Georg Schuller, a Transylvanian Traveler to South Africa and Dutch East Indies (1696-1699)
Georg Schuller, a Transylvanian Traveler to South Africa and Dutch East Indies (1696-1699)

Summary/Abstract: Georg Schuller (aprox. 1670 - after 1742), the author of the oldest known travelogue written by a Transylvanian on South Africa and in Southeast Asia, is known not only for his spirit of adventure and his interest in the most diverse realities from distant regions (plants, animals, traditions, forms of social organization, social relations, public administration), but also for his reflections about what he saw and details that only a careful reader could apprehend, through an analysis whose key is the issue of Otherness. Such an approach also allows the reader to access the intellectual world of the author, a moderate and tolerant evangelical Christian. His conservative religious and political views, as well as his education were typical for the Transylvanian Saxon bourgeoisie of his period. He was familiar with the imagery of the Medieval bestiaries, with the works of the most famous poets and historians of the Greek and Roman Antiquity, but also with the Baroque discourse about cultural otherness and mores, as well as with narratives about the countries at the end of the - then known - world and the peoples who inhabited them.

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