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'''Iosephus Planta''' (''Joseph von Planta, Joseph de Planta''; natus anno [[1744]]; mortuus [[1827]]), eruditus rerum [[Helvetia|Helveticarum]], fuit bibliothecarius principalis [[Museum Britannicum|Musei Britannici]] ab anno [[1799]] usque ad [[1827]]. Fuit filius [[Andreas Planta|Andreae Plantae]], frater [[Frederica Planta|Fredericae]], pater [[Iosephus Planta (1787-1847)|Iosephi]] iunioris.
10.2.1744 à Castasegna,décès 3.12.1827 à Londres, prot., de Susch. Fils d'Andreas (-> 6). ∞ Elisabeh Atwood. Etudes de doit et de philologie à l'université d'Utrecht, séjour d'études à Göttingen. Secrétaire du ministre britannique à Bruxelles (env. 1768-1773). P. fit carrière au British Museum de Londres comme bibliothécaire-assistant (successeur de son père en 1773), sous-bibliothécaire (1775) et directeur de la biliothèque (1799-1827). Il fit dresser le catalogue des manuscrits et celui des imprimés et provoqua un essor général du musée. Payeur des bons du trésor (1788-1811). Membre (1774) et secrétaire ordinaire (1776-1804) de la Société royale de Londres, membre de la Société des sciences de Göttingen (1815). Auteur de l'une des premières études scientifiques de la langue romanche.
Joseph Planta was first educated by his father and then studied at the universities of Utrecht and ‘for a short time’ Göttingen in the 1760s before travelling in France and Italy. After being employed as a secretary to the British minister at Brussels, he returned to England when his father died to care for his mother and family. He succeeded his father as assistant librarian of the department of printed books in the British Museum from 1773, and in 1776 was promoted to under-librarian to take charge of the department of manuscripts. He was elected FRS in February 1774, and in June was appointed to conduct the foreign correspondence of the society. In 1776 he became one of its secretaries.
In June 1778 Planta married Elizabeth Atwood (1744/5–1821) of the parish of St George's, Hanover Square, Westminster. A daughter, Sophia, was born in April 1779, and a son, Joseph Planta (1787–1847), who became a diplomatist, in July 1787. In addition to his duties in the British Museum, Planta was paymaster of exchequer bills for about twenty years from the early 1790s. The salary of the latter post was £283 p.a. as compared with the £100 p.a. paid to the under-librarian of manuscripts for a two-day week.
Much of the time of the under-librarians and assistant librarians of the museum in the eighteenth century was taken up with escorting visitors round the collections. Planta also compiled a catalogue of the Cotton manuscripts (published in 1802) which, despite having many faults, was still in use at the end of the twentieth century. He arranged for repair work on some of the Cotton manuscripts which had been damaged in the fire of 1731. There was almost no money for purchases and so the manuscripts acquired while Planta was under-librarian were mainly received as gifts or bequests.
In fact in the late eighteenth century, during the principal librarianship of the idle Charles Morton, the British Museum was very torpid. There was a great change when Planta became principal librarian in March 1799 after the death of Morton. His twenty-eight years in charge of the museum saw numerous developments, for many of which he was largely responsible. He was in favour of making the exhibition galleries much more accessible to the general public, and he enlarged the capacity of the reading rooms to accommodate the increased number of users.
The stock of the museum grew considerably with the acquisition of such important collections as the Cracherode books, the Egyptian antiquities captured from the French (including the Rosetta stone), the Towneley sculptures, the Lansdowne manuscripts, the Greville minerals, the Von Moll books and natural history specimens, the Elgin marbles, the Burney books and manuscripts, the library of Sir Joseph Banks, and the Payne Knight antiquities. Planta's report of 1812 on the need to increase the holdings of printed works relating to Britain and its overseas possessions led to the government making special grants to fill the gaps to which he had drawn attention.
To house the growing stock of the museum, Planta had to find more space. The Towneley gallery for antiquities was built in 1805–6, and galleries were constructed in some of the rooms of Montagu House (in which the museum was accommodated) in 1815–16 to hold books. Planta also recommended in 1816 that buildings should be constructed north of Montagu House to form a quadrangle. This extension became essential when George IV presented his father's library in 1823, but by this time Planta was too old to take much part in the planning of the new museum designed by Robert Smirke.
Planta was involved in the introduction of increased salaries in 1801, in the first recruitment of attendants in 1802 to relieve the senior staff of the task of escorting visitors round the galleries, and in the change to the staff's conditions of work made in 1807. He pressed for the creation of the department of antiquities which was established in 1807, and he supported the improved arrangements for the natural history collections which were introduced at that time. He encouraged the production of catalogues of the Harley, Lansdowne, and Hargrave collections of manuscripts, and the new edition of the catalogue of printed books which was published between 1813 and 1819. The first edition of a Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum appeared in 1808, illustrated works on antiquities began to be published in 1810, and the publication of a facsimile of the Codex Alexandrinus commenced in 1816.
Planta's publications reflected his interest in his native country. The tongue spoken by some of the inhabitants of the Grisons was the subject of his An Account of the Romansh Language (1776), which was originally printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (66, 1776, 129–59). His History of the Helvetic Confederacy (1800) was inspired by the Napoleonic invasion of Switzerland. After the defeat of Napoleon he wrote a short sequel—A View of the Restoration of the Helvetic Confederacy (1821).
Planta was an urbane man who administered the museum with great ability. His good knowledge of German, French, and Italian enabled him to converse easily with foreign visitors. Having begun life as a member of the Swiss Reformed church, he became a devoted adherent of the Church of England, and a regular attender at St George's, Bloomsbury, where he was buried on 9 December 1827, having died at the museum on 3 December. A memorial tablet to him was erected in St George's.
Oeuvres
-An Account of the Romansh language, 1776
-The History of the Helvetic Confederacy, 1800
== Nexus externi ==
* Stefan Hächler, "[http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/f/F26097.php Planta, Joseph (de)]" in [[Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz]]
== Bibliographia ==
* [[Gavin de Beer|G. R. de Beer]], "Andreas and Joseph Planta" in ''Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London'' vol. 10 (1953) pp. 8-14
* "Planta, Joseph (1744-1827)" in ''[[Dictionary of National Biography]]''▼
* Edward Edwards, ''Lives of the founders of the British Museum: with notices of its chief augmentors and other benefactors, 1570-1870'' [http://books.google.fr/books?id=yNEMo_2Zq6MC&dq=%22Charles+Morton%22+%22British+Museum%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s Paginae selectae]
* M. Godet, ''Dictionnaire historique et biographique de la Suisse'' vol. 5 (1930) pp 302–6
* P. R. Harris, "Planta, Joseph (1744-1827)" in ''[[Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]]''
* P. von Planta, ''Chronik der Familie von Planta nebst verschiedenen Mittheilungen aus der Vergangenheit Rhätiens''. 1892
▲* W. W., "Planta, Joseph (1744-1827)" in ''[[Dictionary of National Biography]]''
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