Maximilianus Hell (1720-1792) - Munin

Thanks to these contributions, we know a great deal about the position of Maximilianus Hell
in eighteenth-century Vienna. Nora Pärr has quite recently submitted a doctoral thesis on
Maximilianus Hell to the University of Vienna. I have not had access to her monograph
during the writing of this thesis, nor has she seen my own works in progress.
Slovak interest in Hell’s career is manifest in a set of contextualised studies edited by Ján
Novák in 1970 (in Slovak, with German summaries) as well as in a full-length biography by
Elena Ferencová (in Slovak, 1995). These contributions contain many pieces of information,
especially on Hell’s childhood and youth in a region that is now found within the confines of
Slovakia. As for the ‘Slovakness’ of Father Hell, however, this is often assumed, but has
turned out to be rather difficult to prove.
Hungarian contributions to the study of Hell’s career have multiplied since the days of Ferenc
Pinzger. The tendency is to portray Hell, somewhat anachronistically, as a representative of
the Hungarian nation state. Hell’s patriotic remarks concerning the Kingdom of Hungary are
all too often ‘translated’ as though they were uttered by a nineteenth- or twentieth-century
nationalist. His alleged part in the discovery of the Finno-Ugrian language group is an
important ingredient in many of these articles, few of which are based upon primary
sources. 55 More promising is the intellectual historian at the European University of Budapest
László Kontler’s recent interest in the cultural-political context of Maximilianus Hell’s career
(2011 & in press).
As for German authors, the prolific historian of astronomy from the Observatorium Hoher
List in Daun, Peter Brosche has investigated Hell’s contacts with certain German
contemporaries (in German, 1977 & 2010; in English, 2001). Alexander Moutchnik’s doctoral
thesis on Christianus Mayer (2006, mentioned above) is also noteworthy in this context.
Finally, recent contributions by Elvira Botez (in English, 2004) and Ferenc Szenkovits (in
Hungarian, 2006) treat Hell’s period as a professor in present-day Romania. 56
55 To cite but one example, the editors of an otherwise fine Hungarian edition of Sajnovics’ Demonstratio have
taken recourse to a report on archival studies made by Hungarian linguists in Vienna during the first half of the
nineteenth century, instead of revisiting the manuscript collections of the Vienna University Observatory
themselves (cf. the contribution of Szíj to Sajnovics 1994). The conclusions of nineteenth-century authors thus
holds sway.
56 I have been unable to get access to Victor Marian, “Maximilian Hell (Höll) şi activitatea sa la Cluj”, Gazeta
Matematică vol. 49 (1943-44), pp. 63-72 (‘Maximilianus Hell and his activities in Claudiopolis’, referred to in
Hadobás 2008, p. 73 and by other authors).
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