KONGRE BİLDİRİLERİ
Prof. Dr. Hans Georg MAJER
Munich University / GERMANY
N
OTTOMAN DOCUMENTS IN MUNICH COLLECTIONS.
ORIGIN AND FATE, TYPE AND CONTENTS, PRESERVATION AND
WHEREABOUTS
either when it was the capital of the dukedom of Bavaria nor when it was the capital of
the electorate and finally of the kingdom of Bavaria Munich ever was part of the Ottoman
Empire. Ottoman ambassadors were never received in Munich and no diplomatic relations
were ever established between Bavaria and the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless Munich houses a
considerable number of Ottoman documents, letters and defters.
But in spite of the fact that there were no official contacts, there have been contacts between
individual Bavarians and Ottomans beginning in the late 14th century when Hans Schiltberger was
made prisoner by Bayezid I in 13961 and ending with Bavarian officers and troops fighting side by
side with the Ottomans in the First World War. Even members of the Bavarian dynasty at different
times entered Ottoman territory: Elector Max Emanuel joining the Imperial army marched into
Ottoman Hungary with his army every year between 1683 and 16882, as did his sons the princes Karl
Albrecht (who later became Emperor Karl VII) and Ferdinand Maria in 1717 and 1718.3 In the 19th
century crown prince Maximilian, King Ludwid I, Duke Maximilian in Bayern, prince Luitpold (who
later reigned in Bavaria as Prinzregent) and crown prince Rupprecht visited the Ottoman Empire as
1 Apart from early prints there are critical editions of the original German text of his Reisebuch (ed. by Karl Friedrich Neumann, Munich 1859;
ed. by Valentin Langmantel, Tübingen 1885) and also many editions in modern German (among them those ed. by Rose Graessel, Hamburg
1947, ed. by Ulrich Schlemmer, Stuttgart 1983; latest editions: Taufkirchen 2000, 2006, 2011) and there are translations into English (ed. by
J. Buchan Telfer, London 1879) and Turkish (Johannes Schiltberger, Türkler ve Tatarlar Arasında (1394-1427), translated by Turgut Akpınar.
Istanbul 1995).
2 On his part and that of the Bavarian army in the war against the Ottomans between 1683 and 1688, see: Karl Staudinger, Geschichte des
kurbayerischen Heeres unter Kurfürst Max II. Emanuel (1680-1726). Munich 1904, pp. 152-301; Ludwig Hüttl, Max Emanuel. Der blaue
Kurfürst 1679-1726, 2. edition, Munich 1976, pp. 100-190.
3 Peter Claus Hartmann, Karl Albrecht – Karl VII. Glücklicher Kurfürst Unglücklicher Kaiser. Regensburg 1985, pp. 37-40.
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Tapu ve Kadastro Genel Müdürlüğü
Arşiv Dairesi Başkanlığı
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