In tough times, someone came up with a whim and wanted to publish a book like this.
At that time, Europe was shrouded in the Napoleonic wars. Johann August Barth, a publisher, printer, and bookseller from Wroclaw (now Poland), wanted to do it with hopes of a truce.
In 1816, when the book was first published, he wrote in his postscript: "While all the Germans were contemplating the design of a monument to world peace... I, as a bookseller, also tried my best to fill the monument's space. A blank. I built a commemorative plaque, without bronze or marble, to present to my contemporaries a work, a work created with the invention of a 'German genius'. German genius - Gutenberg , he invented movable type printing. There is no doubt that his invention is perfect, today and tomorrow."
The original idea of publishing this book: to sing praises to the world in all the languages that can be collected. "For the sake of this book, I have invited scholars from Germany and other countries to specialize in their creations; for their creation, I have carefully designed the pages with lace decorations, and have gone all out to guarantee the printing of this book. Artistic quality."
John August Barth's whimsy attracted many prominent scholars who wrote the text for the book. The name of the book - "Peace Monument", most of the works in the book are poems.
Friedrich David Glatter, one of the founders of German and Scandinavian linguistics, wrote several books in Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Gothic and Frankish a poem.
Peter Friedrich Cangise, who teaches ancient Greek and Roman literature at the Universities of Wroclaw and Greifswald, wrote several poems in Greek, Latin and Italian.
There are two Latin poems in the book. These two poems reflect two periods of language history: Classical Latin and Medieval Latin.
The last part of the book is the "exotic" language - one of the Susu and Arawak languages. The Arawak Poetry was written by Kristlib Quent, a Latvian who lived with Indians in Suriname for 12 years. He also wrote a poem in Estonian.
The only non-original work - a fragment of the Old Icelandic poem "Old Ida" where good triumphs over evil.
The proud work of John August Barth was Gothic poetry.
In his postscript, he wrote: "The printers . Poems.” The pages with the poems imitated not only the colors of the pages of the Silver Code, but also the texture of the pages. The Argent Code - a unique manuscript of the 6th century.
Wroclaw
Some poems have an author's name with only one initial, and some have no author's name at all. An author named Z…n wrote a poem in Dutch and an author named L wrote a poem in Spanish.
This book by John August Barth offers readers an opportunity to appreciate scripts in a variety of languages, not only Latin, but also Oriental, including: Hebrew, Samaritan, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopian, Coptic and Chinese.
When the book was first published in 1816, it was a collection of 43 works in various languages. John August Barth was not entirely satisfied with this result. In 1818, when the book was republished, he wrote in his postscript: "Two years ago, I published this book for the first time in many languages. This book was very far from the goal I had set for myself. far. The language variety is insufficient, the task of collecting languages from all over the world is not completed, and the book's binding needs to be improved. Since then, I have been working on improving the book: the appearance of the binding, the content of the content. The book, as it is now, I can finally hand in a satisfactory answer to my readers. There were 43 languages in the book in the first edition, and now there are more than 100 in the book.
" Second edition of Peace Monument confirms John August Barth's creative ideas are extremely rich. He used primitive lithography to bring out the beauty of the poems, illustrated techniques, and added German and Latin translations of all works at the end.
In the foreword to the second edition, John August Barth confessed his desire to express gratitude: "I have no other purpose, to publish a book like this, as an expression of my desire to restore peace. of joy and gratitude.”
If the life of this illustrious publisher and printer had not come to an abrupt end in 1818, there is no doubt that the new edition will be richer and more colorful.
There is a "Peace Monument" in the collection of the Russian State Library. Long ago, this book was in the collection of Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, wife of Tsar Nicholas I. The book does not have a publication date. The book differs from the first and second editions in that there is no preface, postscript and translation, and the table of contents, the order of the table of contents, and the artistic binding are completely different.
From this it can be speculated that it was a copy, printed separately from the original, as a gift to monarchs Alexander I, Friedrich Wilhelm III and Franz I.
Russian State Library
At present, there is a doubt: are there only three copies of the book that were given as a gift? There is no evidence of this. Who was this book given to? Queen Alexandra Fyodorovna was the daughter of Frederick William III and daughter-in-law of Alexander I. From whom did the book come from, and under what circumstances did it become her treasure? Perhaps librarians will one day find answers to these questions.
We list all languages in this book in the Russian State Library: German, Low German, Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Gothic, Franconian, German (Hohenstau) Finnish), Swedish, Dutch, English, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Ancient Greek, Latin (classical and medieval), Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, Polish , Czech, Luzhzhi, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Samaritan, Chaldean, Yiddish, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopian, Turkish, Coptic, Moroccan, Chinese, Persian, Susu, Arawak, Greenlandic.
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