Criss-Crossing the Danube with Marsigli

Referent/in: Jelena Mrgic, Belgrad

Abstract

For a good part of his life, Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli was, more or less, connected with the Danube River. As a military surveyor and engineer during the Great War between the Habsburg and the Ottoman Empire (1683-1699), he had to make practical solutions in the frontier zones, which involved the Danube River to a great extent. At same time he began to work fervently on his masterpiece – Danubius Pannonico-Mysicus (printed in 1726). After the Karlowitz Peace Treaty, he was the Imperial envoy in the Commission for border demarcation (1699-1701), in which the Danube played a significant role. The paper aims to give an insight into a seeming duality of Marsgli's work as a soldier and as a scientist, and to determine whether he perceived the Danube River as a border, and if so, in what way, and from which perspective (geographic, military/strategic, socio-cultural, sanitary).