BAUCKE (PAUCKE), FLORIAN. — Jesuit missionary and writer, b. at Witzingen (Silesia) on 24 Dec. 1719, d. at Hradec Jindřichův (or Neuhaus, in Bohemia) on 13 Apr. 1780. Having entered the novitiate of the Bohemian province in 1736, he embarked for Paraguay in 1748, where he rendered especially notable service among the Mocobies Indians through his great skill in music and in many arts and crafts. In 1768, he shared the fate of his fellow religious, expelled from the Spanish missions by order of Charles III, and withdrew to Bohemia, where he devoted himself to writing his missionary memoirs.
A substantial manuscript of more than a thousand pages, which he left to the prior of the Cistercians of Zwett, first provided the material for several publications and fragmentary adaptations, by the Cistercian G. Frast (Vienna 1829), and by the Jesuits A. Kobler (P. Fl. B., ein Jesuit in Paraguay, Regensburg 1870), J. Svoboda (Prague 1874), A. Brinckmann (Freiburg im Breisgau 1908), J. Auweiler (Buenos Aires 1900), etc. But the interest it holds, not only for the history but also for the ethnography, zoology, and botany of America, owing to the numerous and curious drawings with which it is illustrated, brought the work back into favor among scholars of Argentina, who have recently produced lavish editions of it: G. Furlong, P. Fl. B., Iconografia colonial rioplatense 1749-67. Costumbre y trajes de Españoles, Criollos e Indios (ibid. 1935); P. Fl. B., Hacia allá y para acá. Una estada entre los Indios Mocobies 1749-1767 (3 vols., Spanish translation by E. Wernicke, Tucuman-Buenos Aires 1942-44).