Los Angeles herald., 1890-08-30
A LEARNED PEASANT.
A German Who Mastered Fifty-one Orien
tai Languages.

A German Who Mastered Fifty -one Orien-
tai Languages.
In the village of Rothenacker, near the
town of Schleiz, there lived from the year
1905 until 1871 man named Nikol Schmidt
Kunzel, who was an unprecedented phe-
nomenon, and who was known as ''the
learned peasant"
He was more or less familiar with fifty
one Oriental languages. He either spoke
them or possessed scholastic knowledge
of them. Among these languages were
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syrian,
Arabic, Persian, Armenian, Abyssinian,
Egyptian, Ethiopian, Turkish, etc. He
had committed the New Testament to
memory in fourteen of them and the Old
Testament in six.
From his twelfth year this hungerer for
knowledge studied in season and out of
season. He attended the little country
school during the short winter term and
then applied himself diligently while tend
ing his fathers cattle or working in wood
or meadow during the rest Of the year
His father came between him and his de-
sires, and frequently forbade him wasting
his time over books, and while such inter-
dict lasted Nikol studied in secret. He
never missed attending church on Sun
days and listened attentively to the
preachers every word. In his fourteenth
year his mothers brother taught him to
write.
About the same time he obtained a Latin
catechism which he compared and studied,
sentence for sentence, with his German
one. Before he was 20 years of age he was
well known to the booksellers of Schleiz,
jena, Hof and Nurnberg at whose shops
he was constant visitor. He studied at
times the long night through, frequently
by the light of the moon. While threshing
in the barn he would cover the walls with
Grecian Hebraic, Chaldean and Arabic
alphabets, and he learned the strange SYM
bols without ceasing from labor.
1t was not long before ''the learned peas
ants" singular talents were talked of far
beyond his own little village. As he came
and went from Weimar Dresden and jena
he was the object of undisguised attention,
and not without emotion did the crowds
regard this self taught man and celebrated
scholar. Besides his periodical acquire
ments he began the study of physics, as
trohomy, meteorology, botany, chemistry,
optics and mathematics. He turned a
small dwelling house on his farm into an
observatory, and sought, with the help of
well selected mathematical and astronomi-
cal instruments, to fathom the secret dis
tances.
He did not escape the miseries and dev-
astations which the war brought upon his
countrymen. His house and lands were
left to him desolate and waste. Financial
ly ruined, the scourge of care forced him
to look about him for some employment.
Owing to the urgent persuasion of influen-
tial friends Nikol was appointed writer Of
the German calendar just at the time when
the fierce struggle between Julianism and
Gregorianism was at its height, and twas
he who led the way to a golden mean. And
for over century the book lover who un-
earths 'Schmidt-Kunzel Calendar from
any booksellers shop in Nurnberg feels
that he has found a rich prize
Nikol Schmidt died on June 26, 1871,
leaving a large family to mourn his loss.
None of his children inherited his thirst
for knowledge or his singular talent for
making foreign languages his own.-Phila-
delphia Times.