Daniel Albert Wyttenbach - Academic Career

Academic Career

At the end of 1771 a professor was wanted at Amsterdam for the College of the Remonstrants. On the recommendation of Ruhnken, Wyttenbach obtained the chair, which he held with great success for eight years. His lectures were wide-ranging. Those on Greek were repeated to the students of the university of Amsterdam (the "Athenaeum"). In 1775 a visit was made to Paris, which was fruitful both of new friendships and of progress in study.

About this time, on the advice of Ruhnken, Wyttenbach began issuing his Bibliotheca critica, which appeared at intervals for the next thirty years. The methods of criticism were in the main those established by Hemsterhuis, and carried on by Valckenaer and Ruhnken, and the publication was accepted by the learned all over Europe. In 1777 the younger Burmann ("Burmannus Secundus") retired from his professorship at the Athenaeum, and Wyttenbach was disappointed not to be chosen to succeed him. Only his regard for Ruhnken and for Dutch freedom (in his own words Ruhnkeni et Batavae libertatis cogitatio) kept him in Holland. For fear of losing him, the authorities at Amsterdam nominated him professor of philosophy in 1779.

In 1785, Toll, Burmann's successor, resigned, and Wyttenbach was appointed to succeed him. His full title was "professor of history and eloquence and Greek and Latin literature." He had hardly got to work in his new office when Valckenaer died, and he received a call to Leiden. Greatly to Ruhnken's disappointment, he declined to abandon the duties he had so recently undertaken. In 1787 began the internal commotions in Holland, afterwards to be aggravated by foreign interference. Scarcely during the remaining thirty-three years of Wyttenbach's life was there a moment of peace in the land. About this time two requests were made to him for an edition of the Moralia of Plutarch, for which a recension of the tract De sera numinis vindicta had marked him out in the eyes of scholars. One request came from the famous Societas Bipontina, the other from the delegates of the Clarendon Press at Oxford, England. Wyttenbach, influenced at once by the reputation of the university, and by the liberality of the Oxonians in tendering him assistance of different kinds, declined the offer of the Bipontine Society — very fortunately, since their press was soon destroyed by the French.

The first portion of Wyttenbach's work was safely conveyed to Oxford in 1794. Then war broke out between Holland and Britain. Randolph, Wyttenbach's Oxford correspondent, advised that the next portion should be sent through the British ambassador at Hamburg, and the manuscript was duly consigned to him "in a little chest well protected by pitch." After sending Randolph a number of letters without getting any answer, Wyttenbach in disgust put all thought of the edition from him, but at last the missing box was discovered in a forgotten corner at Hamburg, where it had lain for two years and a half. The work was finally completed in 1803.

Meanwhile Wyttenbach received invitations from his native city, Bern, and from Leiden, where vacancies had been created by the refusal of professors to swear allegiance to the new Dutch republic set up in 1795, to which Wyttenbach had made submission. But he only left Amsterdam in 1799, when on Ruhnken's death he succeeded him at Leiden as professor and 13th Librarian of Leiden University. Even then his chief object in moving was to facilitate an arrangement by which the necessities of his old master's family might be relieved. His move came too late in life, and he was never so happy at Leiden as he had been at Amsterdam. Before long appeared the ever-delightful Life of David Ruhnken. Though written in Latin, this biography deserves to rank high in the modern literature of its class. Of Wyttenbach's life at Leiden there is little to tell.

The continual changes in state affairs greatly disorganized the universities of Holland, and Wyttenbach had to work in face of much detraction; still, his success as a teacher was very great. In 1805 he narrowly escaped with his life from the great gunpowder explosion, which killed 150 people, among them the Greek scholar Luzac, Wyttenbach's colleague in the university. One of Wyttenbach's letters gives a vivid account of the disaster. During the last years of his life he suffered severely from illness and became nearly blind. After the conclusion of his edition of Plutarch's Moralia in 1805, the only important work he was able to publish was his well-known edition of Plato's Phaedo.

Many honours were conferred upon him both at home and abroad, and in particular he was made a member of the French Institute. Shortly before his death, he obtained the licence of the king of Holland to marry his sister's daughter, Johanna Gallien, who had for twenty years been his housekeeper, secretary and research assistant. The sole object of the marriage was to secure for her a better provision after her husband's death, because as the widow of a professor she would be entitled to a pension. Gallien was a woman of remarkable culture and ability, and wrote works held in great repute at that time. On the festival of the tercentenary of the foundation of the university of Marburg, celebrated in 1827, the degree of doctor was conferred upon her. Wyttenbach died of apoplexy in 1820, and he was buried in the garden of his country house near Leiden, which stood, as he noted, within sight of the dwellings of Descartes and Boerhaave.

Wyttenbach's biography was written in a somewhat dry and lifeless manner by Mahne, one of his pupils, who also published some of his letters. His Opuscula, other than those published in the Bibliotheca critica, were collected in two volumes (Leiden, 1823).