Background
Kögler was born at Landsberg am Lech in Bavaria.
Kögler was born at Landsberg am Lech in Bavaria.
Along with Johann Adam Schall von Bell he was a leading figure among the fifty German Jesuits who between 1650 and 1750 worked in the Chinese missions.
He left Prague for Portugal in 1715, being joined by the noted Czechoslovakian sinologist Karel Slavíček. On March 13, 1716 they left for China.
lieutenant took them 170 days to get there, surviving a major storm, during which many of their belongings were damaged.
On account of his wide learning he enjoyed consideration at the imperial court, and held the office of president of the mathematical astronomical tribunal for thirty years. In accepting these positions he refused the stipends attached to them.
Father August von Hallerstein, his co-operator and successor, considers him "one of the most cultivated minds that ever came into these countries" (ibid, Number 587). Kögler carried on a brisk scientific correspondence with a number of European scholars, such as Eusebius Amort and T. South. Bayer, the Orientalist, sending Bayer many contributions for his "Museum Sinicum" (Street St. Petersburg, 1730) (cf "Miscellanea Berolinensia", 1737, pp 185, 189 sqq.
Gottfr von Murr, "Journal", VII, 240 sqq.
IX, 81 square "Neues Journal", I, 147 sqq. II, 303, sqq). He was twice visitor of the mission, and provincial of the Chinese and Japanese province, and, during the persecution which began under the Yongzheng Emperor, he was the main support of the mission, through his influence at court.
He died, aged 65, at Beijing.
He was a mandarin of the second class, and was from 1731 a member of the supreme court of equity (Li-pu), a position which had never before been held by a foreigner ("Welt-Bott", Number 676).