Rankraštinis Johanno Jacobo Quandto palikimas: Prūsijos presbiterologija (prieš 1772)
Johann Jacob Quandt’s Manuscript Heritage: Prussian Presbyterology (before 1772)

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with Johann Jacob Quandt’s (1686–1772) manuscript Prussian Presbyterology (Germ. Preußische Presbyterologie, vol. 1–5, ~1737–~1772, hereinafter referred to as QPP), currently stored in the Secret State Archives Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin (Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz; GStA PK: XX. HA Hist. StA Königsberg, Hs, No. 2). The author of the presbyterology Quandt was professor primarius of theology at the University of Königsberg, the chief court preacher, and General Superintendent of Prussia; for over four years, he supervised the Lithuanian Language Seminar (1723–1727), and for two decades, he was in charge of publishing Lithuanian religious literature. The paper presents an overview of the history of the QPP manuscript, the aspects of its attribution, the structure and the content of the text, and the main sources of reference, with the focus on the QPP significance for the research into the history of Lithuanian writings. As testified by the analysis of handwriting, QPP is Quandt’s autograph. It is his largest currently known autograph and a very important part of his written heritage. Quandt worked on his presbyterology in Königsberg over three decades, from approximately 1737 until the last years of his life (his latest entries date back to the period between 1768 and 1772). Based on handwriting analysis, the chief court preacher, General Superintendent of Prussia, and later on, Archbishop of the Prussian Evangelical Church Ludwig Ernst von Borowski (1740–1831) was found to have been one of the contributors to that presbyterology. His additions were rather sporadic and found merely in volumes 1 and 2; they date back to the year 1816 or slightly later. An anonymous inscription on the provenance of the manuscript (QPP I 1) is also to be assigned to Borowski’s hand; together with the information provided by the Manuscript Catalogue of the Prussian State Archive Königsberg, it testified to Borowski having been the owner of volumes 1 to 4 of QPP. Both that fact and the handwriting analysis as well as the dating of subsequent additions led to the revision of Albert Nietzki’s (1866–1923) statement about the manuscript having been inherited and abundantly supplemented by Quandt’s colleague Daniel Heinrich Arnoldt (1706–1775): he could only have been the owner of volume 5 of QPP or its reader (between 1772 and 1775). The entries of the so far unidentified main contributor to QPP date back to the period between 1816 and 1829. In the mid-nineteenth century, Quandt’s manuscript continued to be supplemented by a third contributor. As proved by the study of the custodial history of QPP, for several decades upon Quandt’s death (17.01.1772), the manuscript stayed with his relatives. Subsequently, probably after March 1815, they donated volumes 1 to 4 of QPP to Borowski who had become the chief court preacher at the Castle Church in Königsberg. Volume 5 of QPP through a so far unidentified person went to Friedrich Christoph Ludwig Ungefug (1771–after 1836), Director of the Marienwerder Royal Gymnasium, most likely, in the first decades of the nineteenth century. From both private libraries, the five volumes of QPP got to the Prussian State Archive Königsberg to be stored there for about a century. At the end of the Second World War, in the second half of 1944, Quandt’s manuscript, together with other archivalias of that memory institution, was brought to Germany, where it was first stored in the Grasleben salt mines in the Harz Mountains, and then transferred to the State Archive Storehouse in Goslar (until 1952), then to Göttingen (1953–1978), and finally, in 1979, to the Secret State Archives Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin, the current storage location. Even though QPP is a reference book of the clergy, in which Quandt provided information about the Evangelical Lutheran and Reformed priests who served in the churches of the Duchy, and later Kingdom, of Prussia from the beginning of the Reformation to around the middle of the third quarter of the eighteenth century (i.e., 1768; subsequent entries of other contributors continued until the mid-nineteenth century), it also includes valuable data for the studies of the history of Lithuanian writings in Prussian Lithuania. First, it is an important source of the biographies of Prussian Evangelical priests, authors of Lithuanian writings, which allows to supplement, or sometimes even to specify, certain facts of their lives and activities. Second, when presenting the outcomes of the creative activity of the priests, both printed or in manuscripts, Quandt frequently provided some new information about them. For the studies of the history of Lithuanian writings, two volumes of that five-volume manuscript is of primary importance: volume 1 of QPP on the clergy of Königsberg, where in the section “Litthauſche Kirche” (QPP I 108–119) Quandt provided the data on the Lithuanian Evangelical priests in Königsberg, and volume 4, in which he wrote about the clergy who served in Prussian Lithuania. Volume 4 of QPP offered rich information and included Lithuanian words and phrases (e.g., nicknames of priests, toponyms, a proverb, a quotation from a hymn), which testified to Quandt’s special attention to the Lithuanian language and culture. When compiling his presbyterology, Quandt relied to a number of sources characterized by a great variety of genres. The abbreviations of the sources in QPP witnessed that the more frequently used ones included not only presbyterologies (Georg Colbe’s Episcopopresbyterologia Prussico-Regiomontana [Königsberg, 1657], the manuscript of the so-called Stimer’s Presbyterology), but also published funeral sermons and obituaries prepared on behalf of the Rector of the University of Königsberg and its Senate. More than once, Quandt referred to the periodicals Acta Borussica and Erleutertes Preußen published in the eighteenth century in Königsberg, prefaces to Lithuanian books (including his own), Der Preusche Littauer (Danzig, 1744) by Theodor Lepner, etc. Rich information was provided by manuscript sources of a different character. Both limited edition publications and unique manuscript sources, the majority of which did not survive or were not yet found to date, and the authentic materials collected by Quandt himself give special value to his work: it contains data currently inaccessible anywhere else.

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