Julius Platzmann

Karl Julius Platzmann was a German botanical illustrator, writer, and bibliophile who published exact facsimile editions of rare early missionary grammars of indigenous languages of the Americas. Born to a well-to-do family in the Kingdom of Saxony, Platzmann first studied as an artist, and travelled to Brazil, where he created botanical illustrations. He later returned to Germany, where he would spend the rest of a very private life collecting books about linguistics, as well as writing original works and creating facsimile editions of rare early grammars of American languages. Publication of these works made documentation of several American languages available to a much broader audience.

Early life and education

Platzmann was born in Leipzig on January 31, 1832. He was born into a wealthy, influential Leipzig family.
His mother Marianna Platzmann inherited family wealth. His father Theodor Alexander Platzmann was a jurist and
. Like many wealthy German families of the time, the family kept both urban and country homes — Platzmann grew up spending summers on the family estate of Hohnstädt in Grimma, not far from the intellectual hub of Leipzig, where his family also owned a home on Reichstrasse in Leipzig. Like his father, he attended the prestigious Fürstenschule Grimma boarding school, whose students would often go on to study at the University of Leipzig.
He became interested in drawing and botany, however, and after just three years at the Fürstenschule, he transferred to the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers would include the well-known painters Gustav Jäger and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld.

Career as a Botanical Illustrator

Seeking inspiration in the tropics, in 1858 Platzmann set out for Paranagua, in the Brazilian state of Paraná, in order to study and draw the local flora. He bought a parcel of land and lived there until 1864, rarely leaving the small island where he lived. Some of his works would later be published in the Belgian botanical journal La Belgique Horticole. However, he seems to have kept all of his work, without making it available to a wider public during his lifetime; it remained in the possession of his family.

Tenuous comparative links between Old and New World languages

As noted by Kammler, upon returning to Germany the explorer and ethnographer Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius sent Platzmann a copy of his compilation of glossaries of many indigenous languages of Brazil. This seems to have awakened in Platzmann an interest in the topic of languages.
Platzmann developed a strong interest in long-distance word relationships. In 1871 he published his Amerikanisch-asiatische Etymologien via Behring-Strasse 'from the east to the west', which contained "cognates" which he claimed linked words from the New and Old world languages etymologically. These observations paid no heed to the comparative method. The book was widely derided, a fact which Platzmann acknowledged, even so, his interest in such linkages seems to have remained a strong motivation for his work in collecting and republishing grammars of indigenous languages of the New World for the rest of his life.
A random sample of these methodologically unsound linkages is shown below:

New World word	New World language	Old World word	Old World language
Ri	Quechua	rī	Sanskrit
Riču	Quechua	lōk	Sanskrit
Rik, right	Botocudo	right, right	English
Rima, speak	Quechua	rumor, speak	Latin
Rimay, speech	Quechua	'rēma, speech	Greek language
Ris, red	Taino	russus, red	Latin

Platzmann allowed himself to conclude that any similarity between any word from any New World language and any word from any Old World language with a vaguely similar meaning was significant, when in fact the similarities were almost certainly due to chance.
Peetermans ascribes this work to Platzmann's belief in "the monogenetic origin of all humans and their languages and enabled him to gain some insight into the original human language of prehistoric times, die Sprache des Menschen 'the language of the human ', which is the mother tongue from which die Sprachen der Völker 'the languages of the peoples' all derive."
While Platzmann predicted that his work would be rediscovered and appreciated in the future, his contemporary linguists disrgarded the value of what they evaluated as irresponsible etymological fancies. In a letter to Alice Cunningham Fletcher, Daniel Garrison Brinton described this kind of work by Platzmann as “cranky”:

I have just been reading Julius Platzmann's autobiographical pamphlet in which he explains why he republished so many Americana. The reason was, he wanted to prove that the Amer. langs. are substantially the same as the Aryan, Semitic, African & Chinese tongues! He gives many examples of verbal identity. Such cranky productions are either sad or humorous, as you choose to take them. If I hear of any good article on the subject, I shall acquaint you with it.

Collecting early missionary grammars and dictionaries

Whatever his motivations, over the course of this research, he turned his considerable monetary resources toward building a private library of rare early grammars. He described his journey in collecting and republishing linguistic works as his "great, twenty-year, dilettante language study"., translation by Van Hal) His life became almost exclusively focused on studying books in his collection, and he described himself as a near hermit:

I was able to read with diligence, because I never go out in company or to a club, never go to the theatre, never go to a concert, never go to a restaurant , never travel – with minimal exceptions –, am at home all year round, go to bed at 10 o’clock, even if I don't get up early, but I am with my cause all day long and I very much hate it when someone visits me and takes me out of my circle of thoughts.

He spent enormous sums of money on these volumes. Vasconcellos cites a then-recent catalog listing of one work — Alonso de Molina’s dictionary of Nahuatl — as being valued at “£72 sterling”, which amounts to thousands of pounds in modern dollars, perhaps a year's salary for a laborer in those days. Platzmann himself practically bragged about the cost of his volumes: "I spared no expense. I have repeatedly paid 1000, 2000, even 5000 francs for a book."
Platzmann published a catalog of his collection as of 1876, when it contained exclusively volumes related to American languages. The importance of this library was recognized by influential contemporaries, among them August Friedrich Pott, who called them "an enviable treasure of the highest value and a unique private possession of its kind". It was these books that would become the basis of his later facsimile editions.
By the time of his death in 1902, his library had grown to include 1400 volumes. A catalog of the auction of that library was published by Oswald Weigel.
In some cases Platzmann commissioned private copies of manuscripts for himself or for others. One amanuensis for these transcriptions was Emanuel Forchhammer, who copied a rare manuscript grammar of the Chiquitano language of Bolivia, which was later used as a source in a published grammar of the language. Forchhammer also transcribed the so-called Gülich manuscript, a collectanea of content about Tupi, for Karl Friederich Henning, the personal secretary and tutor for Pedro II of Brazil, with whom Platzmann was personally acquainted.

Facsimile editions

Later in his life, Platzmann published facsimiles of his collected books, beginning in 1874 with a facsimile of the Tupi grammar of 1595 by the Jesuit José de Anchieta. Facsimile editions of historical South American language books followed and eventually included the Carib, Arawak, Tupi, Guarani, Araucano, Quechua, Aymara, Mapudungun, and Mexican Nahuatl languages.
The exceptional fidelity of the facsimiles is demonstrated below by two sample pages from Ludovico Bertonio's vocabulary of the Aymara language. On the left is the original, and a scan of the same page in the facsimile is on the right.


Page 22, Bertonio original	Platzmann's facsimile

Van Hal makes the case that it was the well-known German linguist August Pott who encouraged Platzmann to continue creating facsimiles, knowing that Platzmann was both obsessive enough to carry out the tedious work, and wealthy enough to afford to purchase exceedingly rare and valuable originals.
Platzmann himself dedicated a work to the topic of why he created facsimiles. Like his earlier work on spurious etymologies, this work also meanders into unreliable musing on putative Old/New world etymological relationships.
As for the facsimiles themselves, it is clear that he held that the early grammars should not be modified at all:

I prefer the old American grammars as they are. No one should try to correct them, for it is impossible. One couldn't improve a Raphael or a Rembrandt. They are masterpieces from a bygone era that should remain as they are.

All of Platzmann's facsimiles were published by B. G. Teubner. The table below is a complete list of his facsimile editions, based mainly on Van Hal.

Table of Facsimiles

Year of Facsimile	Year of Original Work	Author	Facsimile	Description	Language
1874	1595	José de Anchieta	Arte de Gramática da Língua mais Usada na Costa do Brasil	Art of Grammar of the Most Used Language on the Coast of Brazil	Tupi
1876	1595	José de Anchieta	Arte de grammatica da lingua mais usada na costa do Brasil feita pelo P. Joseph de Anchieta	Art of Grammar of the Most Used Language on the Coast of Brazil Made by Father Joseph de Anchieta	Tupi
1876	1640	Antonio Ruiz de Montoya	Arte, Bocabulario, Tesoro y Catecismo de la lengva gvarani por Antonio Ruiz de Montoya . 4 vols.	Art, Vocabulary, Treasure and Catechism of the Guarani Language by Antonio Ruiz de Montoya. 4 vols.	Guarani
1878	1687	Luís Figueira	A Arte da Língua Brasílica	Grammar of the Language of Brazil, Composed by Father Luiz Figueira	Tupi
1878	1686	Antônio de Araújo	Catecismo brasilico da doutrina christãa	Brazilian Catechism of Christian Doctrine	Tupi
1879	1612	Ludovico Bertonio	Arte de la lengua aymara compuesta por el P. Ludovico Bertonio	Art of the Aymara Language Composed by Father Ludovico Bertonio	Aymara
1879	1612	Ludovico Bertonio	Vocabulario de la lengua aymara compuesto por el P. Ludovico Bertonio. 2 vols	Vocabulary of the Aymara Language Composed by Father Ludovico Bertonio. 2 vols.	Aymara
1880	1571	Alonso de Molina	Vocabulario de la lengua méxicana compuesto por el P. Fr. Alonso de Molina	Vocabulary of the Mexican Language Composed by Father Alonso de Molina	Mexican
1883	1777	Bernhard Havestadt	Chilidúgu, sive, Tractatus linguae chilensis, opera Bernardi Havestadt	Chilidúgu, or, Treatise on the Chilean Language, Work of Bernardi Havestadt	Mapudungun/Chilean
1887	1606	Luis de Valdivia	Arte, Vocabulario y Confesionario de la lengua de Chile, compuestos por Luiz de Valdivia	Art, Vocabulary and Confessionary of the Language of Chile, Composed by Luiz de Valdivia	Mapudungun/Chilean
1888		Francisco de Tauste, Matías Ruiz Blanco, Diego de Tapia, Manuel de Yangues	Algunas obras raras sobre la lengua cumanagota	Some Rare Works on the Cumanagota Language	Cumanagoto
1888	1680	Francisco de Tausté	Vol. 1: Arte, Bocabulario, Doctrina christiana, y Catecismo de la lengua de Cumana, compuestos por el R. P. Fr. Francisco de Tausté	Vol. 1: Art, Vocabulary, Christian Doctrine, and Catechism of the Language of Cumana, Composed by Father Francisco de Tausté	Cumanagoto
1888		Manuel de Yangues	Vol. 2: Principios y reglas de la lengua Cumanagota, c. un diccionario	Vol. 2: Principles and Rules of the Cumanagota Language, with a Dictionary	Cumanagoto
1888		Matías Ruiz Blanco	Vol. 3: Arte y tesoro de la lengua Cumanagota	Vol. 3: Art and Treasure of the Cumanagota Language	Cumanagoto
1888		Diego de Tapía	Vol. 4-5: Confesionario mas lato en lengua cumanagota por fr. Diego de Tapía	Vol. 4-5: Extended Confessionary in the Cumanagota Language by fr. Diego de Tapía	Cumanagoto
1890	1778	Anselm Eckart	Specimen linguae brasilicae vulgaris	Anselm Eckart's Specimen of the Common Brazilian Language, published by Christoph Gottlieb von Murr.	Tupi
1891	1560	Domingo de Santo Tomás	Grammatica o Arte de la lengua general de los Indios de los Reynos del Peru	Grammar or Art of the general language of the Indians of the Kingdoms of Peru	Quechua
1892	1666	Raymond Breton	Dictionaire caraibe-français composé par le R. P. Raymond Breton	Carib-French Dictionary Composed by Father Raymond Breton	Carib
1894	1701	Pedro Marbán	Arte de la lengua Moxa con su vocabulario y cathecismo por el padre Pedro Marban	Art of the Moxa Language with its Vocabulary and Catechism by Father Pedro Marban	Moxa
1896	1795	Anonymous	O diccionario anonymo da lingua geral do Brasil publicado de novo com o seu reverso por Julio Platzmann	The Anonymous Dictionary of the General Language of Brazil newly published with reverse by Julio Platzmann Based on the Lisbon edition of 1795.	Língua Geral
1896	1709	Bernardo de Nantes	Catecismo da lingua kariris composto pelo R. P. Fr. Bernardo de Nantes	Catechism of the Kariri Language Composed by Father Bernardo de Nantes	Kariri
1898	1639	Antonio Ruiz de Montoya	Tesoro de la lengua guarani	The Language Material of the Guarani Grammar by Antonio Ruiz	Guarani
1899	1775	Thomas Falkner	Thomas Falkner's Nachricht von der moluchischen Sprache, separat und unverändert herausgegeben von Julius Platzmann mit einer Karte.	Thomas Falkner's Account of the Moluchian Language, published separated and unchanged by Julius Platzmann with a Map. A short reprint of a German translation of a collectanea of English language materials on Mapudungun by Thomas Falkner.	Mapudungun
1900	1807	Christlieb Quandt	Des Herrnhuter Glaubensboten Christlieb Quandt nachricht von der Arawackischen Sprache	The Herrnhut Missionary Christlieb Quandt's Account of the Arawak Language. Brief reprint of linguistic material from the Moravian missionary Christlieb Quandt's original book on Suriname.	Arawak
1902	1783	Martin Dobrizhoffer	Auskunft über die Abiponische Sprache	An account of the Abipón language. Platzmann reprinted the linguistic material from the German translation of the Latin original Historia de Abiponibus, equestri bellicosaque Paraquariae natione	Abipón
1903		Theophilus Schmidt	Der Sprachstoff der Patagonischen Grammatik des Theophilus Schmidt . Mit einer Karte des südlichen Südamerika	The Language Material of the Patagonian Grammar by Theophilus Schmidt. With a Map of Southern South America	Patagonian/Tehuelche

As the table suggests, he held a particular interest in the Tupi-Guaraní language family of Brazil.