Wernsdorf - a biography of an 18th century scholar - transcription, photographs and partial translation - Open Research Data - Bridge of Knowledge

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Wernsdorf - a biography of an 18th century scholar - transcription, photographs and partial translation

Description

Illustration of the publication

The data set contains the transcription of a large passage of the Latin biography of the eighteenth-century philologist and theologian Gottlieb Wernsdorf (1717-1774), as well as photos of the entire print. A translation from Latin into English and Polish was added to the data set as well (that is, excerpts on the education of both Gottlieb himself, and his children).

Although born in Wittenberg (former Electorate of Saxony), Gottlieb Wernsdorf (or Wernsdorff) spent most of his adult life in Gdańsk (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, since 1772, Kingdom of Prussia). There, since 1743, he worked as a teacher at the Academic Gymnasium and conducted, among other things, extensive research in ancient and Byzantine Greek literature.

Since 1749, he was a professor of rhetoric and poetry at the aforementioned school. As a professor of rhetoric, he served as the official Latin speaker in Gdańsk, and repeatedly, he was providing an evidence of his high competence in the field of performative rhetoric. For instance, he gave speeches for the 300th anniversary of the incorporation of the Royal Prussia to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or for the centenary of the treaty of Oliva.

The text is authored by Johann Christian Wernsdorf (1723 -1783), Gottlieb's Wernsdorf younger brother. He oversaw the publication of Gottlieb's greatest scholarly work: the edition of all the extant speeches of the ancient Greek sophist Himerius of Prusias (c. 315-c. 386 C.E.). The biography was included in the edition printed in 1790.

As its title suggests (in Latin: "narratio de vita, studiis ac moribus Gottlieb Wernsdofii", see orig. p. [5]), this text is divided into three parts:

  • curriculum vitae (from the Gottlieb's birth to the arrival in Gdańsk in 1743)
  • scholarly achievements
  • personality (in the broad sense of the word).

The files in the data set are provided in the following formats: txt, docx, and jpg.

Photographed pages of Wernsdorf's Himerian edition can be found in the other web repositories (e.g. Google Books, Europeana [access: 17.06.2021]). However, the photos included in the data set are of a unique copy belonging to the Wernsdorf family. This copy is currently stored in the PAS Library of Gdańsk (call number: Cc 8625 8o).

Nota bene!

If you intend to use photographs from the data set, please indicate that the photographed object belongs to the collection of the Polish Academy of Sciences the Gdańsk Library.

Dataset file

De vita Wernsdorfii_DS_v_1_0.zip
12.5 MB, S3 ETag 5cdc2e281e68abf1a20e7b34b520bb4f-1, downloads: 23
The file hash is calculated from the formula
hexmd5(md5(part1)+md5(part2)+...)-{parts_count} where a single part of the file is 512 MB in size.

Example script for calculation:
https://github.com/antespi/s3md5
download file De vita Wernsdorfii_DS_v_1_0.zip

File details

License:
Creative Commons: by 4.0 open in new tab
CC BY
Attribution
File embargo:
2021-06-16

Details

Year of publication:
2021
Verification date:
2021-06-18
Creation date:
2021
Dataset language:
latin
Fields of science:
  • literary studies (Humanities)
DOI:
DOI ID 10.34808/qrqd-df72 open in new tab
Verified by:
Gdańsk University of Technology

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