Rudolf Erich Raspe
Rudolf Erich Raspe (March 1736 – 16 November 1794) was a German librarian, writer, and scientist, called by his biographer
Life and work
Raspe was born in
In 1767, he was appointed professor in
In London, he employed his knowledge of English and his learning to secure a living by publishing and translating books on various subjects. Besides helping translate Georg Forster's A Voyage Round the World into German, he also translated German works into English, and there are allusions to him as "a Dutch savant" in 1780 in the writings of Horace Walpole, who gave him money and helped him to publish an Essay on the Origin of Oil-painting (1781). But Raspe remained poor, and the Royal Society expunged his name from its list.
From 1782 to 1788, he was employed by Matthew Boulton as assay-master and storekeeper in the Dolcoath mine in Cornwall.[3] At the same time, he also authored books in geology and the history of art.
The Trewhiddle Ingot, found in 2003, is a lump of tungsten found at Trewhiddle Farm and thought to be at least 150 years old. This may predate the earliest known smelting of the metal (which requires extremely high temperatures) and has led to speculation that it may have been produced during a visit by Raspe to Happy-Union mine (at nearby Pentewan) in the late eighteenth century. Raspe was also a chemist with a particular interest in tungsten.[5][6] Memories of his ingenuity remained to the middle of the 19th century. While in Cornwall, he seems to have written the original version of Munchausen; whether he also wrote the several continuations that appeared until 1792 is still debated.[3][7]
He also worked for the famous publisher
The Baron Munchausen tales were made famous when they were 'borrowed', translated into German, and embellished somewhat by Gottfried August Bürger in 1786—and have been among the favourite reading of subsequent generations, as well as the basis of several films, including Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen inspired by the Karel Zeman (Czech director) movie The Fabulous Baron Munchausen, made twenty years before (Baron Prášil 1961). Others during Raspe's lifetime were also aware of his authorship of the Adventures, including his friend John Hawkins, the geologist and traveller to Greece who mentions Raspe's authorship in a letter to Charles Lyell.[7] It was not till 1824 that the biographer of Bürger revealed the truth about the book.[3]
Raspe's dubious mining activities in Scotland provided the model for the character of Herman Dousterswivel, a German mining swindler in Walter Scott's novel The Antiquary (1816), which was set in Scotland in the late 18th century. In a preface to the novel, Scott himself noted that the Dousterswivel character might seem "forced and improbable", but wrote: "... the reader may be assured that this part of the narrative is founded on a fact of actual occurrence."[9]
References
- ^ Meier, Uwe (2003), "Raspe, Rudolf Erich", Neue Deutsche Biographie (online edition), vol. 21, pp. 164–166, retrieved 21 February 2016
- ^ Œuvres philosophiques latines & françoises du feu MR. de Leibnitz, Amsterdam-Leipzig, 1765 (read online).
- ^ a b c d e f g Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- ^ "Fellows details". Royal Society. Archived from the original on 14 March 2022. Retrieved 25 January 2017.
- ^ "BBC Inside Out – Tungsten". BBC. 4 October 2004. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
- ^ [1] Archived 25 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b Dawson, Ruth P. (1984). "Rudolf Erich Raspe and the Munchausen Tales". Lessing Yearbook. XVI: 216–17.
- ^ "De verrezen Gulliver (...)". Amsterdam : Schalekamp en Van de Grampel. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
- ^ Nicola J. Watson, editorial notes for: Walter Scott. The Antiquary 3, 439. (Oxford University Press, 2002.)
Further reading
- Carswell, John Patrick (1950). The Prospector: Being the Life and Times of Rudolf Erich Raspe (1737–1794). London: Cresset Press.
- Dawson, Ruth (1979). Rudolf Erich Raspe, The Geologist Captain Cook Refused. Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 8, 269–290.
- Linnebach, Andrea, ed. (2005). Der Münchhausen-Autor Rudolf Erich Raspe: Wissenschaft – Kunst – Abenteuer. Kassel: Euregioverlag.
- Tarkka-Robinson, Laura (2017). Rudolf Erich Raspe and the Anglo-Hanoverian Enlightenment (PhD thesis). University of Helsinki. ISBN 978-951-51-2833-1.
- Wiebel, Bernhard & Gfeller, Ursula (2009). Rudolf Erich Raspe als Geologe – vom "vulkanischen Mordbrenner" zum Zweifler am Vulkanismus. Philippia 14/1, p. 9–56. Kassel: Abhandlungen und Berichte aus dem Naturmuseum im Ottoneum. (Containing the transcription of a letter of 40 pages, R. E. Raspe to John Hawkins, dealing geological theories.)
External links
- Works by Rudolf Erich Raspe in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
- Works by Rudolph Erich Raspe at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Rudolf Erich Raspe at Internet Archive
- Works by Rudolf Erich Raspe at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Munchausen – Library. Archived 14 March 2007 at the Wayback Machine Munchausen.org
- Rodolph Eric Raspe, by Robert Hunt, 1885
- Raspe, Rudolf E. (1763). Specimen historiæ naturalis globi terraquei – digital facsimile from the Linda Hall Library
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