Johann Andreas Schmidt

Johann Andreas Schmidt, engraving by Martin Bernigeroth (1712)

Johann Andreas Schmidt (also: Schmid, Schmidius , born August 28, 1652 in Worms , † June 12, 1726 in Helmstedt ) was a German Lutheran theologian and church historian.

Life

The son of the pastor, senior clergy and school supervisor in Worms Georg Schmid († 1666) and his wife Catharina Petrus († 1666), were initially taught by private teachers and had attended schools in Worms. In 1667 he went to his maternal grandfather Johann Petrus in Augsburg , where he was accepted among the alumni of the local high school. He actually wanted to start studying in Altdorf, where he had already entered the university's register. However, on May 18, 1673 he moved to the University of Jena , where he first completed a philosophical course with a tendency towards theology and in August 1676 acquired the academic degree of a master's degree in philosophy.

In 1677 he took a trip to Hamburg, where he met Esdras Edzardus , Eberhard Anckelmann (1641–1703) and Bernhard Sivers (1649–1694) and had been made cheap offers to stay there. But since he had received scholarships from Augsburg, he went back to Jena, suffered an accident in December 1678 and broke his arm so that it remained crippled for life. In 1679 Schmidt found access to the university operations of the Jena University as an adjunct at the philosophical faculty. A promised extraordinary professorship for mathematics was canceled in 1680, instead he became a full professor of logic and metaphysics in October 1683.

After Johann Wilhelm Baier's move to the university in Halle, he received an extraordinary professorship at the theological faculty in Jena in 1694. Around the same time he also received several offers from the University of Halle for a theological and philosophical chair, and at the intercession of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz from the University of Helmstedt , which offered him the theological professorship in church history. Since he had experienced a lot of envy and resentment in Jena and the church history appealed to him very much, he accepted the Helmstedt professorship that same year. In order to have the necessary academic degrees, he acquired a licentiate in theology in Jena in December 1694, and in September 1695, in poor health, he obtained a doctorate in theology at his own expense .

Schmidt had also participated in the organizational tasks of the university in Jena. He was dean of the philosophical faculty several times and once, in the summer semester of 1689, prorector of the Alma Mater. When he arrived in Helmstedt in September 1695, he was overwhelmed with work because Heinrich Wideburg (1641–1696) had died and Friedrich Ulrich Calixt had been declared emeritus. Therefore, for a time he was the only theological professor at the Helmstedt University. In 1699 the dukes Rudolf August and Anton Ulrich appointed him abbot of the Mariental monastery . In 1691 he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina . In 1701 he was accepted as a foreign member of the Royal Prussian Society of Sciences .

On January 17, 1720 he suffered a stroke that partially paralyzed him, but he continued his lectures, after having suffered another stroke on January 1, 1723, a third stroke took him in 1726. He was buried in the St. Stephen's Church in Helmstedt .

Act

With his appointment it was hoped in Helmstedt that he would inherit from Georg Calixt . However, historical research was more at the center of his interests. The practical ecclesiastical questions touched him less, although he felt quite well what the church of the time lacked. Toward the Catholics he pursued a mildly conciliatory direction which was not averse to union with them. So he has the transfer of Princess Elisabeth Christine of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel , the wife of the later Emperor Charles VI. , spoke to the Catholic Church with the majority of his colleagues. The versatility of his scientific activity is expressed in his numerous writings, which already exceeded the number of one hundred before he moved to Helmstedt. He himself wrote a catalog of what he had published up to 1712. The church historian Johann Lorenz von Mosheim , who held him in high esteem and gave him a memorial speech in Latin on June 28, praised him as theologum, philosophum, mathematicum, historicum, oratorem, physicum, philologum and iuris sacri peritum.

family

Schmidt was married twice. On November 25, 1686, he married in Jena Dorothea († January 1689), the daughter of the general superintendent Theophil Cöler (born September 5, 1618 in Leipzig † July 16, 1685 in Jena). The daughter Catharina Elisabeth Schmid emerged from the marriage and married Hartwig Samuel Schröter, the princely Braunschweig councilor, on October 10, 1715 in Braunschweig. On July 29, 1691 he married Sibylle, the daughter of the general superintendent in Jena Georg Götze . There are five sons and four daughters from the marriage. You know about the children

• Anna Sophia Schmid († young)
• Johann Georg Schmid († young)
• Louise Schmid I. Marriage in 1718 with the royal Saxon court judge Christian Friedrich Schröder; II. Marriage on October 31, 1726 with Polykarp Leyser IV.
• Johann Andreas Schmid (born November 19, 1697 in Helmstedt, † October 18, 1728 ibid) 1720 ao Prof. med., 1727 o. Prof. med.
• Maria Elisabeth Schmid married with the princely Brunswick-Lüneburg commission councilor Johann Ludwig Kotzebue
• Georg Andreas Schmid († before father)
• Hedwig Catharina Schmid († before father)
• Christoph Andreas Schmid became a lawyer

Works (selection)

• De oblatis eucharisticis quae hostiae vocari solent. Helmstedt: Bucholtz 1727
• Puer Athanasius baptizans. 1726 ( online )
• Compendium Historiae Ecclesiasticae V. et N Testamenti. Leipzig: Gleditsch, 1739

literature

• Karl Joseph Bouginé : Handbook of the general Litterargeschichte after Heumann's plan. Orell, Geßner Füßli and Comp., Zurich 1790, Vol. 3, p. 349 ( digitized in the Google book search).
• Johann Jakob Günter: Life sketches of the professors of the University of Jena from 1558 to 1858. Verlag Friedrich Manke, Jena 1858, p. 185 ( digitized in the Google book search).
• Bernd Roling : Mechanics and Miracles: Johannes Andreas Schmidt (1652–1726) and the technical limits of the miracle in Helmstedt . In: Frank Rexroth , Martin Mulsow (ed.): What may be considered scientific. Practices of demarcation in scholarly environments of the premodern. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2014, pp. 211–245.
• Fritz Roth : Complete evaluations of funeral sermons for genealogical and cultural-historical purposes. Self-published, Boppard / Rhein 1976, vol. 9, p. 106, R 8173.
• Rolf Volkmann: Schmidt, Johann Andreas . In: Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Dieter Lent u. a. (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon: 8th to 18th century . Appelhans, Braunschweig 2006, ISBN 3-937664-46-7 , p. 622 f.
• Georg Wilhelm Zapf : Augsburg library. Or a historical-critical-literary directory of all writings that concern the city of Augsburg and explain its history. Johann Melchior Lotter, Augsburg, 1795, vol. 1, p. 404 ( digitized in the Google book search).
• Paul Zimmermann :  Schmidt, Johann Andreas . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 31, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1890, pp. 734-736.
• Schmid, Johann Andreas. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 35, Leipzig 1743, columns 391-398.

Web links

Wikisource: Johann Andreas Schmid  - Sources and full texts

• Works by and about Johann Andreas Schmidt  in the German Digital Library
• Publications by and about Johann Andreas Schmidt in VD 17 .
• Literature by and about Johann Andreas Schmidt in the catalog of the SUB Göttingen

Individual evidence

1. ^ Member entry by Johann Andreas Schmidt at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on June 21, 2016.