Occupation Scholar Died 1800, Leiden, Netherlands Role Poet | Name Konstantinos Tzechanis Religion Christian Orthodox | |
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Born 1740 Moscopole, Ottoman Empire, present day Albania | ||
Konstantinos Tzechanis (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Τζεχάνης, Latin: Constantinus Tzechani,Albanian: Kostë Xhehani, 1740–1800) was a philosopher, mathematician and poet from the 18th century Aromanian center of Moscopole.
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Life
Tzechanis was born in Moscopole (Voskopojë, southeast Albania), an 18th-century cultural and commercial metropolis of the Balkans and center of Greek culture. His ethnicity is disputed, with various sources claiming that he is of Albanian, Aromanian or Greek origin,.
Tzechanis initially studied in his home town with Theodore Kavalliotis being his teacher in the New Academy. He later attended lessons in Modra, today in Slovakia. At 1760, he moved together with his parents to Vienna, where his father became a merchant. Tzechanis became a teacher at the Greek schools of Temesvar, Pest and Zemun. Later in 1768–74 he went to Halle, then a city of the Kingdom of Prussia, to study literature and mathematics, and in 1776 he studied in the University of Cambridge. He also studied in Leipzig for three years and moved to several countries of Western Europe. He also lived in Wallachia, where he composed a satyrical poem.
In 1769 as a student he had written in Latin and Greek a treatise in geometry, the Introduction to Geometry: new theory of squaring the circle, 1774 (Greek: Προγύμνασμα Γεωμετρικόν, ήτοι νέα θεωρία τετραγωνισμού του κύκλου), in which he proposed a new theoretical solution to the problem of squaring the circle. Tzechanis also gave to the Swedish linguist Johann Thunmann a copy of Protopireia, one of the most significant works of Kavalliotis, he also assisted Thunmann on his works regarding the Albanian and the Aromanian languages. During his stay in Leyden, Netherlands, Tzechanis composed two large poems in Greek, praising the local university on the one and the ancient Greek authors on the other.
In the 1770s, he wrote in Greek a biography of Skanderbeg, the national hero of Albania, based on Marin Barleti's biography. He taught Latin, Greek and mathematics in Leiden University. His best known poetry work is Έπος ηρωελεγείον προς Αικατερίνην (Heroic Epic to Catherine II of Russia), a patriotic work that aimed at the national awakening of the Greek people that lived under Ottoman rule (1776), written in Latin and Ancient Greek and published in 1776. He died at 1800 in Leyden .
Work
Tzechani composed the following works:
Translation from German to Greek:
Translations from Ancient Greek to German: