Oluf Gerhard Tychsen
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Oluf (Olaus) Gerhard Tychsen (14 December 1734, Tondern–30 December 1815, Rostock) was a German orientalist and Hebrew scholar. He is known today as one of the founding fathers of Islamic numismatics.
As a Protestant Christian, he attended secondary school in Altona and the Rabbinic school attached to the Altona synagogue. From 1756 he studied oriental languages at the University of Halle.
He spent a year of missionary work towards the conversion of Jews, and then taught Hebrew in the newly found University of Buetzow. He held librarian and academic positions in Buetzow. There he founded the Journal "Buetzower Nebenstunden", which comprised a broad variety of articles about the Old Testament and Oriental Culture, especially material culture, such as Islamic coins.
From 1778 he taught at the University of Rostock. He worked in different fields of oriental studies, Arabic, Syriac, Hebrew. His Introduction into Islamic Numismatics in 1794 was the first scientific handbook on this topic, based on 27 years of research. Among his students were Christian Martin Frähn, later professor in Kazan and later founder of the Asiatic Museum in Saint Petersburg, and Christian Adler, who wrote the first scientific catalogue of a collection of Islamic coins and became later superintendent of Schleswig-Holstein.
[edit] References
- Niklot Klüßendorf: „Das akademische Münzkabinett der Universität Rostock (1794-1944).“ In: Werner Buchholz, Günter Mangelsdorf (ed.): Land am Meer, Pommern im Spiegel seiner Geschichte, Roderich Schmidt zum 70. Geburtstag, Köln et al. 1995, pp. 725-757.
- Stefan Heidemann: „Die Entwicklung der Methoden in der Islamischen Numismatik im 18. Jahrhundert - War Johann Jacob Reiske ihr Begründer?“ In: Hans-Georg Ebert, Thoralf Hanstein (edd.): Johann Jacob Reiske: Persönlichkeit und Wirkung, Leipzig 2005 (= Beiträge zur Leipziger Universitäts- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte 7), pp. 147-202.
