Johann Matthias Gesner

Johann Matthias Gesner. Title copper of the Novus Linguæ Et Eruditionis Romanae Thesaurus (1747)

Johann Matthias Gesner , also Latinized for Jo. Matthias Gesnerus (born April 9, 1691 in Roth an der Rednitz ; † August 3, 1761 in Göttingen ) was a pedagogue, classical philologist and librarian. From 1730 to 1734 he was the rector of the Thomas School in Leipzig . When the Georg August University was founded in 1734, Gesner was appointed professor of poetry and eloquence in Göttingen and, as such, also took over the management of the Göttingen university library. While he was not very innovative in his work as the editor of classical authors, he became one of the most effective pioneers of new humanism with his reform ideas for school and university teaching . His main work, the four-volume dictionary Novus Linguæ Et Eruditionis Romanæ Thesaurus , published in 1749, is still one of the most important foundations for the development of the large lexicon of the Latin " Munich Thesaurus " that was started in 1900 .

life and work

Childhood and school days in Franconia

Johann Matthias Gesner was born on April 9, 1691 in the small town of Roth near Nuremberg. His father Johann Samuel Gesner (1661–1704) was transferred there as a preacher in 1687, but died before his youngest son Johann Matthias was twelve years old. Gesner's mother Maria Magdalena née Husswedel (1670–1738) was the daughter of an Ansbach chamber councilor and came from an old family of civil servants. After the death of her husband, she had nine children to look after and only a short time later married the successor in office in the rectory, Johann Zuckermantel. He soon noticed Johann Matthias' extraordinary talent and prepared him for admission to the Ansbacher Gymnasium through private lessons . Since the cost of attending school exceeded the family's financial means, Gesner was supported by public funds. He spent his high school years in Ansbach in a dormitory for poor students and, because of his talent, received intensive support from the then rector of the Ansbach high school, Georg Nikolaus Köhler.

Study time in Jena

In 1710 Gesner enrolled at the University of Jena . Through the mediation of the former prince educator Jakob Friedrich Weihl, who had already become aware of Gesner in Ansbach, he received a scholarship. At the same time Gesner wrote occasional poems for weddings and birthdays to improve his financial situation. In 1712 the theologian Johann Franz Buddeus , Gesner's preferred teacher, took him into his house and gave him his son's lessons. It was also Buddeus who paved his access to classical philology and, through access to his private library, gave him the opportunity to expand his education on his own. In 1714 Gesner published his first philological work, the Philopatris dialogus Lucianeus , in which he proved that the Philopatris ascribed to the Greek writer Lukian of Samosata could not have come from him at all, but rather came into being in the time of Emperor Julian - around 200 years later must. A year later, his first educational work, Institutiones rei scholasticæ (“Principles of Pedagogy”), appeared in which he took up the views of school reformers from the 17th century and expanded them with his own ideas.

The Weimar years

Wilhelm Ernst, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach

In 1715, through the mediation of his Jena mentor Buddeus, Gesner received the position of vice-principal at the Wilhelm-Ernst-Gymnasium in Weimar . In 1718 in nearby Gera (today Geraberg ) he married the pastor's daughter Elisabetha Caritas (1695–1761), née Eberhard, who gave birth to his first son Carl Philipp (1719–1780), who later became court physician and personal physician, in 1719. The daughter Elisabetha, born in 1721, later married Johann Jakob Huber , who worked as an associate professor of anatomy at the University of Göttingen from 1739 to 1742 and then went to Kassel as the personal physician of Landgrave Wilhelm VIII .

In addition to his work at the grammar school, Gesner was also the administrator of the ducal coin collection and library - the so-called Schurzfleisch collection and later Duchess Anna Amalia library . As part of this activity, he created a nine-volume catalog of nominal values , prepared a subject catalog, supplemented the inventory and produced a printed report, the Notitia Bibliothecæ Vimariæ praesertim Schurzfleischianæ (1723) on the library.

Gesner owed his appointment as librarian to a recommendation from his patron Buddeus to the royal court marshal Friedrich Gotthilf von Marschall . Gesner soon developed a close friendly relationship with him, ate lunch with him almost every day and spent his holidays on his estate in Oßmannstedt . Through regular contact with the court marshal, Gesner acquired fundamental knowledge of social manners, which later enabled him to take on representative tasks. During his almost fifteen-year stay in Weimar, he wrote numerous, mostly smaller, works, including the Chrestomathia Ciceroniana (1717) and the Chrestomathia Pliniana (1723), annotated compilations of texts from the writings of Cicero and Pliny ' Naturalis historia for use in language lessons. Here Gesner met his future cantor Johann Sebastian Bach .

Interlude in Ansbach

After Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach died in 1728, his successor and nephew Ernst August got rid of all those who had had influence under his uncle. Knowing that this would additionally offend the Marshal, who had meanwhile been removed from his position, he withdrew Gesner from the position of ducal librarian. Gesner, who had previously carried out this task with great devotion, then gave up his position as vice-principal at the Weimar grammar school and returned to his former school in Ansbach as principal in June 1729, where he only stayed for a short time.

Rector of the Leipzig Thomas School

When the rector of the Thomasschule Leipzig, Johann Heinrich Ernesti , died in October 1729, Gesner was appointed to Leipzig as his successor . Ernesti had held a professorship at Leipzig University since 1680 and had only looked after school matters very marginally since the beginning of his rectorate at the Thomas School in 1684. When Gesner took over the post of rector in July 1730, the school was in a state of extreme neglect. Challenged by his new role, Gesner reformed the school rules, ensured that teaching was regulated and the curriculum was renewed. The composer Johann Sebastian Bach , who was also subject to music lessons at the St. Thomas School as part of his office as cantor and music director of the city of Leipzig, had serious arguments with Gesner's predecessor Ernesti and is said to have exclaimed joyfully when he heard the news of Gesner's arrival: “Now everything will be done good! ”Later he dedicated his canon to two voices ( BWV 1075). Gesner, who admired Bach and his music, successfully campaigned for his better remuneration and set a lasting memorial to the composer in one of his comments on Quintilian's Institutio oratoria . To a passage praising the versatility of the lute player, he added the comment “ Oh Quintilian! If you could rise from the dead and see our brook, you would consider this to be insignificant! ". Gesner's relationship with the professors at Leipzig University , on the other hand, was difficult from the start. Out of jealousy for his high reputation with the city council, they refused Gesner the teaching permit and thus ensured that he left Leipzig again after four years of activity.

Gesner's work in Göttingen

A university foundation in the province

Göttingen - View of the city from the southeast . Copper engraving from 1735. The tape emphasizes the new importance of the city through the founding of the university in the previous year.

In 1734 the first lecture was given in Göttingen . It was a great risk to found a university, especially in such an insignificant city, which also suffered from the consequences of the Thirty Years' War. The ambitious project could only succeed if scholars with an exceptional reputation could be won right from the start. In order to achieve this goal, however, working conditions had to be created in Göttingen that were sufficiently attractive from the point of view of possible candidates to make the way to the small provincial town with its almost a thousand, half-dilapidated houses. Gerlach Adolph Freiherr von Münchhausen (1688–1770), Hanoverian Minister of State under King George II , who ruled the electorate in personal union with Great Britain from London , had suggested the foundation of the university, he was its first curator and greatest sponsor. Münchhausen recognized that a generous supply of books to the university was one of the keys to getting recognized scholars enthusiastic about the Göttingen University. That is why he added a further 2,154 volumes from duplicates from the Royal Library in Hanover to the basic set of 708 volumes from the library of the Göttingen grammar school , including many editions of antique classics. The decisive coup he succeeded in persuading the heirs of the Hanoverian statesman Joachim Hinrich von Bülow , who died in 1724, to donate his famous and precious private library for the new university. Their only condition was that the Göttingen university library should permanently bear the name “Bibliotheca Buloviana”, a name that was only given up in the following centuries. In spite of everything, the value of the library depended to a large extent on the extent to which Münchhausen succeeded in appointing a capable and at the same time committed director to supplement, maintain and expand it.

Appointment to the Georgia-Augusta

Heads of Haller , Gesner and Mosheim (from left to right) on the front of the auditorium building at Weender Tor in Göttingen, completed in 1866

Münchhausen found the suitable candidate for this office in Gesner, whose previous life was largely determined by his love for books and who was the first professor to arrive in Göttingen in 1734. But although besides Gesner other scholars with a high academic reputation such as the theologian Johann Lorenz von Mosheim and the natural scientist and poet Albrecht von Haller came to Georgia-Augusta , the young university still lacked a sufficient number of solvent students in its early years. Therefore, one year after his arrival in Göttingen, Gesner wrote, with the consent of Münchhausen, an anonymous pamphlet disguised as a letter to an English baron with the title Epistola praesentem Academiæ Gottingensis statum exhibens , in which he praised Göttingen University beyond all measure. The treatise, written in elegant Latin, praised the hippodromus in addition to the Bibliotheca buloviana and thus skilfully served the aspirations of young aristocrats, who were known not only as riding and fencing, but also as particularly well-off students. Gesner's authorship could only be proven beyond doubt in 1922 after a handwritten draft was found, but the font - just like another letter written by Gesner at the end of 1736 - more than fulfilled its aim. For a long time after Gesner's death, Göttingen University was known for its high proportion of aristocrats studying there.

In the first year of his activity in Göttingen, Gesner published his first larger edition of Latin classics, the Scriptores rei rusticæ (1735) , with the Abraham Vandenhoecks publishing house . In contrast to the innovations of his contemporary, the English classical philologist Richard Bentley , Gesner's two-volume work remains, from today's perspective, a typical child of his time. Filled with baroque erudition, Gesner's edition cannot come close to the work of Bentley.

Director of the Bibliotheca Buloviana

Scene from the hall of the Bibliotheca Buloviana . Detail from a hand-colored copper engraving by Georg Balthasar Probst, 1750.

At the time the university was founded, the holdings of the former Bülow private library with its almost 9,000 volumes of printed matter, various manuscripts and around 2,000 maps and tables made up almost three quarters of the former holdings of the Göttingen university library . The idea of ​​a continuous increase and meaningful addition to this stock was not yet a matter of course in Gesner's time. Rather, each professor maintained his own private library, which was with him throughout his life. Münchhausen made clever use of this fact by making sure that when appointing new professors, if possible, candidates with a particularly richly stocked book collection were brought to Göttingen. For example, Samuel Christian Hollmann , first professor of philosophy at Georgia-Augusta and at the same time its first chronicler, reports in retrospect in 1787 that the citizens of Göttingen, when they saw the wagonloads of books that came into town with the newly appointed professors, thought man now bring the university. In addition, however, Münchhausen made a large sum available annually for the library's inventory build-up. The decisions about the acquisitions were made in Hanover, where Gesner and his Göttingen professor colleagues sent their purchase proposals. The books were mainly bought at auctions at home and abroad, whereby the naturally good contact with London as one of the major centers of the book trade at the time was particularly beneficial. Gesner's extensive scientific connections to European scholars also ensured numerous new acquisitions in the form of gifts, including a complete edition of the writings of Cardinal Angelo Maria Quirini († 1755), the Bishop of Brescia and later head of the Bibliotheca Vaticana . Although there are no precise details about the growth of the library from Gesner's time, the inventory in the year of his death is estimated to be more than 50,000 volumes.

Gesner's school regulations for the Duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg

In 1738 Gesner published school regulations for the Duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg on behalf of King George II , which included provisions on the establishment of a philological seminar at Göttingen University. The overriding aim of the regulations was to set a standard for university teacher training and subsequently to guarantee a uniform level of education for all students when they were admitted to the universities (“ [...] thus a consistent uniformity in teaching = Arth introduced, and the school = Studia with which future Studiis Academicis may harmonize. "). To control the schools, the respective professor for rhetoric at Georgia-Augusta - Gesner and his successors - was permanently assigned the additional office of school inspector for the grammar schools of the Duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg.

Throughout his life Gesner placed a special emphasis on the fight against the mechanically small-scale teaching method in Latin and Greek lessons practiced at the time, which he opposed with his newly developed method of "cursory reading". Instead of examining individual text passages from constantly new lexical and grammatical points of view, Gesner pleaded for continuous reading, not interrupted by learned explanations, taking into account the overall context of the content. He wrote: “ Here, the youth must also be instructed […] that they do not become tired or tired of one or the other occurring difficulty, but only continue to read, because in general what appeared difficult at the beginning was pursued by the writer himself is explained and made clear. “With this redesign of language teaching, Gesner ushered in a new era in the history of high school education.

In addition to Gesner's reform of Latin and Greek teaching, the establishment of the philological seminar at Göttingen University, which he initiated, was trend-setting. The establishment was the first of its kind, and with its conception, the Göttingen Institute became the model for all later philological seminars. Here, too, Gesner's ideas were innovative and modifications continue to have an effect to this day. If possible, the seminarians should gain practical pedagogical experience in self-organized private lessons during their studies and deepen these skills at the Göttingen grammar school by means of independent teaching attempts:

193. So that the seminarians may have the opportunity to put their hands on the information work themselves and begin to bring what they have learned in it into the exercise: they should be admonished that they themselves enjoy working with children with whom they are acquainted or will be able to deal with, whose love and trust seek to acquire; that they take pleasure in examining them, saying something good to them, and not so much looking at the present profit in doing so as covering how they will thereby enable themselves to guarantee the prosperity of the Republic and their own happiness in the future promote.

194. At the same time, the director of the Göttingische Stadt = school has been instructed to allow the seminarians presented to him by the inspector to attend an intended school for some information, and to instruct them according to a certain class, hour and lesson [...]

As a special incentive, all seminarians were guaranteed a scholarship by George II , so that they “get the more pleasure to make use of these institutions for themselves and the Republic ”.

"Informal and correct" - the German society

In 1727 Johann Christoph Gottsched founded the “German Society” in Leipzig, a language society based on the model of the “ Académie française ”. In their meetings, which usually take place on a weekly basis, their members presented, discussed and assessed new, unprinted text samples that were often written on specific occasions such as anniversaries, birthdays, etc. The focus of the language criticism was on maintaining standard German and thus consciously avoiding dialect or foreign language expressions. After going through the evaluation and improvement process, the result was saved by an entry in the company's text collection.

Emblem of the German Society founded by Gesner in Göttingen

Soon after its founding, the Leipzig German Society became a nationally known institution and its chairman Gottsched a sought-after arbitrator in linguistic and literary questions. Its membership grew rapidly, and by 1775 more than 30 subsidiaries were founded, whose network spanned the entire German-speaking area. As early as 1735, Johann Lorenz von Mosheim , who was president of the Leipzig Society at the time , had suggested the establishment of a Göttingen subsidiary across from Münchhausen , but his suggestion had not yet met with little response. After Gesner's appointment and the establishment of the Philological Seminary he initiated, the situation had changed: Gesner was a suitable president and the seminarians could be considered as possible members of the German Society. On August 18, 1738, the founding statutes were signed, and on February 13, 1740, the society received official royal confirmation from George II and its seal, designed according to Gesner's proposal.

From its foundation to 1755, more than 500 members could be recruited for the society, whereby the proportion of the nobility was disproportionately high from the beginning. The meetings, which regularly take place on late Friday afternoons, were based on the model of the Leipzig German Society, whereas the Göttingen Society, unlike the latter, did not succeed in publishing its texts later. Gesner headed the society as president until his death, after which the office was not filled again. With an interruption during the Seven Years' War , the Göttingen German Society existed until it was dissolved in 1791.

The Novus Thesaurus

Already between 1726 and 1735 Gesner was working on improved new editions of the Thesaurus eruditionis scholasticae , first published in 1571 by Basilius Faber , which is one of the most printed encyclopedias of the early modern period. In 1733 Gesner first thought about a completely new lexicon of the Latin language and estimated its completion to take three years. When the four-volume Novus Linguæ Et Eruditionis Romanae Thesaurus finally appeared in 1749, it was the result of twelve years of work. Gesner's lexicon differed from those of its predecessors in three main ways: Gesner limited his choice of vocabulary to ancient sources and left them all Middle and Neo-Latin expressions are omitted. In addition, he put the Latin expressions - out of the conviction that the meaning must be derived from the original evidence - no German-language equivalents. Finally, Gesner laid out the internal structure of the articles in strict chronological order according to the development of the word and meaning. The editors of the academy project known under the name “Munich Thesaurus” for the creation of a new large lexicon of the Latin language assessed Gesner's work as so important that in the foreword of the first volume published in 1900 they were the only ones next to Egidio Forcellini , the creator of the Totius Latinitatis Lexicon , mentioned among the predecessors.

The last few years

Gesner around 1750, engraving by Christian Nikolaus Eberlein

Göttingen memorial plaque

In 1751 Georg II founded the “ Royal Society of Sciences in Göttingen ”, which is the third oldest of the seven scientific academies in Germany after Berlin (1700) and Leipzig (1704). Albrecht von Haller was appointed its first president , Gesner was appointed first secretary of the historical-philological class. In 1753, after Haller's departure from Göttingen, he was his successor.

Five years before his death, Gesner was appointed court counselor by Georg II on February 17, 1756 because of his achievements. At the time, he was highly respected in the scientific world. The British doctor Anthony Askew , who was one of Gesner's numerous correspondents, wrote of him: “ Talem neminem vidi! “:“ I've never seen a man like this ”.

Gesner died on August 3, 1761 at the age of seventy in Göttingen. In his eulogy, his friend and colleague, the theologian and orientalist Johann David Michaelis, said: “ … not a private property, but a public one, throughout Germany and Europe, has passed: Gesner ” (“ … non res nostra privata periit, sed publica totius Germaniae et Europae, Gesnerus ”).

Fonts (selection)

• Philopatris dialogus Lucianeus (1714)
• Institutiones rei scholasticæ (1715) ( digitized in the digital library Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania)
• Chrestomathia Ciceroniana (1717)
• Chrestomathia Pliniana (1723)
• Edition of the Thesaurus eruditionis scholasticae (1726ff.) First published by Basilius Faber in 1571
• Scriptores rei rusticæ (1735)
• School regulations in front of the Churfürstl. Braunschweig-Lüneburgische Lande (1738)
• Edition of the Institutio oratoria Quintilians (1738)
• Opuscula minora varii argumenti (1743–1745)
• Index etymologicus latinitatis (1749)
• Novus linguæ et eruditionis romanae thesaurus (1749)
• Primæ lineæ isagoges in eruditionem universalem (1756)
• Thesaurus epistolicus Gesnerianus (1768–1770, published posthumously by Christian Adolf Klotz)
• Vegetii Renati Artis veterinariae sive mulomedicinae libri quatuor , Mannheim 1781.

literature

Newer representations

• Meinolf Vielberg : Johann Matthias Gesner, Institutiones rei scholasticae , edited, translated, explained and provided with an introduction, Wiesbaden 2013 (= Gratia, Tübinger Schriften zur Renaissanceforschung und Kulturwissenschaft. Vol. 48), ISBN 344706921X .
• Dieter Cherubim , Ariane Walsdorf: Language criticism as enlightenment. The German Society in Göttingen in the 18th century , ed. by Elmar Mittler, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-930457-48-2 - on this the review by Martin Stuber, Historical Institute, University of Bern, in: sehepunkte 7 (2007), No. 5 from May 15, 2007, available online via sehepunkte , Review journal for the historical sciences.
• Reinhold Friedrich: Johann Matthias Gesner: his life and his work. Roth 1991, ISBN 3-924983-07-0 - the core of the volume is a forty-four-page description of Gesner's living conditions written by Reinhold Friedrich, which also goes into parts of the work and was supplemented by a table on genealogy and a list of literature. In addition, the volume contains excerpts from an essay by Theodor Gericke on Gesner's position in the history of high school education, as well as from the above-mentioned essay by Ulrich Schindel on Gesner's work as a professor of poetry and eloquence. According to the title of the series (“Rother Miniatures”), the reader can expect a narrow booklet, but the volume is currently the only monograph available that offers a complete overview of Gesner's life and work (as of August 2005).
• Ulrich Schindel : Johann Matthias Gesner. Professor of poetry and eloquence 1734–1761. In: Carl Joachim Classen (Hrsg.): The classical antiquity at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen: a lecture series on its history, Göttingen 1989, ISBN 3-525-35845-8 , pp. 9-26.
• Christiane Kind-Doerne: The Lower Saxony State and University Library Göttingen. Your holdings and facilities, past and present. Wiesbaden 1986, ISBN 3-447-02590-5 - Here in particular the chapters “From the Bibliotheca Buloviana to the Lower Saxony State and University Library”, pp. 1–9 and “First Decades (1734–1763)”, pp. 10–19 .
• Ulrich Schindel:  Gesner, Johann Matthias. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 348 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Johannes Joachim: Gesner's part in the propaganda for the Göttingen University 1735–1736. In: Contributions to the history of libraries and scholars in Göttingen, ed. and dedicated to the participants of the 24th Assembly of German Librarians by the University Library, Göttingen 1928, pp. 7-19.
• Karl Pöhnert: Johann Matthias Gesner and his relationship to philanthropinism and neo-humanism. A contribution to the history of education in the 18th century. Leipzig 1898.
• Friedrich August Eckstein :  Gesner, Johann Matthias . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, pp. 97-103.
• Friedrich A. Eckstein: JM Gesner's effectiveness for the improvement of higher schools. Leipzig 1869.
• Hermann Sauppe : Annual report on the Wilhelm Ernstische Gymnasium in Weimar from Easter 1853 to Easter 1856 submitted by the director Hermann Sauppe. It is preceded by a lecture on Johann Matthias Gesner , Weimar 1856.

Contemporary writings

• Jeremias Nikolaus Eyring: Descriptio operum Jo. Matthi. Gesneri cuius insertum est commercium litterar. Lucianeum praemissa epistola ad Ge. Christ. Hambergerum. Goettingen 1769.
• Johann Nikolaus Niclas: Epistola familiaris de Jo. Matthia Gesnero. Göttingen 1769 - Niclas (1733–1808) came to Göttingen to study in 1753 and was one of the students that Gesner loved and encouraged. In 1770 he went to Lüneburg as rector of the Michaelisgymnasium . In 1790 the Lüneburg Knight Academy acquired its valuable private library of around ten thousand volumes. The Epistola was reissued posthumously in 1826.
• Jeremias Nikolaus Eyring: Io. Matthiae Gesneri Biographia Academica Gottingensis. with a foreword by Christian Adolf Klotz, 2 vols., Halle 1768 - In it under XIV. a commemorative document written by Gesner's Göttingen professor colleague Johann David Michaelis with the title “Memoria Io. Matthiae Gesneri auctore Io. Davide Michaelis ”(pp. 245–276) and under XV. a reprint of the font Johann August Ernestis “Io. Aug. Ernesti narratio de Io. Matthia Gesnero ”(pp. 277–328) - Like Gesner, Eyring (1739–1803) came from Franconia and, after finishing school in Coburg, went to study in Göttingen in 1759, where a year later he became a member of the philological seminar initiated by Gesner . In 1762 he entered the school service, was appointed rector of the city school in 1765 and was appointed director of the Göttingen grammar school in 1773. In the same year he was appointed associate professor, in 1780 full professor of philosophy at Georgia-Augusta, where he read on theological, linguistic and literary subjects. From 1763 he worked at the university library, where he made it to the position of first curator in 1785 and devoted himself above all to the elaboration of the systematic catalog. In 1761, under the impression of Gesner's death, he wrote a pamphlet entitled “Thoughts for the Defense of Those Who Study Without Wealth”.
• Johann August Ernesti : Narratio de Jo. Matthia Gesnero ad Davidem Ruhnkenium , Leipzig 1762 - Ernesti (1707–1781) held the post of vice rector at the Thomas School under Gesner and was appointed as his successor after his departure from Leipzig. His writing is aimed at the classical philologist David Ruhnken (1723–1798), one of the most important humanists of the 18th century. After finishing school, Ruhnken decided to study with Gesner in Göttingen, but on the way there he decided to stay at the Wittenberg University for the time being. In Wittenberg he met Ernesti, who stayed there often. Ernesti moved Ruhnken to study Greek in Leiden with Tiberius Hemsterhuys (1685–1766), the founder of the Dutch Hellenistic School, and wrote recommendations to him together with Ruhnken's Wittenberg professors. Ernesti thus had a decisive influence on Ruhnken's further life, because he became Hemsterhuys' favorite student and remained in the Netherlands until his own death. When he was offered the professorship of the late Gesner at Ernesti's suggestion in 1761, he turned it down and recommended Christian Gottlob Heyne instead .

Footnotes

1. ^ Johann David Michaelis: Memoria Io. Matthiae Gesneri . In: Jeremias Nikolaus Eyring (ed.): Io. Matthiae Gesneri Biographia Academica Gottingensis . Curt, Halle 1768, Vol. 1, pp. 245-276, quotation p. 247.

Web links

Commons : Johann Matthias Gesner  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Johann Matthias Gesner in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Johann Matthias Gesner  in the German Digital Library
• References in the Analytic Bibliography of Online Neo-Latin Texts
• Thesaurus linguae Latinae ed. Auctoritate et consilio academiarum quinque Germanicarum - Further information on the "Munich Thesaurus" from the bibliography "Latin Dictionaries" by Richard Wolf
• Digitized materials on Gesner, see search
• Online edition of the Novus Linguae Et Eruditionis Romanae Thesaurus in the CAMENA project
• Online edition of the Primae Lineae Isagoges In Eruditionem Universalem in the CAMENA project
• Online edition of Carmina in the CAMENA project

predecessor	government office	successor
-	Professor of poetry and eloquence at the University of Göttingen 1734–1761	Christian Gottlob Heyne
-	Director of the Göttingen University Library 1734–1761	Johann David Michaelis

This article was added to the list of excellent articles on August 21, 2005 in this version .