Ways and works of Michael Kosmeli (1773-1844)

Michael Kosmeli (1773-1844), lawyer, writer, translator, botanist and Jew's harp player, travelled throughout his life as an itinerant scholar and musician through half of Europe to Asia, preferably in the corridor that connected East Germany and Eastern Europe with the Ottoman Empire and Persia. Kosmeli effortlessly crossed geographical, political, cultural and religious borders. The research project aims to reconstruct Kosmeli's life and works and to compile a short biography including a bibliography and an annotated edition of his letters. Building on this, his role in the circulation of knowledge in the trans-Ottoman area, his connections, interrelationships and interactions with scholars, writers and musicians in the West and East, as well as his transfer achievements in the course of adapting texts, ideas, knowledge and compositions will be analysed.