Preface
Walther von Dyck, “Vorbemerkung,” in Nova Kepleriana: Wieder aufgefundene Drucke und Handschriften von Johannes Kepler, 4: Die Keplerbriefe auf der Nationalbibliothek und auf der Sternwarte in Paris (Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1927), 3–4, transcribed in Plain Old Text, https://sources.vjbe.net/stable/zhehm.
Nova Kepleriana 4 1927, p. 3–4 Summary
Part of Die Keplerbriefe auf der Nationalbibliothek und auf der Sternwarte in Paris
Von Dyck explains how he found these letters of Kepler, Bartsch and Crüger in Paris at Easter 1914, why the edition was delayed by the war, and that Max Caspar shared the translation and notes; he calls for a complete edition of Kepler's correspondence.
Source: Walther von Dyck's preface to Nova Kepleriana 4: Die Keplerbriefe auf der Nationalbibliothek und auf der Sternwarte in Paris, ed. Walther von Dyck and Max Caspar, Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Math.-naturw. Abteilung 31, no. 1 (Munich, 1927), 3–4. Von Dyck (1856–1934), professor of mathematics at the Technische Hochschule in Munich, had found the letters in Paris at Easter 1914; the volume was presented to the Academy on 15 May 1926.
English translation of Walther von Dyck’s German preface, made for Plain Old Text. Each paragraph translates the corresponding paragraph of the original. Italics follow von Dyck’s spaced type, used for emphasis and for names.
The publication of a series of printed works and manuscripts by Johannes Kepler, which I rediscovered in various places before the war, was interrupted by the war and has since been delayed by the duties of office. I had begun it then with the publication of two “Prognostica” for the years 1604 and 1624 found in the Munich State Library (these Abhandlungen, vol. XXV, 5), with the “Confession of Faith” of 1623 discovered at Wittenberg (Abhandlungen, vol. XXV, 9), and with a correspondence between Kepler and Edmund Bruce of 1603 (Abhandlungen, vol. XXVIII, 2), which is in the library of the British Museum in London.
I now publish, as the fourth part, a letter of 1622 from Kepler to Johannes Seussius, secretary to the Elector of Saxony, and letters to the Leipzig professor Philipp Müller from 1622 and from the last years of Kepler’s life, which I found and brought together during a stay in Paris at Easter 1914, in the National Library and in the library of the Observatory there. Because of their direct bearing on Kepler, I add extracts from letters to Philipp Müller from Kepler’s son-in-law Jacob Bartsch and from the Danzig astronomer Peter Crüger, which belong, with further letters to Müller, to a collection of manuscripts and letters on astronomy in the National Library in Paris.
The directors of the National Library and of the Paris Observatory at that time very kindly gave me permission to publish these letters from photographs.
For the translation of the text, which I was urged to include, and for the editing of the notes, I have had the pleasure of working with Professor Max Caspar of the Gymnasium at Rottweil, who has already earned the thanks of all friends of Kepler with his excellent translation of Kepler’s youthful work, the Mysterium cosmographicum, and who intends to go on devoting himself to editing and interpreting Kepler’s works. Professor P. Lehmann of the university here, helped by his pupil B. BischoffBernhard Bischoff (1906–1991), later the leading palaeographer of his day., has most kindly compared the Latin texts with the photographs of the originals.
The notes to the letters are fuller, and range more widely over the history, than may seem necessary for the immediate purpose. But Kepler’s personality, and the core of his trains of thought, which often seem strange to us, can only be rightly appreciated in connection with that unhappiest epoch of our history, which carried within it ferment, upheaval and renewal. So these studies too are meant as preliminary work for a complete account of Kepler’s life’s work, set in the midst of his times. For that account, even if a new complete edition of the works, such as I have in mind, cannot be realised soon because of the high costs, what is needed first of all is a complete edition of the correspondenceIt came: Kepler's letters fill volumes 13–18 of the Gesammelte Werke, begun in 1937 by Caspar and von Dyck.; for it is here that Kepler’s nature speaks to us most forcefully, and Kepler’s letters are in turn among the most important documents of the cultural history of that time. May it be possible to carry out this edition soon, as a first part of the complete edition of the works.
Walther von Dyck.