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 c