A Brill Calendar: March 31

Burman, or Burman?

Few alumni of Leyden University are not utterly forgotten.

They number throughout the ages only several tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands and largely share their oblivion with their Professors and Lecturers, a minor fraction of the denizens of Holland’s main Academia since 1575.

If they are remembered at all, it is not scholarly achievement in the Faculty, but poetry, literature or general history. Professor Willem Otterspeer’s present Chair in the History of the University has fascinating objectives. And it is seldom that the work of this silent majority is ever questioned, rather it contents itself with extending the ocean of archives during this age of electronic digital processing. Barring celebrities like Stevin, Grotius, Boerhaave and Lorentz, alumni names rarely emerge in the public domain; curiously enough excepting street-names of urban areas added to Dutch cities since the last third of the 19th century.

An example chosen at random is the ‘Burman Straat’ in Amsterdam, possibly named after Johannes and Nicolaas Burman, father & son, both 18th century botanists: born, bred & dying in town. The association of Burman Senior with the great Swede Linnaeus may have helped the nomination.

However – an ocean is vast by definition – there are other Burmans in Holland’s past; like Petrus Burman (or ‘Pieter’; Utrecht July 6 1668 – Leyden, March 31 1741), lawyer and academician, first teaching rhetoric and history in Utrecht University, since 1696; and later, as of 1715, in Leyden, where his responsibilities also included teaching Greek and supervising the University Library. Burman may even be seen as one of Otterspeer’s predecessors, editing correspondences of illustrious Leyden humanists like Gronovius, Heinsius and Lipsius. In addition, this philological linguist, embodying the learning and sophistication of his age, wrote poetry. Not in his mother-tongue, but in Latin, as befitted his position. His namesake and nephew Petrus Burman Junior – or ‘Secundus’ – collected and published the lyrical exploits of his uncle.