A.) FAIR CONDITION
B.) SPINE DAMAGED - FIRST LOOSE PAGES, FOXY SPOTS IN PAGES.

ABOUT THE WORK

A Friend of the Filipino People in Bohemia: Ferdinand Blumentritt Blumentritt, born in Prague, then part of the Austro- Hungarian Empire, represents intellectual passion. And in his case, that passion was the Philippines. Probably few individuals have gone down in history as experts on a country without ever having visited it. Blumentritt is one of those rare cases. A modest high school teacher and very Catholic, his love for the Philippines came to him through his interest in the Spanish colonies. His friendship with Rizal was legendary. Rizal found in this bohemian an interlocutor to his level: critical, sincere, well-meaning, always animated by the pleasure of knowing. Although they only met in person once, it was a friendship that was fireproof. We know that Rizal asked him for a foreword to his edition of Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas. Blumentritt was very critical of this work and let him know in writing. Rizal, in an exercise of supreme chivalry, decided to include that foreword in his work. One of the last letters Rizal wrote before being executed was precisely to Blumentritt. And it was the Bohemian who first translated Noli Me Tangere into German. Through the correspondence between Rizal and Blumentritt we witness lives that appear to be endowed with sense through intellectual stimulation, academic work, the pleasure of knowing and of climbing towards the truth, little by little, through countless readings. Fernando Blumentritt