Two previously unknown German monographs of the first half of the XIX century on Scanderbeg’s personality

Abstract

The present paper informs about two monographs on Scanderbeg, which belong to the German historiography. The first monograph is titled Georg Skanderbeg, glücklicher Vorgänger des Ali Pascha in Janina (Gjergj Scanderbeg lucky predecessor of Ali Pasha of Ioannina), and the second monograph is titled Georg Kastriotto. Eine biographische Skizze der Vorwelt, Vergleichung mit der Gegenwart darbietend (Gjergj Kastrioti, an outline presentation of the previous world offering a comparison with the today).
These monographs were written in the second half of the XIX century and are unknown to the scholars, and to Albanians in particular. The first information about the texts of these biographies was provided in 1969 by the German scholar Gerhard Grimm in his paper with the title, "Deutsche Skender-Beg-Monographien"² in which it is given a short content of these works. In addition, these titles are also mentioned in 1881 by Georg Petrović in his bibliography, "Scanderbeg"³ and in the work entitled, "Gjergj Kastrioti Skёnderbegu. Bibliografi, 1454-1835"⁴, authored by Jup Kastrati and Kasem Biçoku. The present paper introduces briefly for the first time these two monographs.