Leopold Friedrich Prowe (14 October 1821 – 26 September 1887) was a German
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...
and
gymnasium instructor, born as the son of a town councillor of
Thorn in
West Prussia (now in
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
), the town where in 1473 the astronomer
Nicolaus Copernicus was born. Prowe compiled a comprehensive
German language
German (, ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western Europe, Western and Central Europe. It is the majority and Official language, official (or co-official) language in Germany, Austria, Switze ...
biography
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curri ...
of Copernicus, titled ''Nicolaus Coppernicus''.
Life
Prowe studied in
Leipzig
Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...
and Berlin and then returned home to become a teacher at the gymnasium of Thorn. In 1839, a local "monument committee" had been founded with the intention to erect a monument, which was created by
Friedrich Tieck of Berlin, and erected posthumously in 1853. The activities then continued in a society for science and arts, called ''Coppernicus-Verein für Wissenschaft und Kunst zu Thorn'', headed by Prowe for many years.
Work
Prowe researched the local archives of
Copernicus' birthplace, as well as those of other towns in
Prussia
Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...
where the astronomer had worked and lived, especially
Frauenburg. He also travelled to
Krakau, then part of Austria, to Italian cities, and to
Upsala in Sweden, where documents and books owned by the astronomer and scientist Copernicus had been abducted to in later wars. He published several reports, contributed to the celebration of the 400th anniversary in 1873, and to the Latin and German edition of
de revolutionibus in 1879.
Prowe's biography of the astronomer, published in 1883 and 1884, consists of two volumes, the first (about 970 pages split in two books, before and after the year 1512) describes his life, the second volumes (over 500 pages) focuses on works of the astronomer, works falsely attributed to him, and other documents related.
Prowe's biography is still considered a masterwork:
* "Despite its age and defects, Prowe's still remains the standard biography of Copernicus."
* "As a result of its comprehensive treatment of the stages of Copernicus's life and its cultural, political, and scientific context, the biography by PROWE is regarded as unsurpassed to the present, despite some corrections recommended by more recent biographical research.
[Andreas Kühne, "Copernicanism" (translated from German by Andrea Katherina-Mayer), in Arne Hessenbruch, ed., ''Reader's Guide to the History of Science'' Taylor & Francis, 2000, p. 152.]
/ref>
Copernicus' nationality has since long been a source of argument between Germans and Poles. Viewed in Poland as one of the nation's greatest figures, Germans also consider the man to be one of their own. Leopold Prowe contributed to the view that Copernicus had German origins.
Notes
External links
*
*
Works by Prowe
https://books.google.com/books?lr=&q=author%3A%22Leopold+Prowe%22&btnG=Search+Books] at Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical charac ...
Gedächtnisrede auf Professor Leopold Prowe 1887, M. Curtze
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Prowe, Leopold
1821 births
1889 deaths
German biographers
German male biographers
People from Toruń
People from West Prussia
19th-century German historians
19th-century German male writers
19th-century German writers