{"id":20025,"date":"2021-05-05T12:23:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-05T10:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hab.de\/ein-professor-an-der-ritterakademie\/"},"modified":"2023-06-16T12:58:33","modified_gmt":"2023-06-16T10:58:33","slug":"a-professor-at-the-ritterakademie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hab.de\/en\/a-professor-at-the-ritterakademie\/","title":{"rendered":"A professor at the Ritterakademie"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Marbach-Weimar-Wolfenb\u00fcttel Research Association (MWW) project \u2018Intellectual Networks\u2019 has set out to reconstruct the network in which Sturm was active, comprising scholars, professional contacts and associates dealing with the practical concerns of faith.<\/p>

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5 May 2021<\/span><\/p>

In 1694 the 25-year-old Sturm was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the Ritterakademie Rudolph-Antoniana (Rudolph-Antoniana Knight Academy), which had become vacant. His duties included lecturing in civilian and military architecture, which at that time was considered a branch of applied mathematics.<\/p>

Sturm felt ambivalent about his post in Wolfenb\u00fcttel, as he remarked in a letter to August Hermann Francke dated 13 June 1701: \u2018I would like to quietly bide my time withal in anticipation of acts of divine providence, to which I may indeed give thanks for the comfortable salary, pleasant existence and gracious masters I have here and for the fact that I have nothing to complain about other than the lack of company pleasing to God and of conversation to pass the time.\u2019<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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\n\t\t\tSturm\u2019s letter to August Hermann Francke<\/span>\n\t\t\t\n\"Brief\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<\/use>\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t\tSturm\u2019s letter to August Hermann Francke<\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The ambitious young professor thus felt intellectually rather under-challenged in this minor seat of ducal power. What is more, he disliked the religious censorship that had been in force since the 1692 edict on Pietism and applied to all public employees \u2013 including him. At the same time, Wolfenb\u00fcttel represented a lucky opportunity for him, since it ensured a steady supply of books and scientific instruments for teaching and for his own use, thanks to the famous ducal library.<\/p>

The loan records which the Wolfenb\u00fcttel library has kept consistently since 1664 reveal to the day exactly when a particular user borrowed a book. During his time in Wolfenb\u00fcttel, Sturm was one of the most frequent and grateful users of the Bibliotheca Augusta, which was also an academic library for as long as the Ritterakademie existed (1687\u22121713). Both as a professor at the ducal academy and as a private individual, he borrowed a total of 391 books, some of them several times. Curiously, he did not in fact borrow many books on mathematics, perhaps for the simple reason that many of the relevant works were already in his private library. He borrowed a particularly large number of books grouped under \u2018architecture, geometry and the art of engineering\u2019 \u2013 among them many classics \u2013 and \u2018militaria\u2019, including pertinent books on how to build fortresses. The share of books on theology is likewise significant, although he did not begin to study religion intensively until his final three years in Wolfenb\u00fcttel. Finally, Sturm used the opportunity to borrow a terrestrial globe as well as astronomical and geometrical instruments from the ducal collection for use in his teaching at the academy.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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\n\t\t\tA page from the loans book (Bibliotheksarchiv HAB | Bibl.A. 1,1 Registraturbuch 1664\u20131697). On 8 Oct. 1694 Sturm borrowed Pierre de La Ram\u00e9e\u2019s Scholarum mathematicarum libri 31, Frankfurt am Main, 1627 \u2013 17.1 Quod.4\u00b0\n<\/span>\n\t\t\t\n\"Eine\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<\/use>\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t\tA page from the loans book (Bibliotheksarchiv HAB | Bibl.A. 1,1 Registraturbuch 1664\u20131697). On 8 Oct. 1694 Sturm borrowed Pierre de La Ram\u00e9e\u2019s Scholarum mathematicarum libri 31, Frankfurt am Main, 1627 \u2013 17.1 Quod.4\u00b0\n<\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Only a rough estimate can be made of the number of books Sturm owned privately during his stay in Wolfenb\u00fcttel. The 20-page inventory that has been preserved in the archive of the Herzog August Bibliothek (shelf mark BA I 673) records the holdings in his private library at the end of his life. When he died at the age of 50 in 1719 in Blankenburg in the Harz mountains, his collection boasted as many as 500 individual titles and included polemic pamphlets, books of plates, maps and dissertations as well as illustrated books and anthologies.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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\n\t\t\tThe first page of the inventory of Sturm\u2019s private library<\/span>\n\t\t\t\n\"Catalogus:\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<\/use>\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t\tThe first page of the inventory of Sturm\u2019s private library<\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Most of the items in the inventory belong in the \u2018scholarly literature\u2019 section with a focus on \u2018architecture \/ civil and military arts of construction and engineering\u2019 and \u2018astronomy\/mathematics\/geometry\u2019. They include books by well-known authors in the disciplines mentioned as well as works on the same subjects by Sturm himself. In addition, the inventory lists titles that can be categorised in the group \u2018geography\/topography\/landscape and travel descriptions\u2019. There are 140 theological titles, including leading lights of the Pietist movement as well as texts by other important authors, some of them chiliastic. In this section, too, there are texts penned by Sturm, in which he struggles to find the correct interpretation of the divine revelation, sometimes resorting to mathematical methods to prove his point. Finally, the entries on the last three pages of the inventory list a rather fine little collection of instruments. There are technical drawing tools and optical instruments, including \u2018a large and a small speculum causticum\u2019 (burning glass), \u2018a hollow mirror\u2019 and \u2018a microscope in wood\u2019.<\/p>

Sturm was enormously productive. He wrote at least 40 tracts on architectural theory alongside theological texts, disputations and contributions to mathematics, museology (before it existed as a science) and the education of the nobility. Although Sturm held several posts as a mathematician and director of construction work, he realised very few building projects himself. He was aware of this deficit and mentions it with regret several times in his writings. Also remarkable is his fervent appetite for theological discussions and publications, which he devoted himself to in parallel to his other work, exhibiting an equal degree of knowledge about the subject. Sturm\u2019s spirited nature, which responded with indignation and existential alarm to what he perceived as the world\u2019s lax attitude towards religion, can also be observed in his correspondence with contemporaries, including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, August Hermann Francke and Gottfried Kirch (1639\u20131710).<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Sturm\u2019s mode of expression testifies to a conflicted character. He proclaims his grateful humility before God and cites the creator to explain his activities and abilities (\u2018For it is certain that a human being has nothing he calls his own that he has not received from God\u2019), only in the same moment to boast of his individual competence, which often sounds contradictory, if not indeed presumptuous (\u2018After I have indisputably shown the best manner of fortification\u2019). While the tone of his writings is certainly polite and distinguished, cloaked in modesty and emphasising his own fallibility (\u2018which is why I would politely ask the reader to kindly communicate his misgivings to me\u00a0\u2026 \u00a0I do not consider it a disgrace at all to be a human being \u2013 that is, to err\u2019), the querulous and opinionated side of him that sometimes breaks through has a jarring effect: \u2018Now this judgement [he is referring here to a counter-argument, probably from the pen of the famous Halle professor of mathematics and philosophy Christian Wolff] is apparently of such a nature that it cannot make the slightest impact either on me or my cause\u2019.<\/p>

While Sturm certainly made a name for himself with his ideas about building techniques and his military and non-military designs as well as his interventions in questions of faith, his views were not uncontroversial. His intensive use of the public library in Wolfenb\u00fcttel, his privately owned books and his own extensive oeuvre, including accurate technical drawings, are testament to Sturm\u2019s position as an architectural theorist, a cultural technician and querulous public figure of some rank in the early 18th century.<\/p>

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PURL: http:\/\/diglib.hab.de\/?link=145<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Der Autor<\/h2>\n\t\t\t

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The Marbach-Weimar-Wolfenb\u00fcttel Research Association (MWW) project \u2018Intellectual Networks\u2019 has set out to reconstruct the network in which Sturm was active, comprising scholars, professional contacts and associates dealing with the practical concerns of faith. 5 May 2021In 1694 the 25-year-old Sturm was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the Ritterakademie Rudolph-Antoniana (Rudolph-Antoniana Knight Academy), which had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":14265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[141,274],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-info","category-hablog-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hab.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hab.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hab.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hab.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hab.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20025"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.hab.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22986,"href":"https:\/\/www.hab.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20025\/revisions\/22986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hab.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hab.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hab.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hab.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}