Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Bleker, Otto

Titel

Ferdinand Dejean (1731-97): Surgeon of the Dutch East-India Company, Man of the Enlightenment, and Patron of Mozart

Ist Teil von

• The Historian (Kingston), 2016-03, Vol.78 (1), p.57-80

Ort / Verlag

Allentown: Taylor & Francis

Erscheinungsjahr

2016

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Wiley Online Library Journals Frontfile Complete

Beschreibungen/Notizen

•   On 19 December 1777 in Mannheim, the young, albeit already famous, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91) visited his friend Johann Baptist Wendling (1723-97), flautist of the Court Chapel of Elector Palatine Karl Theodor (1724-99), and reported to his father how, The other day I went to dine at Wendling's, when he said to me: Our Indian friend (a Dutchman, who lives on his own means, and is an amateur of all fine arts, and a great friend and admirer of mine) is certainly a peculiar fellow. He will give [Mozart] two hundred florins to write for him three little easy short concertos and a couple of quattros for the flute.[1] Mozart ran out of time, however, and, in a letter of 14 February 1778, he informed his father, that "Herr de Jean sets off tomorrow for Paris as well, and as I have only finished two concertos and three quartets for him, he sent me a mere 96 florins."[2] We may nonetheless thank Mozart's client for these concertos, now known as KV 313, KV 314, and KV 315, and the quattros KV 285, KV 285a, and KV 285b. In his letters, Mozart calls his Dutch maecenas somewhat confusingly "de Jean," "De Jean," "de champs," "our Indian," "the Indian Dutchman," or "the rich Dutchman," but a generation ago Frank Lequin discovered his identity: It was Ferdinand Dejean. Born in Bonn in 1731, he served as a surgeon for the Dutch East-India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC), and after ten years in Asia, returned to Europe as a man of fortune; he then studied medicine and chemistry in Leiden, after which he lived the life of a man of arts, sciences, and letters, dying in Vienna in 1797.[3] Our recently published biography presents greater detail, both on Dejean's career in Asia and his life and scientific work in Europe.[4] This article intends to show to an English-language audience how Dejean's biography sheds light on the influence and diffusion of Enlightenment ideas and the history of medicine, imperialism, as well as on the patronage of musicians in the twilight of the Early Modern Age.