Page - 305 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

© PER PIPPIN ASPAAS AND LÁSZLÓ KONTLER, ����  |  doi:10.1163/9789004416833_009 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. Chapter 7 Disruption of Old Structures After a seven-month stay in Copenhagen, on May 22, 1770 Hell and Sajnovics finally left for Vienna, which they reached on August 12. The route they took was different from the outward journey. Instead of a sea voyage to Travemünde, they traveled overland in a southwestern direction, visiting first of all the Acad- emy for Nobles at Sorø, where they met the likes of Gerhard Schøning (1722– 80), a historian specializing in Norway and the ethnographic history of far northern peoples.1 Thereafter, they passed through Funen, southern Jutland, Schleswig, and Holstein to Hamburg. From Hamburg, they again chose a more westerly route, this time visiting Göttingen and Kassel before turning straight westward to Düsseldorf and then south through Cologne to Mannheim and Schwetzingen. They then headed east, via Würzburg, Ingolstadt, and Passau to reach Linz, Kremsmünster, Graz, and finally Vienna. The record of encounters with fellow astronomers or other scholars (apart from passing references to whom they met and where) is meager, but a desire to visit as many residences of Jesuit missionaries as possible, as well as observatories and other secular research institutions, appears to have been the reason behind this winding track. Hell’s grandiose dream of a long publicity tour of virtually all Western Eu- rope, as outlined in his letter to the pope before the expedition, thus did not materialize.2 Yet, he had no reason for disappointment. He and his companion were elected members of the academies of Trondheim and Copenhagen, and treated in the Danish capital as celebrities. In every respect, the expedition was a success: besides accomplishing the main task, the observation of the transit of Venus, during their nine-month stay in Vardø they carried out systematic work and collected materials in several academic fields whose processing would keep Hell busy for many years. They even managed to analyze some of these materials and publish the results while still in Copenhagen. Although in regard of the transit observation even this was considered late by some fellow astronomers and a bitter controversy ensued, during the two years and three 1 Sajnovics, travel diary, draft version (wus). On Schøning, see Stian Bones Larsen, “Gerhard Schøning, Gothicism, and the Re-evaluation of the Northern Landscapes,” Acta borealia 18, no. 2 (2001): 61–84. 2 As the letter to the pope is the only source where this idea is raised, it is naturally a question how realistic it was to begin with.