leipzig No. 7, pp. 39–41.
