Bernhard Havestadt

Bernhard Havestadt

German Jesuit; b. at Cologne, 27 February, 1714; died at Münster after 1778. He entered the Lower-Rhenish province of the order on 20 October, 1732, and in 1746 went to Chile. He was one of the 102 German Jesuits who laboured on the Chilian mission between 1720-67, and in the twenty years of his sojourn in the country, spent mostly among the Araucanian Indians, his displayed remarkable energy and ability. With his splendid linguistic gifts, knowing more or less perfectly nine languages, he took up with enthusiasm the study of Chilidugu, which, in his opinion, "towered over all other languages as the Andes over all other mountains". The result of these studies appeared in a work of great linguistic importance: "Chilidugu, sive Res Chilenses, vel descriptio, status tum naturalis, tum civilis, cum moralis regni populique Chilensis, inserta suis, locis perfectæ ad Chilensem linguam manuductioni etc." (3 vols., Münster, 1777). This work was written in Germany after the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish colonies; it had been originally composed in Spanish, and was now issued in Latin. Besides a grammar and dictionary, it includes copious specimens of the native Chilian tongue, hymns, and valuable ethnographic notes, etc. The work was re-issued in two volumes by the well-known Americanist Dr. Julius Platzmann (Leipzig, 1883), under its original title, "Chilidugu sive tractatus linguæ Chilensis" (see Zarncke, "Literar. Centralblatt", 1883, col. 693).

Huonder, Deutsche Jesuitenmissionäre (Freiburg im Br., 1899), 133; von Murr, journal (Nuremburg, 1776-90), I, 122 sqq.: Idem, Nachrichten aus verschiedenen Ländern der spanischen Amerika, II (Halle, 1810), 431 sqq.; Adelung und Vater, Mithridates (Berlin, 1806-17), III, 2, 404; Enrich, Hist. de la Comp. de Jésus en Chile, II (Barcelona, 1891), 213, 294, 352, and elsewhere; Zwölf Missionsspredigten . . . durch den Wolchrw. Herrn. Bernhardt Havestadt, chemaligen Missionarium aus der Gesell. Jesu (Cologne, 1778), which contains some bibliographical information.

A. HUONDER