Johann Melchior Möller

Johann Melchior Möller (born December 9, 1760 in Erfurt , † March 17, 1824 in Stotternheim ) was a German Protestant clergyman.

Life

family

Johann Melchior Möller was the son of Wilhelm Jacob Möller (* December 18, 1732 in Erfurt; † May 11, 1764 there), who was pastor at the Protestant Thomas Church in Erfurt and professor of sacred languages at the Ratsgymnasium in Erfurt, and his wife Regine Sophie, daughter of doctor Dr. Johann Christoph Raßbach (1698–1757); he had another sister:

• Magdalena Christiana Dorothea Möller (1763–1797), married to Johann Sigismund Bessler (1756–1820), pastor in Walschleben .

Johann Melchior Möller was married to Maria Regina (born March 17, 1767 - November 30, 1787), a daughter of Georg Wilhelm Ritschl (1736–1804), pastor in Erfurt, since September 12, 1786 in Erfurt. They had a daughter together, and his wife died when she was born:

• Christel Möller (born November 30, 1787; † unknown), married to Carl Kuhn (* 1784; † unknown), leaseholder of the Brettin property in Stotternheim.

In his second marriage, he was married to Friederike Beate Christiane (born November 7, 1760 in Saalfeld , † June 14, 1827 in Gröbitz ), daughter of Johann Friedrich Bernhardi, general superintendent in Saalfeld, from November 9, 1788 in Erfurt . They had five children:

• Johann Friedrich Möller (born November 13, 1789 in Erfurt; † April 20, 1861), general superintendent of the old Prussian church province of Saxony and consistorial councilor in Magdeburg ;
• Ernst Sigismund Gustav Möller (* 1793; † 1857), landowner in Buttendorf near Fürth and married to Christiane Louise Caroline (* 1801 † 1861), daughter of Heinrich Wilhelm Müller, postal secretary in Erfurt;
• Karoline Möller (* 1795; † June 17, 1861), married to Pastor Johann Friedrich Müller in Mühlberg ;
• Heinrich Möller (January 14, 1799 in Stotternheim; † 1886 in Bad Kösen ), superintendent in Lissen near Osterfeld , first married to Agnes (* 1802; † 1842), daughter of Siegmund Gottlob Helmershausen († 1827), Saxon-Hildburghauser Medical Councilor and in 2nd marriage with Johann Wahn (* 1815; † 1898);
• Henriette Möller (* 1803; † 1871).

Career

education

Möller attended the municipal elementary school of the Barfüßer because the Protestant Ratsgymnasium Erfurt had a bad reputation at the time and could not prepare him for later studies. On August 9, 1817, he wrote to one of his sons about the school system at that time:

“ ... even if this work should be of the kind that the good grains in it should be covered by the chaff, that is, by the passage and clothing, which lack the logical sharpness and the rhetorical art; So now I put this bow to the many who will tell you, my children, after my death that your father wanted well, but could not, because his age, which should prepare him and give his lively spirit the development, left him miserable, and had no sense or hearing for his tears and for his great efforts . "

From 1777 to 1778 he attended the University of Erfurt , but made the experience there that the teachers, who were also pastors, were more concerned with their pastoral work than with imparting academic knowledge. In 1779 he continued his theology studies at the University of Jena and heard the lectures of Ernst Jakob Danovius , with whom he also lived and with whom he was on friendly terms.

Erfurt

After completing his studies, he returned to Erfurt and passed the candidate examination. As early as 1778 he had given his first sermon on Good Friday in Möbisburg near Erfurt and in Jena he took part in the exercises of the preacher's seminar , so that after passing the candidate examination he was asked 160 times within four years to step into the pulpit. Because it was customary for the candidates to take over a school post, Johann Melchior Möller was appointed vice rectorate with the Augustinians. In July 1784 he was elected deacon by the regulator parish in Erfurt with 200 votes against 12 and took office in August; at the same time he was the overseer of the girls' school and taught there as a religion teacher. In 1787 he submitted a paper to the city ​​council in which he pointed out the lack of the city's school system, with regard to subjects, textbooks and discipline; However, it took more than twenty years until these deficiencies were eliminated, although the then coadjutor and later elector and archbishop Karl Theodor von Dalberg paid his attention to this report in 1789.

Schmira

In August 1790, the rural community Schmira near Erfurt, which mainly consisted of gardeners and farmers, appointed him to their pastor. There he managed to make some changes in the community with the support of his friend Peter Adolph Winkopp and the government director Johann Arnold von Bellmont (1718-1803), Count Karl Christian Ernst von Bentzel-Sternau and the coadjutor von Dalberg. In 1792 he was able to set up a tree nursery , in which the youth of the village learned the art of grafting and inoculation , where he personally took over the gardening, supervision and financial support of this facility. In the same year he founded a weekly winter evening party for the practical training and education of the young, male villagers. To this end, he taught at the school and read Fröding popular calendar , Christian Gotthilf Salzmann's Little Book of Crabs , Rudolph Zacharias Becker Noth- and Hülfsbüchlein for peasants , Rudolph Zacharias Becker The sincere calendar man, a really curious and useful book , Henry Sanders Öconomische natural history for the Germans compatriot , went on the history of Erfurt, taught about geography , arboriculture, health care and the police. In the course of time the number of participants grew to 30 people and on November 21, 1792 Count Bentzel-Sternau also took part in an event.

Erfurt

In 1793 he was called to the Michaeliskirche in Erfurt as a deacon , and took office in May 1794. In November 1794 he also received the post of professor at the Protestant Ratsgymnasium, which his father-in-law left him in part as an adjunct . At the same time he was busy preparing the school teacher seminarists and thus found the opportunity to implement his ideas for improving the school landscape at the root. During this time he also wrote instructions for children to use numbers in order to prepare them for mental arithmetic.

In 1795 he placed an anonymous advertisement in the imperially privileged Reichsanzeiger , in which he offered the suffering and lost people to give secret advice and consolation if they would turn to the intelligence office in Erfurt.

In 1796 he published the text About the rescue of furniture and household appliances in the event of a conflagration , in which he suggested that in places where there are no fire extinguishers, voluntary members join a society in which each member can use a certain piece of furniture Could provide, so that in the event of a fire, a replacement would be created quickly. For this he received a prize from the Society of Sciences in Göttingen .

Through his stay in Erfurt he came into closer contact with the coadjutor von Dalberg, who supported him in taking care of the pastoral care and moral supervision of the breeding and police house, which was in the parish of the Michaeliskirche; he was a supporter of John Howard , who sought penal reform . On May 12, 1797, he was employed as the first religious and moral teacher at the breeding and police station, an office that was permanently subordinate to the Diaconate of Michaeliskirche.

Stuttering home

In August 1797 he was elected pastor of the rural community of Stotternheim, where he took office on September 13, 1797. In addition to his pastoral work, he created a register of residents in which he recorded the residents of each house according to age, status and gender; on the side he created a local history . He also planted trees in which several hundred grafted trunks of various types of fruit were planted. In 1799 he introduced that each confirmand plant a young tree trunk in a community area.

He proposed to dry out a swamp near Stotternheim by digging trenches and Dalberg tenants make fruitful; this suggestion was implemented and he could still experience that potatoes, white cabbage and flax were grown and wooded areas were planted in the former swamp. Today the area of ​​the Schwanseer Forest is in Schwansee .

His brothers in office also entrusted him with the management and administration of the country preaching widow's institute, which he met with the greatest care, as well as co-directing the Thuringian Bible Society and participating in the association for the distribution of English grants from Dr. Christian Ernst August Schwabe († 1843), preacher at the German Lutheran St. George's Church in the east London district of Aldgate (today: London Borough of Tower Hamlets ) in London.

During his time as a pastor in Stotternheim, he experienced a four-time change of rule of the place, from Kurmainz to the Kingdom of Prussia , seven years later Napoleon declared Erfurt together with Blankenhain as the Principality of Erfurt to be an imperial domain that was not part of the Confederation of Rhine , but was directly under him until it came back to Prussia in 1814, before it belonged to the Duchy of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach .

On April 2, 1822 he was appointed adjunct of the superintendent of Großrudestedt .

Fonts (selection)

• First instruction for children to use numbers to prepare them for mental arithmetic. With tables . Erfurt 1793.
• About the rescue of the furniture and household utensils in the event of a conflagration . Erfurt 1796.
• Macrothymia, or attempts to educate mankind . Erfurt near Maring 1797.
• Campaign against stick and rod, or suggestions for a better education of the youth of beyderley sex . Erfurt: Beyer and Maring, 1802.

Literature (selection)

• Johann Melchior Möller . In: New Nekrolog der Deutschen , 2nd year, 1824, 2nd issue. Ilmenau Voigt, 1826. pp. 559-587.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ GEDBAS: Johann Melchior MÖLLER. Retrieved June 22, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung . P. 223 f. Joh. Gottfr. Müllerischen Buchh., 1796 ( google.de [accessed June 22, 2019]).
3. ↑ Thuringian Natural Letter - The NSG "Schwansee" near Erfurt. Retrieved June 22, 2019 . 
4. ^ Johann Martin Lappenberg: Documented history of the Hanseatic steel yard in London . S. 131. Langhoff, 1851 ( google.de [accessed June 22, 2019]).
5. ^ Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung . S. 117. JM Mauke, 1814 ( google.de [accessed on June 22, 2019]).