1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bergler, Stephan

BERGLER, STEPHAN, German classical scholar, was born about 1680 at Kronstadt in Transylvania. The date of his death is uncertain. After studying at Leipzig, he went to Amsterdam, where he edited Homer and the Onomasticon of Julius Pollux for Wetzstein the publisher. Subsequently, at Hamburg, he assisted the great bibliographer J. A. Fabricius in the production of his Bibliotheca Graeca and his edition of Sextus Empiricus. He finally found a permanent post in Bucharest as secretary to the prince of Walachia, Alexander Mavrocordato, whose work Περὶ τῶν καθηκόντων (De Officiis) he had previously translated for Fritzsch, the Leipzig bookseller, by whom he had been employed as proof-reader and literary hack. In the prince’s library Bergler discovered the introduction and the first three chapters of Eusebius’s Demonstratio Evangelica. He died in Bucharest, and was buried at his patron’s expense. According to another account, Bergler, finding himself without means, drifted to Constantinople, where he came to an untoward end (c. 1740). He is said to have become a convert to Islam; this report was probably a mistake for the undisputed fact that he embraced Roman Catholicism. Bergler led a wild and irregular life, and offended his friends and made many enemies by his dissipated habits and cynical disposition. In addition to writing numerous articles for the Leipzig Acta Eruditorum, Bergler edited the editio princeps of the Byzantine historiographer Genesius (1733), and the letters of Alciphron (1715), in which seventy-five hitherto unpublished letters were for the first time included.