Johann Jakob Breitinger (philologist)

Johann Jakob Breitinger (born March 1, 1701 in Zurich ; † December 14, 1776 ibid) was a Swiss philologist and author .

Johann Jakob Breitinger; Mezzotint by VD Preissler after JC Füeßli , 1741.

Life

Johann Jakob Breitinger studied theology and philology and earned his first recognition from 1730 through a new edition of the Septuagint . From 1731 he worked as a professor of the Hebrew and later the Greek language at the Collegium Carolinum in Zurich. Breitinger was best known as an employee of his friend Johann Jakob Bodmer . In their joint works on church history, it is not always possible to distinguish from whom most of the suggestions came. The main part of the historical collection Thesaurus Historicae Helveticae (1735) can be attributed to Breitinger.

Breitinger's main work Critische Dichtkunst from 1740 was a rejection of the traditional poetic principle of imitating nature in favor of creative imagination - it had a great influence on German literary theory and the burgeoning cult of genius . Bodmer and Breitinger's quarrel with Johann Christoph Gottsched , which was significant in terms of literary history, was also related to this .

Works

• Critical Treatise on the Nature, Intentions, and Uses of Parables , 1740.
• Critical Poetry , 1740.
• Defense of the Swiss muse Mr. DA Hallers , 1744.

literature

• Michael Böhler: Breitinger, Johann Jakob. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Uwe Möller: Rhetorical tradition and poetry theory in the early 18th century. Studies on Gottsched, Breitinger and Georg Friedrich Meier. Fink, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-7705-2102-1 .
• Wolfgang Bender: Johann Jakob Bodmer and Johann Jakob Breitinger . (= Metzler Collection; 113). Metzler, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-476-10113-4 .
• Fritz Ernst:  Breitinger, Johann Jakob. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 578 ( digitized version ).
• Johann Kaspar Mörikofer :  Breitinger, Johann Jakob (aesthetics) . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 295.
• Anett Lütteken, Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (eds.): Johann Jakob Bodmer and Johann Jakob Breitinger in the network of the European Enlightenment . (= The Eighteenth Century / Supplementa 16). Wallstein, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8353-0560-1 .
• Johannes Wankhammer: Poiesis in the “counterpart” of the other worlds: Epistemic and cosmological contingency in Breitinger and Brockes. In: Tim Sparenberg, Reto Rössler, and Philipp Weber (Eds.): Kosmos and Contingency. Fink, Paderborn 2016, pp. 112–126.

Web links

• Publications by and about Johann Jakob Breitinger (1701–1776) in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library
• Literature by and about Johann Jakob Breitinger in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Johann Jakob Breitinger  in the German Digital Library
• Works by Johann Jakob Breitinger at Zeno.org .
• Short biography of Johann Jakob Breitinger
• NZZ for the 300th birthday of Johann Jakob Breitinger
• Tripota - Trier portrait database