Julius Platzmann | |
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![]() Julius Platzmann | |
Born | |
Died | Plagwitz, Leipzig, Germany | September 6, 1902
Citizenship | German Empire |
Occupation(s) | Botanist, writer, and editor |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Native languages of South America |
Karl Julius Platzmann (born 31 January 1832 in Leipzig; died 6 September 1902 in Leipzig) was a German botanical illustrator, writer, and bibliophile who published exact facsimile editions of rare early missionary grammars of indigenous languages of the Americas. Born to a well-to-do family in the Kingdom of Saxony, Platzmann first studied as an artist, and travelled to Brazil, where he created botanical illustrations. He spent the remainder of his life back in Germany, leading a very private life collecting books about linguistics, as well as writing original works and creating facsimile editions of rare early grammars of American languages. Publication of these works made documentation of several American languages available to a much broader audience.
Platzmann was born in Leipzig on January 31, 1832. He inherited privilege from both sides of his family. His mother Marianna Platzmann (née Beyer) inherited family wealth. [1] His father Theodor Alexander Platzmann (b. 1795) was a jurist and member of the Saxon State Parliament (Landtag), and a landowner of significance — Platzmann grew up spending summers on the family estate of Hohnstädt in Grimma, [2] not far from the intellectual hub of Leipzig, where his family also owned a home. Like his father, he attended the prestigious Fürstenschule Grimma boarding school, whose students would often go on to study at the University of Leipzig.
He became interested in drawing and botany, however, and after just three years at the Fürstenschule, he transferred to the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, [3] where his teachers would include the well-known painters Gustav Jäger and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld. [4]
Seeking inspiration in the tropics, in 1858 Platzmann set out for Paranagua, in the Brazilian state of Paraná, in order to study and draw the local flora and fauna. He bought a parcel of land and lived there until 1864, rarely leaving the small island (Ilha dos Pinheiros) where he lived. Some of his works would later be published in the Belgian botanical journal La Belgique horticole . However, he seems to have kept all of his work, without making it available to a wider public during his lifetime; it remained in the possession of his family."
As noted by Kammler, [3] upon returning to Germany, the explorer and ethnographer Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius sent Platzmann a copy of his compilation of glossaries of many indigenous languages of Brazil. This seems to have awakened in Platzmann an interest in the topic of languages. [5]
Platzmann developed a strong interest in long-distance word relationships. In 1871 he published his Amerikanisch-asiatische Etymologien via Behring-Strasse 'from the east to the west', [6] which contained "cognates" which he claimed linked words from the New and Old world languages etymologically. These observations paid no heed to the comparative method. The book was widely derided, a fact which Platzmann acknowledged, even so, his interest in such linkages seems to have remained a strong motivation for his work in collecting and republishing grammars of indigenous languages of the new world for the rest of his life.
A random sample of these very questionable linkages is shown below:
New World word | New World language | Old World word | Old World language |
---|---|---|---|
Ri | Quechua | rī | Sanskrit |
Riču | Quechua | lōk | Sanskrit |
Rik, right | Botocudo | right, right | English |
Rima, speak | Quechua | rumor, speak | Latin |
Rimay, speech | Quechua | 'rēma, speech | Greek language |
Ris, red | Taino | russus, red | Latin |
Platzmann allowed himself to conclude that any similarity between any word from any New World language and any word from any Old World language with a vaguely similar meaning was significant, when in fact the similarities were almost certainly due to chance.
In a letter to his fellow ethnologist Alice Cunningham Fletcher, Daniel Garrison Brinton describes this kind of work by Platzmann as "cranky" and clearly implies his opinion that it is bad work:
I have just been reading Julius Platzmann's autobiographical pamphlet in which he explains why he republished so many Americana. The reason was, he wanted to prove that the Amer. langs. (all of them) are substantially the same as the Aryan, Semitic, African & Chinese tongues! He gives many examples of verbal identity. Such cranky productions are either sad or humorous, as you choose to take them. If I hear of any good article on the subject, I shall acquaint you with it. [7]
Whatever his motivations, over the course of this research, he turned his considerable monetary resources toward building a private library of rare early grammars. He described his journey in collecting and republishing linguistic works as his "great, twenty-year, dilettante language study". [4] (Van Hal 2020:72, translation) His life became almost exclusively focused on studying books in his collection, and he described himself as a near hermit:
I was able to read with diligence, because I never go out in company or to a club, never go to the theatre, never go to a concert, never go to a restaurant [...], never travel – with minimal exceptions –, am at home all year round, go to bed at 10 o’clock, even if I don't get up early, but I am with my cause all day long and I very much hate it when someone visits me and takes me out of my circle of thoughts. (Van Hal 2020, translation) [8]
It is rather ironic that his place in the history of linguistics came about in Europe, given that his passion for American (and other) languages arose only once he had left Brazil. He spent enormous sums of money on these volumes. Vasconcellos (1881:7) cites a then-recent catalog listing of one work — Alonso de Molina’s dictionary of Nahuatl — as being valued at “£72 sterling”, which amounts to thousands of pounds in modern dollars, perhaps a year's salary for a laborer in those days. [9] Platzmann himself practically bragged about the cost of his volumes: "I spared no expense. I have repeatedly paid 1000, 2000, even 5000 francs for a book." [4]
Platzmann published a catalog of his collection as of 1876, when it contained exclusively volumes related to American languages. [10] The importance of this library was recognized by influential contemporaries, among them August Friedrich Pott, who called them "an enviable treasure of the highest value and a unique private possession of its kind". [11] It was these books that would become the basis of his later facsimile editions.
By the time of his death, his library had grown to include 1400 volumes. A catalog of the auction of that library was published posthumously by Oswald Weigel in 1903. [12] [13]
In some cases Platzmann commissioned private copies of manuscripts for himself or for others. One amanuensis for these transcriptions was Emanuel Forchhammer, who copied a rare manuscript grammar of the Chiquitano language of Bolivia, which was later used as a source in a published grammar of the language. [14] [15] Forchhammer also transcribed the so-called Gülich manuscript, [16] a collectanea of content about Tupi, for Karl Friederich Henning, the personal secretary and tutor for Pedro II of Brazil, with whom Platzmann was personally acquainted. [17]
Later in his life, Platzmann published facsimiles of his collected books, beginning in 1874 with a facsimile of the Tupi grammar of 1595 by the Jesuit José de Anchieta. Facsimile editions of historical South American language books followed and eventually included the Carib, Arawak, Tupi, Guarani, Araucano, Quechua, Aymara, Mapudungun, and Mexican Nahuatl (Aztec) languages.
The incredible fidelity of the facsimiles is demonstrated below by two sample pages from Ludovico Bertonio's vocabulary of the Aymara language. [18] On the left is the original, and a scan of the same page in the facsimile is on the right. [19]
![]() | ![]() |
Page 22, Bertonio original | Platzmann's facsimile |
Van Hal (2020) makes the case that it was the well-known German linguist August Pott who encouraged Platzmann to continue creating facsimiles, knowing that Platzmann was both obsessive enough to carry out the tedious work, and wealthy enough to afford to purchase exceedingly rare and valuable originals. [8]
Platzmann himself dedicated a work to the topic of why he created facsimiles (among many meandering asides). [20] Like his earlier work on spurious etymologies, this work also meanders into unreliable musing on putative Old/New world etymological relationships.
As for the facsimiles themselves, it is clear that he held that the early grammars should not be modified at all:
I prefer the old American grammars as they are. No one should try to correct them, for it is impossible. One couldn't improve a Raphael or a Rembrandt. They are masterpieces from a bygone era that should remain as they are. (Platzmann 1893:98)
All of Platzmann's facsimiles were published by B. G. Teubner. The table below is a complete list of his facsimile editions, based on Van Hal (2020).
Year of Facsimile | Author | Facsimile | English Translation | Language |
---|---|---|---|---|
1874 | José de Anchieta (1534–1597) | Arte de Gramática da Língua mais Usada na Costa do Brasil [21] | Art of Grammar of the Most Used Language on the Coast of Brazil | Tupi |
1876 | José de Anchieta (1534–1597) | Arte de grammatica da lingua mais usada na costa do Brasil feita pelo P. Joseph de Anchieta [22] | Art of Grammar of the Most Used Language on the Coast of Brazil Made by Father Joseph de Anchieta | Tupi |
1876 | Antonio Ruiz de Montoya (1585–1652) | Arte, Bocabulario, Tesoro y Catecismo de la lengva gvarani por Antonio Ruiz de Montoya [1585–1652]. 4 vols. [23] | Art, Vocabulary, Treasure and Catechism of the Guarani Language by Antonio Ruiz de Montoya. 4 vols. | Guarani |
1878 | Luís Figueira (1573–1643) | A Arte da Língua Brasílica [24] | Grammar of the Language of Brazil, Composed by Father Luiz Figueira | Tupi |
1878 | Antônio de Araújo (1566–1632) | Catecismo brasilico da doutrina christãa [25] | Brazilian Catechism of Christian Doctrine | Tupi |
1879 | Ludovico Bertonio (1555–1628) | Arte de la lengua aymara compuesta por el P. Ludovico Bertonio [26] | Art of the Aymara Language Composed by Father Ludovico Bertonio | Aymara |
1879 | Ludovico Bertonio (1555–1628) | Vocabulario de la lengua aymara compuesto por el P. Ludovico Bertonio. 2 vols [27] | Vocabulary of the Aymara Language Composed by Father Ludovico Bertonio. 2 vols. | Aymara |
1880 | Alonso de Molina (1513?–1585?) | Vocabulario de la lengua méxicana compuesto por el P. Fr. Alonso de Molina [28] | Vocabulary of the Mexican Language Composed by Father Alonso de Molina | Mexican (Nahuatl) |
1883 | Bernhard Havestadt (1714–1781) | Chilidúgu, sive, Tractatus linguae chilensis, opera Bernardi Havestadt [29] | Chilidúgu, or, Treatise on the Chilean Language, Work of Bernardi Havestadt | Mapudungun/Chilean |
1887 | Luis de Valdivia (1561–1642) | Arte, Vocabulario y Confesionario de la lengua de Chile, compuestos por Luiz de Valdivia [30] | Art, Vocabulary and Confessionary of the Language of Chile, Composed by Luiz de Valdivia | Mapudungun/Chilean |
1888 | Francisco de Tauste, Matías Ruiz Blanco, Diego de Tapia, Manuel de Yangues | Algunas obras raras sobre la lengua cumanagota [31] | Some Rare Works on the Cumanagota Language [5 vols.] | Cumanagoto |
1888 | Francisco de Tausté (1626–1685) | Vol. 1: Arte, Bocabulario, Doctrina christiana, y Catecismo de la lengua de Cumana, compuestos por el R. P. Fr. Francisco de Tausté [32] | Vol. 1: Art, Vocabulary, Christian Doctrine, and Catechism of the Language of Cumana, Composed by Father Francisco de Tausté | Cumanagoto |
1888 | Manuel de Yangues (d. 1676) | Vol. 2: Principios y reglas de la lengua Cumanagota, c. un diccionario | Vol. 2: Principles and Rules of the Cumanagota Language, with a Dictionary | Cumanagoto |
1888 | Matías Ruiz Blanco (1643–1705) | Vol. 3: Arte y tesoro de la lengua Cumanagota [Matías Ruiz Blanco, 1643–1705] | Vol. 3: Art and Treasure of the Cumanagota Language | Cumanagoto |
1888 | Diego de Tapía (fl. 1746) | Vol. 4-5: Confesionario mas lato en lengua cumanagota por fr. Diego de Tapía [fl. 1746] | Vol. 4-5: Extended Confessionary in the Cumanagota Language by fr. Diego de Tapía | Cumanagoto |
1890 | Anselm Eckart (1721–1809) | Anselmi Eckarti [1721–1809] Specimen linguae brasilicae vulgaris | Anselm Eckart's Specimen of the Common Brazilian Language | Tupi |
1891 | Domingo de Santo Tomás (1499–1570) | Arte de la lengua quichua compuesta por Domingo de Sancto Thomas [1499–1570] | Art of the Quechua Language Composed by Domingo de Santo Tomás | Quechua |
1892 | Raymond Breton (1609–1679) | Dictionaire caraibe-français composé par le R. P. Raymond Breton [1609–1679] | Carib-French Dictionary Composed by Father Raymond Breton | Carib |
1894 | Pedro Marbán (1653–1713) | Arte de la lengua Moxa con su vocabulario y cathecismo por el padre Pedro Marban [1653–1713] | Art of the Moxa Language with its Vocabulary and Catechism by Father Pedro Marban | Moxa |
1896 | Anonymous | O diccionario anonymo da lingua geral do Brasil publicado de novo com o seu reverso por Julio Platzmann [Edition used: Lissabon 1795] | The Anonymous Dictionary of the General Language of Brazil newly published with reverse by Julio Platzmann | Língua Geral |
1896 | Bernardo de Nantes (fl. 1709) | Catecismo da lingua kariris composto pelo R. P. Fr. Bernardo de Nantes [fl. 1709] | Catechism of the Kariri Language Composed by Father Bernardo de Nantes | Kariri |
1898 | Antonio Ruiz de Montoya (1585–1652) | Tesoro de la lengua guarani [Antonio Ruiz de Montoya] [33] | The Language Material of the Guarani Grammar by Antonio Ruiz | Guarani |
1899 | Thomas Falkner (1707–1784) | Thomas Falkner's Nachricht von der moluchischen Sprache, separat und unverändert herausgegeben von Julius Platzmann mit einer Karte. | Thomas Falkner's Account of the Moluchian Language, published separated and unchanged by Julius Platzmann with a Map. | Mapudungun |
1900 | Raymond Breton (1609–1679) | Dictionaire français-caraibe composé par le R.P. Raymond Breton | French-Carib Dictionary Composed by Father Raymond Breton | Carib |
1900 | Christlieb Quandt (1740–1824) | Des Herrnhuter Glaubensboten Christlieb Quandt [1740–1824] nachricht von der Arawackischen Sprache | The Herrnhut Missionary Christlieb Quandt's Account of the Arawak Language | Arawak (Lokono) |
1902 | Martin Dobrizhoffer (1717–1791) | Dobrizhoffer, Martin, des Abbé [1717–1791], Auskunft über die Abiponische Sprache | Dobrizhoffer, Martin, the Abbé, Information on the Abipón Language | Abipón |
1903 | Theophilus Schmidt (fl. 1860) | Der Sprachstoff der Patagonischen Grammatik des Theophilus Schmidt [fl. 1860]. Mit einer Karte des südlichen Südamerika | The Language Material of the Patagonian Grammar by Theophilus Schmidt. With a Map of Southern South America | Patagonian/Tehuelche |
As the table suggests, he held a particular interest in the Tupi-Guaraní language family of Brazil.
Platzmann wrote three wholely original books:
He also wrote a short piece with an unclear publication history, but which contains an interesting description of the nature and culture in the coastal areas around Paranaguá:
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: year (link)He also wrote four derivative works, some based the sources of his facsimiles (Anchieta, Figueira, Anonymous), and one on a bible translation.
Charles Jacques Édouard Morren named the species Vriesea platzmannii in Platzmann's honor. [16]
Platzmann was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1886. [38]
Unsold stocks of Platzmann’s facsimiles (they had sold poorly) were purchased en masse from Teubner and subsequently sold by Otto Harrassowitz. [8]
Platzmann’s personal library was auctioned off by Otto Weigel in 1903.
Weigel enumerates three awards (Weigel 1903:II-III) received by Platzmann, among "many more":
Of his legacy, Grumpelt comments:
Julius Platzmann lived a quiet and withdrawn life, devoting himself solely to the serious study of linguistics, making the rare treasures of linguistics available to the public through reprints, and collecting documents of human speech in all its diversity. [39]
Despite his harsh critique of Platzmann's comparative efforts cited above, Weigel (1903) also quotes Daniel Brinton's very high praise for Platzmann's work on facsimiles:
By his beautiful and faithful republications of old authors he has, perhaps, done more than any other living man to aid these studies.
…einen beneidenswerthen Schatz von allerhöchstem Werthe und in seiner Art einzigen Privatbesitz
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link)OSWALD WIEGEL, of Leipzig, will sell at auction on June 11–13 the library of the late Dr. Julius Platzmann, which contains some fourteen hundred works on American languages, especially on the languages of South America.
Al exito de la segunda sesion del Congreso internacional de los Americanistas ( Luxemburgo), nos hizo el S' Julius Platzmann, de Leipzig, el extremo favor de confiarnos la copia de un manuscrito que se guarda en la biblioteca de la Universidad de Jena con el título siguiente : Grammática de la lengua Chiquita, compuesta probablemente por el Padre Fray Georgio Garcia.