Johann Paul Ernst Greverus

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Johann Paul Ernst Greverus (born August 12, 1789 in Strückhausen , † August 15, 1859 in Oldenburg ) was a German writer and educator .

Life

Johann Paul Ernst Greverus was a son of the preacher Johann Paul Greverus (1745–1799), who worked in Strückhausen. He received the first instructions from private tutors and then graduated from high school in Oldenburg. At Easter 1808 he first moved to the University of Jena to study theology and philology and, two years later, the University of Göttingen . Thereupon, prevented by the French occupation from returning to his fatherland, around the New Year of 1811 he took up the post of first teacher at the secondary school for girls in Hannoversch-Münden . In 1813 he took over the management of a well-attended private college for boys in Bremen . At Easter 1815 he gave up this position and participated as a volunteer on the last campaign against Napoleon Bonaparte .

Since he was unable to find a suitable job as a teacher after returning home, Greverus lived for a long time in Paris and traveled to southern France , northern Italy and Switzerland . Then he privatized for several years with his befriended country preacher Friedrich Georg Althaus in the Principality of Lippe and pursued philological studies. In the summer of 1819, Princess Pauline zur Lippe appointed him rector of the Lemgo grammar school . When he took office he wrote the program Ars educandi ars liberalis (Lemgo 1819). In June 1827 he was appointed rector and professor of the grammar school in Oldenburg as the successor to Friedrich Reinhard Ricklefs . He introduced a compulsory curriculum with a fixed number of compulsory subjects and developed the educational establishment he ran into a humanistic grammar school.

Greverus liked to travel and used the holidays to make repeated trips to England , northern France, Denmark and Sweden . From Christmas 1837 to Michaelmas Day 1838 he traveled to southern Italy and Greece for almost nine months and described this tour in the writing Wanderelust in ideas and pictures from Italy and Greece (2 parts, Bremen 1839, 1840). According to the title, he must have established closer ties in Athens , because he also calls himself a member of the Archaeological Society in Athens.

Greverus worked at the Oldenburg grammar school for 27 years until he asked for a retirement because of his sickness. On April 8, 1854, at a well-attended public meeting, he said goodbye to the institution he had successfully run. He died on August 15, 1859 at the age of 70 in Oldenburg. He had been married twice but had no children. He bequeathed his library, consisting of around 3,000 books, to the Oldenburg high school.

Works

Greverus' writing activity was varied. His numerous school programs soon contributed to the explanation of his favorite writers, such as the classical authors Theokrit , Euripides and Tacitus , and soon they had the Anglo-Saxon language he recommended as a subject for schools as well . In addition, ideas appear about the first lessons in Latin , an appreciation of Klopstock's Messiah and a characteristic of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet . He summarized his theocritical studies in the text On the Appreciation, Explanation and Critique of Theocrit's Idylls, along with some detailed treatises on Theocrit’s life (Oldenburg 1845).

Some of his school speeches and addresses are specially printed; he published a selection of these as school lectures (1855). Among his pedagogical writings, apart from smaller treatises, the ideas for a revision of the entire school system (1836) should be emphasized. He showed his interest in the local prehistory through the article Wildeshausen in Antiquity (1837), which he wrote together with GWA Oldenburg. Everywhere he is eager to apply his motto “Truth, Warmth, Clarity”.

In many occasional writings, a gentle humor reveals itself in a light form. Greverus also tried his hand at poet under the pseudonym Ernst Greif ; In 1827 he published a collection of his youthful poems under the title Youth Sins . He celebrated the marriage of his friend Althaus to a daughter of Bishop Bernhard Dräseke (1819) with a Greek epithalamium in theocritical manner, which he published in 1835 with other Greek poems. He was also one of the founders of the literary sociable society , of which he was a member from 1839 to 1845.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Greverus, Johann Paul Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and educator
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1789
PLACE OF BIRTH Strückhausen
DATE OF DEATH August 15, 1859
Place of death Oldenburg