Hasselquist resolved to undertake a journey to that country, and a sufficient subscription having been obtained to defray expenses, he reached Smyrna towards the end of 1749. He visited parts of Asia Minor, Egypt, Cyprus and Palestine, making large natural history collections, but his constitution, naturally weak, gave way under the fatigues of travel, and he died near Smyrna on the 9th of February 1752 on his way home. His collections reached home in safety, and five years after his death his notes were published by Linnaeus under the title Resa till Heliga Landet förättad från år 1749 till 1752, which was translated into French and German in 1762 and into English in 1766.
HASSELT, ANDRÉ HENRI CONSTANT VAN (1806–1874),
Belgian poet, was born at Maastricht, in Limburg, on the 5th of
January 1806. He was educated in his native town, and at the
university of Liége. In 1833 he left Maastricht, then blockaded
by the Belgian forces, and made his way to Brussels, where he
became a naturalized Belgian, and was attached to the Bibliothèque
de Bourgogne. In 1843 be entered the education department,
and eventually became an inspector of normal schools.
His native language was Dutch, and as a French poet André van
Hasselt had to overcome the difficulties of writing in a foreign
language. He had published a Chant hellénique in honour of
Canaris in the columns of La Sentinelle des Pays-Bas as early as
1826, and other poems followed. His first volume of verse,
Primevères (1834), shows markedly the influence of Victor Hugo,
which had been strengthened by a visit to Paris in 1830. His
relations with Hugo became intimate in 1851–1852, when the
poet was an exile in Brussels. In 1839 he became editor of the
Renaissance, a paper founded to encourage the fine arts. His
chief work, the epic of the Quatre Incarnations du Christ, was
published in 1867. In the same volume were printed his Études
rythmiques, a series of metrical experiments designed to show
that the French language could be adapted to every kind of
musical rhythm. With the same end in view he executed translations
of many German songs, and wrote new French libretti
for the best-known operas of Mozart, Weber and others. Hasselt
died at Saint Josse ten Noode, a suburb of Brussels, on the 1st
of December 1874.
A selection from his works (10 vols., Brussels, 1876–1877) was edited by MM. Charles Hen and Louis Alvin. He wrote many books for children, chiefly under the pseudonym of Alfred Avelines; and studies on historical and literary subjects. The books written in collaboration with Charles Hen are signed Charles André. A bibliography of his writings is appended to the notice by Louis Alvin in the Biographie nat. de Belgique, vol. vii. Van Hasselt’s fame has continued to increase since his death. A series of tributes to his memory are printed in the Poésies choisies (1901), edited by M. Georges Barral for the Collection des poètes français de l’étranger. This book contains a biographical and critical study by Jules Guillaume, and some valuable notes on the poet’s theories of rhythm.
HASSELT, the capital of the Belgian province of Limburg.
Pop. (1904), 16,179. It derives its name from Hazel-bosch (hazel
wood). It stands at the junction of several important roads
and railways from Maaseyck, Maastricht and Liége. It has many
breweries and distilleries, and the spirit known by its name,
which is a coarse gin, has a certain reputation throughout
Belgium. On the 6th of August 1831 the Dutch troops obtained
here their chief success over the Belgian nationalists during the
War of Independence. Hasselt is best known for its great septennial
fête held on the day of Assumption, August 15th. The
curious part of this fête, which is held in honour of the Virgin
under the name of Virga Jesse, is the conversion of the town for
the day into the semblance of a forest. Fir trees and branches
from the neighbouring forest are collected and planted in front
of the houses, so that for a few hours Hasselt has the appearance
of being restored to its primitive condition as a wood. The
figure of the giant who is supposed to have once held the Hazel-bosch
under his terror is paraded on this occasion as the “lounge
man.” Originally this celebration was held annually, but in
the 18th century it was restricted to once in seven years. There
was a celebration in 1905.
HASSENPFLUG, HANS DANIEL LUDWIG FRIEDRICH
(1794–1862), German statesman, was born at Hanau in Hesse
on the 26th of February 1794. He studied law at Göttingen,
graduated in 1816, and took his seat as Assessor in the judicial
chamber of the board of government (Regierungskollegium) at
Cassel, of which his father Johann Hassenpflug was also a member.
In 1821 he was nominated by the new elector, William II.,
Justizrat (councillor of justice); in 1832 he became Ministerialrat
and reporter (Referent) to the ministry of Hesse-Cassel, and in
May of the same year was appointed successively minister of
justice and of the interior. It was from this moment that he
became conspicuous in the constitutional struggles of Germany.
The reactionary system introduced by the elector William I. had broken down before the revolutionary movements of 1830, and in 1831 Hesse had received a constitution. This development was welcome neither to the elector nor to the other German governments, and Hassenpflug deliberately set to work to reverse it. In doing so he gave the lie to his own early promise; for he had been a conspicuous member of the revolutionary Burschenschaft at Göttingen, and had taken part as a volunteer in the War of Liberation. Into the causes of the change it is unnecessary to inquire; Hassenpflug by training and tradition was a strait-laced official; he was also a first-rate lawyer; and his naturally arbitrary temper had from the first displayed itself in an attitude of overbearing independence towards his colleagues and even towards the elector. To such a man constitutional restrictions were intolerable, and from the moment he came into power he set to work to override them, by means of press censorship, legal quibbles, unjustifiable use of the electoral prerogatives, or frank supersession of the legislative rights of the Estates by electoral ordinances. The story of the constitutional deadlock that resulted belongs to the history of Hesse-Cassel and Germany; so far as Hassenpflug himself was concerned, it made him, more even than Metternich, the Mephistopheles of the Reaction to the German people. In Hesse itself he was known as “Hessen’s Hass und Fluch” (Hesse’s hate and curse). In the end, however, his masterful temper became unendurable to the regent (Frederick William); in the summer of 1837 he was suddenly removed from his post as minister of the interior and he thereupon left the elector’s service.
In 1838 he was appointed head of the administration of the little principality of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, an office which he exchanged in the following year for that of civil governor of the grand-duchy of Luxemburg. Here, too, his independent character suffered him to remain only a year: he resented having to transact all business with the grand-duke (king of the Netherlands) through a Dutch official at the Hague; he protested against the absorption of the Luxemburg surplus in the Dutch treasury; and, failing to obtain redress, he resigned (1840). From 1841 to 1850 he was in Prussian service, first as a member of the supreme court of justice (Obertribunal) and then (1846) as president of the high court of appeal (Oberappellationsgericht) at Greifswald. In 1850 he was tried for peculation and convicted; and, though this judgment was reversed on appeal, he left the service of Prussia.
With somewhat indecent haste (the appeal had not been heard) he was now summoned by the elector of Hesse once more to the head of the government, and he immediately threw himself again with zeal into the struggle against the constitution. He soon found, however, that the opinion of all classes, including the army, was solidly against him, and he decided to risk all on an alliance with the reviving fortunes of Austria, which was steadily working for the restoration of the status quo overthrown by the revolution of 1848. On his advice the elector seceded from the Northern Union established by Prussia and, on the 13th of September, committed the folly of flying secretly from Hesse with his minister. They went to Frankfort, where the federal diet had been re-established, and on the 21st persuaded the diet to decree an armed intervention in Hesse. This decree, carried out by Austrian troops, all but led to war with Prussia, but the unreadiness of the Berlin government led to the triumph of Austria and of Hassenpflug, who at the end of the year was once more installed in power at Cassel as minister of finance. His position was, however, not enviable; he was loathed and
