Maximilianus Hell (1720-1792) - Munin

Maskelyne, upon repeated requests for help in furnishing the Agria observatory with
instruments. 346
Until solid evidence emerges, the alleged ‘English trace’ in Hell’s career ought to be treated
as dubious. The ‘Danish trace’, however, has a more solid fundament in the sources. In a
petition delivered to the Kaiserlich-Königliche Hofkammer (virtually, the ‘ministry of
finance’) in July 1781, Hell asks for a higher salary. In doing so, he argues that one reason
why he deserves a rise in payment is 347
because I, in consideration of the honour of the Imperial and Royal Court,
rejected an offer of a yearly personal pension of a thousand Gülden from the
Danish Court as a token of gratitude for my highly strenuous and dangerous
journey to the island Wardoehus in the Arctic Ocean, where I observed the
transit of Venus in front of the Sun. I refused to receive this pension because I,
as Imperial and Royal Court Astronomer, deemed that it would be negative for
the honour of the Imperial and Royal Court if I benefited from a pension from a
foreign court in conducting my work.
There is no mention here of any similar offer from England, nor have I found it mentioned in
any other document that has been available for this study.
On the whole, the scientific ambitions of Maximilianus Hell appear to have been scaled down
after about 1780. The major astronomical contributions to the supplements of the
Ephemerides Astronomicae in the 1780s were either authored by Hell’s serving assistant
Franciscus Triesnecker or by his former assistant, Antonius Pilgram. 348 His own contributions
in the appendices of the Ephemerides Astronomicae gradually shifted away from the core
subjects of practical and theoretical astronomy towards more externally oriented works. Thus,
in the volumes for 1787 and 1788 Hell published poems and other texts celebrating the
discovery of the planet now known as Uranus, which, he argued, should be named Urania
after the muse of astronomy; in the 1789 volume, he published a curious elegy arguing that
346 See Section II.3.1 below.
347 Hell to the Kaiserl: Königl: Hofkammer in Vienna, no date, but according to an administrative note received
25 July 1781 (Akademie der Wissenschaften in Vienna): “weil ich in Betrachtung der Ehre des K: K: Hofes die
mir von Dänischen Hof angetragene jährliche Pension ad Personam von tausend Gülden als eine Remuneration
wegen der sehr beschwerlichen und gefährlichen Reise nach der Jnsul Wardohuβ im Eiβmeere, wo ich den
Durchgang der Venus vor der Sonne beobachtet hatte, ausgeschlagen, und nicht angenommen hatte, aus Ursach,
weil ich als K: K: HofAstronom der Ehre des K: K: Hofes nachtheilig erachtete, von einem fremden auswärtigen
Hofe eine Pension meines Amts wegen zu ziehen.”
348 Cf. Sommervogel 1893, pp. 244-246. Beginning in the late 1780s, the highly talented, but far less renowned
astronomer Johann Tobias Bürg (1766-1834) also took part in observations at the Vienna University
Observatory. After Hell’s death in 1792, he served as Triesnecker’s adjunct and co-editor of the Ephemerides
(for a popular account of Bürg’s career, see Firneis 1993).
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