Christoph Samuel John

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Christoph Samuel John (born August 11, 1747 in Fröbersgrün near Greiz ; † September 1, 1813 in Tranquebar, southern India ) was a German missionary in the service of the Danish-Halle Mission .

life and work

Christoph Samuel John was the son of a pastor. He studied theology at the University of Halle and already worked as an educator in the Halle orphanage during his studies under Johann Georg Knapp . On November 3, 1769, he was in Copenhagen ordained . A voyage to India that began on January 6, 1770 had to be canceled due to ice drifts. It was not until 14 months later, on March 15, 1771, that he set out again and arrived in India on June 13, 1771 to take up his post as a missionary in the Danish colony of Tranquebar.

Illustration by CS John describing a sky gazer ( Uranoscopus lebeckii )

In addition to his more than 40 years as a teacher and preacher in India, he developed research activities in the fields of linguistics, history, ethnology and zoology. While traveling through southern India, he put on extensive ethnological and scientific collections and sent many of his finds to researchers such as Georg Forster , William Roxburgh and Marcus Élieser Bloch . With his descriptions, drawings and careful preparations, he made important contributions to Bloch's work, General Natural History of Fish . In addition to his mother tongue, John spoke English, Portuguese and Tamil. A lung disease and increasing blindness did not prevent him from teaching. He died of a stroke at the age of 66 and was buried in the New Jerusalem Cemetery in Tharangambadi.

Honors

Under the presidency of Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber , John was appointed Doctor of Philosophy by the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina on April 30, 1795 .

The ichthyologist Marcus Élieser Bloch named the tropical fish genus Johnius after him.

The herpetologist Patrick Russell named a snake species Eryx johnii after him.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johann Ferdinand Neigebaur: History of the imperial Leopoldino-Carolinian German academy of natural scientists during the second century of its existence . Frommann, Jena 1860, p. 64 ( digitized version )
  2. ↑ Bo Beolens, Michael Watkins, Michael Grayson: The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011, p. 135.

literature

  • Gerald H. Anderson: Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions . New York: Macmillan Reference, 1998. ISBN 0-02-864604-5
  • Johannes Ferdinand Fenger: Den Trankebarske Missions Historie , Copenhagen, 1843
  • Hans-Joachim Paepke: Bloch's fish collection in the Museum für Naturkunde der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - An illustrated catalog and historical account . ARG Gantner Verlag KG, Czech Republic, 1999. ISBN 3-904144-16-2
personal data
SURNAME John, Christoph Samuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German evangelical missionary
DATE OF BIRTH August 11, 1747
PLACE OF BIRTH Frobersgrün near Greiz
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 1813
Place of death Tranquebar , India