Georg Joachim Zollikofer

Zollikofer 1773 ( Anton Graff )

Georg Joachim Zollikofer (born August 5, 1730 in St. Gallen , † January 22, 1788 in Leipzig ) was a Swiss- German theologian and hymn poet.

Life

Zollikofer was the son of the legal scholar David Anton Zollikofer from the family of Zollikofer von Altenklingen at Altenklingen Castle and his wife Anna Elisabeth Högger. After attending high schools in St. Gallen and Frankfurt am Main , he accompanied the son of the Frankfurt bookseller Bernus on his grand tour through the Netherlands. From 1751 Zollikofer studied at the academic high schools in Bremen and Hanau as well as at the University in Utrecht and returned to his hometown in 1753.

In 1754 he took over a preaching position in the Reformed community of Murten in what is now the canton of Friborg , but left the community after a year of activity. From there he was transferred to the community of Monsheim (Rheinhessen). There he met his future wife Susanna Regina Le Roy in the house of the La Roche family .

On March 6, 1758, Zollikofer became pastor in a parish in the exile town of Neu-Isenburg, founded by the Huguenots in 1699 . In the same year he moved to Leipzig at the end of April , where he found his position as pastor of the Reformed community. On August 13, 1758 he gave his inaugural sermon in Leipzig.

When his wife died a few years later, Zollikofer married Henrike Sechehaye soon after in 1780.

Since his work in a not particularly large community left him time for other activities, he soon developed a special talent for the spread of Enlightenment ideas. When Denis Diderot went to Saint Petersburg in 1773 to accept an invitation from the Russian Tsarina Catherine the Great , he met Zollikofer in Leipzig on September 2, 1773 .

In the Lutheran city of Leipzig, Zollikofer became a celebrated preacher, and a large number of theology students from the university are said to have come to his church services time and again to hear his famous sermons.

Zollikofer is the lyricist of the hymn Let me, O Lord, in all things ( EG 414).

Georg Joachim Zollikofer died on January 22, 1788 in Leipzig at the age of almost 58 years, and a street was named in his honor in the Volkmarsdorf district .

See also

• List of hymn poets

literature

• Daniel Jacoby:  Zollikofer, Georg Joachim . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 45, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1900, pp. 415-419.
• Erich Wenneker:  ZOLLIKOFER, Georg Joachim. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 14, Bautz, Herzberg 1998, ISBN 3-88309-073-5 , Sp. 576-579.
• Werner Raupp : Georg Joachim Zollikofer. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Werner Raupp : Art. Zollikofer, Georg Joachim (1730–1788), in: The Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century German Philosophers. General Editors Heiner F. Klemme, Manfred Kuehn, Vol. 3, London / New York 2010, pp. 1324-1325.