Pieter Johannes Veth (1814–1895) Dutch geographer, ethnologist, historian Royal Dutch Geographical - Autograph signed Obituary for Orientalist Prof. Dr. Hendrik Arent Hamaker (1789–1835) - 1835

Necrology. Everyone who knew Hamaker or learned to appreciate his merits will easily understand how much the powers of a mortal fall short of sketching a man whose exceptional abilities made him the glory of his fatherland and his time. It is therefore mainly for this reason that the reader should not expect a complete sketch from our hand, which—as is our desire and our hope—can be expected from the hand of him who is best able to satisfy the regular desire of the scholarly world, the rightful estimator of his merits, his faithful friend, tested in times of need. Hendrik Arent Hamaker was born in Amsterdam in 1789, yet in his youth he did not enjoy the advantage that residing in a city where sciences flourish provides to those trained for the scholarly profession. On the contrary: although destined by his parents for commerce, he owed not only everything to his own diligence and skill, but... owed it, yet initially encountered those resistances which are usually the lot of those who, against the will of their closest relatives, choose a path of life devoted entirely to the sciences. Yet early on it became apparent that iron determination could overcome all iron determination. And so fortunate was his disposition that he was soon able to dispense with the help of him who had initially instructed him in his studies, and was soon regarded by all who knew him at his level with appreciative esteem. Yet the strongest proof of his incomparable talents was that after only a few years of devoting himself to studies, he was already deemed worthy in the year 1815 to fill the professorship of Oriental languages at the Athenaeum in Franeker, which post he assumed on December 28th by delivering his inaugural lecture (“Oratio de Graecis Latinisque historicis mediis aevi ac diu Latinum fontibus illustrandis”). And if we see him fulfilling this post with so much brilliance that he was already called by royal decree of May 20, 1817, to the larger stage of the Leiden University, there to assume the post of professor extraordinary of Oriental languages and interpreter of the all-important Waermerand legacy, how... do we mention his important contribution to the Archive for Church History, published by Professors N.G. Kist and W.J. Rooyaards, 5th Part (1834) under the title: Notes on the Samaritans and their Correspondence with some European Scholars on the occasion of the publication of an unknown Samaritan letter, of which a facsimile accompanies these notes. And what a lively part Samaritker [Hamaker] took in the distressed state in which our fatherland lingered in the recent years of unrest can be proved, among other things, by his Oration: On the nature of independence, its weight for entire nations and particular persons, and its high necessity for the Netherlands in the present, published in print as a contribution to the monument of the heroic 1830, and for the benefit of the relations of those communal... [Leiden 1831]. Of Hamaker's zeal in fulfilling his academic duties, not only his students can testify, but he provided conclusive proof when in the months of [April and] May 1834 he gave his public lessons on the comparison of Germanic dialects with...