Page - 46 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 146 and natural law,23 were conceived already during the liberation wars, and spontaneous as well as organized resettlement—mostly of several hundred thousand Balkan Orthodox Serbs, and Catholic German “Swabians”—also took place around the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Matthäus Höll’s marriage certificate of November 22, 1707 at the parish reg- istry of Banská Štiavnica, which refers to him as a Gen[erosus] D[omi]nus, a man of respectable social standing, identifies him as natione Bohemus ex Schlackenberg (i.e., “a Bohemian by nation from Schlackenberg”). There is, however, no place called Schlackenberg in Bohemia. A late descendant has put forward “Schlaggenwerth in Bavaria” as Höll’s place of origin, also suggesting that Bohemia may have been but a temporary station in the family’s migra- tion.24 This is contradicted by his identification in the church documents as a Bohemian, which has given rise to speculation about Schlackenwerth, or even Schlaggenwald (in Czech, Ostrov and Horní Slavkov, respectively), both in the Karlovy Vary region in western Bohemia.25 The union of Höll, a widower, with Julianna Victoria Staindl (1685–?),26 the daughter of an official auditor (Überraiter)27 in Štiavnické Bane, was his second marriage. In total, his two marriages produced twenty-two sons and daughters, only some of whom are mentioned in any meaningful historical records. Apart from Maximilian, the youngest of the family, the best known is Joseph Karl (1713–89), who, like his father, became a prodigious engineer and inventor. Ignaz Cornelius (1711–82), who allegedly spoke eighteen languages, also filled various functions around the local mines, while a daughter whose name is not known is said to have been as proficient in mathematics as any student of the Banská Štiavnica min- ing school established in 1735. There are records of other Hölls working in the 23 László Kontler and Balázs Trencsényi, “Hungary,” in European Political Thought 1450–1700: Religion, Law, and Philosophy, ed. Howell A. Lloyd, Glenn Burgess, and Simon Hodson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 176–207, here 203–4. 24 Pinzger, Hell Miksa, 10. 25 Faller, A magyar bányagépesítés úttörői, 18–19; Dušan Janota, “Život Maximiliána Hella/ Das Leben Maximilian Hells,” in Maximilián Hell 1720–1792: Zborník prednášok z konferen- cie o živote a diele Maximiliána Hella, ed. Ján Novák (Bratislava: úrad pre Slovenské ban- ské múzeum v Ban. Štiavnici, 1970), 45–69, here 45. In each case, the German place names—“slag hill,” “slag forest”—refer to mining activity. 26 In an autobiography, preserved in his own hand and dated Vienna, June 9, 1773, Hell spells the name of his mother “Juliana Steindlin.” Private collection of copies of documents of the late Magda Vargha (1931–2010) at the Miklós Konkoly-Thege Institute of Astronomy in Budapest (hereafter: Vargha priv.). 27 Überreiter is interpreted by Norbert Weyss, “Maximilian Hell und sein Fernsehen vor 200 Jahren, Part ii,” Maria Enzersdorfer Kulturnachrichten (December 1986): 4 as kaiserliche[r] Rechnungskontrollor; by Pinzger, Hell Miksa, 1:10, simply as ellenőr (controller).