Johann Georg August Hacker

Johann Georg August Hacker (born January 24, 1762 or 1758 in Dresden ; † February 21, 1823 there ) was a German Lutheran theologian .

Dot engraving around 1800 by Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen after a drawing by Moritz Retzsch

family

Johann Georg August Hacker was born during the Seven Years' War to the master baker Johann Gottfried Hacker and Juliane Dorothea Junkerin (or Jungk). Allegedly, the mother and the newborn child are said to have hidden for a few days in a crypt in the Bohemian churchyard of the Johanniskirche in Dresden to be safe from the heavy fighting. The Hackers had a total of five children, of whom Johann Georg August Hacker showed a special interest in science at an early age.

Hacker grew up in a Protestant home. His cousin Joachim Bernhard Nicolaus Hacker was also a Protestant theologian. In 1785, Hacker married Charlotte Wilhelmine Frisch, the daughter of the ministerial preacher to St. Petri in Freyberg ( Freiberg ), M. Johann Christian Frisch (or Fritsch). Hacker had a special relationship with his wife's brother, Samuel Gottlob Frisch (or Fritsch), who was second court preacher in Dresden at the time and son-in-law of the writer Christian Felix Weisse . The Dresden court preacher, Christoph Friedrich von Ammon, also appreciates Hacker very much. Later, one of Ammons' granddaughters married Hacker's grandson.

Career

First, Hacker attended the Kreuzschule in Dresden. In 1778, at the age of 18, he began studying at the University of Wittenberg . Among other things, he heard Johann Friedrich Hiller , Johann Matthias Schröckh and Karl Christian Tittmann here . Above all, he attended the theological and homiletic lectures of Franz Volkmar Reinhard , professor of theology and philosophy . He wrote his final thesis on Socrates under the supervision of Reinhard. Hacker left the university after three years and then worked for a while as a court master or private teacher. In 1784, when he was only 22, he became a preacher in the kennel and poor house in Torgau . There he gained special recognition because he not only acted as a pastor and teacher for the inmates, but also looked after 400 mentally ill people. Thanks to his good reputation and the recommendations of Reinhard, with whom he was now a close friend, Hacker only became second court preacher in Dresden in 1796 and, before the end of the same year, he became the first court preacher . In 1802 he was finally awarded a doctorate from the University of Wittenberg. A little later, in 1807, a group of young theologians formed under Hacker as the leader and met weekly at Hacker's house to discuss scientific questions and theological terms in Latin. Throughout his life, Hacker had a reputation for being a hardworking, humble, and self-sacrificing religious person. He also had an extensive education and was in contact with many of the personalities of the literary world at the time. Documents show that Hacker was at least temporarily in contact with Karl August Böttiger .

When Franz Volkmar Reinhard died in 1812, Hacker took over the editing of his friend's unpublished writings. The following year 1813, however, with the battle of Dresden and the death of his wife, brought even more severe blows of fate for him, so that over time he withdrew more and more. Eventually he fell ill with "lung addiction" ( tuberculosis ) and died, despite two spa visits in Karlsbad , in 1823 at the age of 62 in Dresden. The funeral sermon was given by Hacker's brother-in-law and successor in office, Samuel Gottlob Frisch. The theologian and poet Ludwig Würkert wrote a poem on his death, which aroused grief among the general public , which was published in the Dresdner Abendzeitung .

Fonts (selection)

• Imago vitae morumque Socratis e scriptoribus vetustis ( expressa ). Disputatio historico philosophica. Vitebergae (praes. Fr. Volkm. Reinhard) (1781)
• Memories and encouragement given to us by the passing centuries. A sermon on the Sunday after Christmas 1800 (1801)
• Dissertatio de descensu ad inferos, 1 Petr. III, 19–20 ad Messiae demandatam referendo dissertatio / Descensus ad inferos (1802)
• How we should look at the sparing God gave us under the storms of so many thousands of our brethren ago. (1807)
• Drafts of sermons on ordinary Sundays and on free texts (in several volumes , 1807–1809)
• Indications of a fruitful use of the sections of holy scripture, which, according to the highest order in 1810, instead of the usual Gospels at the Protestant service in the royal. Saxon Lands are to be declared publicly / Ed. by Dr. Johann Georg August Hacker (multiple volumes; 1810)
• Communion book for persons from the educated classes (1812)
• Words to Reinhard's grave (funeral sermon for Franz Volkmar Reinhard), 1812
• The psalms / translated and their main content explained by Franz Volkmar Reinhard. Edited by Johann Georg August Hacker (1813)
• God gives victory to the good cause, even if it already seems to succumb! / a sermon on Sundays Quasimodogeniti before the. Ev. Court community held (1814)
• Sermon to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the reign of His Majesty the King of Saxony Friedrich August (1818)
• That nothing harms the cause of Jesus more than an unworthy behavior of his confessors and alleged friends; delivered a sermon on Sundays Jubilate on the ordinary epistle. (1822)

literature

• Bernhard Friedrich Voight, Friedrich August Schmidt (ed.): New Nekrolog der Deutschen. Ilmenau 1824, pp. 207-223. ( Digitized in the Google book search)
• Ernst Zimmermann (ed.): General Church Newspaper. Darmstadt 1824, col. 165–166. ( Digitized in the Google book search)
• Samuel Gottlob Frisch: In memory of D. Johann Georg August Hacker. 1823.
• Johann Samuelersch , Johann Gottfried Gruber : Hacker. in: General Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts . Volume 2, Issue 1, 1827, p. 78 ( digitized in the Google book search)
• Heinrich Döring: The German pulpit speakers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: depicted after their lives and work. Neustadt an der Orla 1830, pp. 70–74. ( Digitized in the Google book search)
• Karl Gottfried Theodor Winkler (ed.): Evening newspaper. 48th edition, Dresden February 25, 1823, p. 189 ( digitized in the Google book search)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Marriage register number 27 of the year 1849. Parish office of the Evangelical Lutheran parish church in Kesselsdorf.
2. ↑ Entry on Johann Georg August Hacker in Kalliope . Retrieved September 10, 2015.