Johann Philipp Fresenius

Johann Philipp Fresenius (born October 22, 1705 in Nieder-Wiesen , † July 4, 1761 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a Lutheran theologian .

Life

JP Fresenius as senior of the Frankfurt Ministry of Preachers

Fresenius was the second oldest of 11 children of Johann Wilhelm Fresenius (1677–1727), who was pastor of Nieder-Wiesen from 1704 to 1727, and his wife Maria Margareta née Metz (1684–1753). From 1723 he studied theology in Strasbourg . In 1725 he became the private tutor of the Count of Salm - Grumbach and in 1727 his father's successor. In 1731 he had to flee to Darmstadt due to a polemical argument with the Jesuit student and writer Johann Nikolaus Weislinger (1691–1755) . Landgrave Ernst Ludwig Appointed him in 1734 as a castle preacher in Giessen . In 1736 Fresenius became court deacon in Darmstadt, where he founded a proselyte institute for the conversion of unbelief, erroneous beliefs and Jews . In 1742 he returned to the University of Gießen as city preacher and professor .

In 1743 he became a pastor in Frankfurt am Main, first as a preacher at the Peterskirche , and in 1747 at the Katharinenkirche . In 1748 he was appointed as the successor to Heinrich Andreas Walther to the senior position of the Protestant Ministry of Preachers and Consistorial Councilor and chief preacher at the Barefoot Church . He trusted on August 21, 1748 Johann Caspar Goethe and Catharina Elisabeth Textor and baptized on 29 August 1749 her son Johann Wolfgang . Fresenius later described this in the fourth book of Poetry and Truth as follows:

The senior of the ministry of preachers (was) a gentle man of beautiful, agreeable reputation, who was venerated by his congregation, indeed, by the whole city, as an exemplary clergyman and good pulpit speaker, but who, because he had acted against the Moravians, was honored by the segregated people Pious did not have the best reputation, but before the crowd he had made himself famous and at the same time holy through the conversion of a free-spirited general who had been blessed to the death.

Fresenius is regarded as a representative of moderate Lutheran orthodoxy , influenced in his understanding of ministry by August Hermann Francke and Philipp Jakob Speners . During his time in Frankfurt he was considered a famous revival preacher . The conversion of the Saxon general Georg Carl von Dyhern , mentioned by Goethe, took place after the battle of Bergen .

He distinguished himself from the Herrnhutern so polemically that their bishop Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf protested in 1748 in a letter of complaint to the city council of Frankfurt. He stubbornly denied the Reformed the right to build their own Reformed church in Frankfurt. They had to go to the church service in Bockenheim, which is just outside the city .

Fresenius married Charlotte Friederike Miltenberger on June 27, 1735 in Gießen (* March 6, 1717 in Siegen , † October 18, 1782 in Bornheim ). The couple had four daughters and six sons. Two of the daughters died in early childhood, the other two married Protestant pastors. Four of his sons also became pastors, a lawyer and a pharmacist. His grandchildren include the botanist Georg Fresenius and the chemist Carl Remigius Fresenius . His great-grandson Johann Philipp Fresenius (* 1842) took over the traditional Frankfurt pharmacy "Zum Goldenen Hirsch" (founded in 1462) as a pharmacist from 1872; which in turn passed to his son Johann Eduard (1874–1946) in 1905. This began in 1912 with industrial drug production. From his manufacture, "Fresenius AG" (Medical Care), which is still in existence today, is based in Bad Homburg and operates worldwide in the field of dialysis products and medical services.

Fresenius died on July 4, 1761 in Frankfurt am Main.

Works

• Confession and Communion Book, 1746;
• From the justification of a poor sinner before God, 1747;
• Proven news of Moravian things, 4 volumes, 1747 to 1751;
• Necessary examination of the Zinzendorf method of teaching, 1748;
• Pastoral Collections, 24 parts, 1748–60;
• Healing reflections on the Sundays and Holiday Gospels, 1750;
• Reliable news of the life, death and writings of D. Johann Albrecht Bengel , 1753;
• Epistle Sermons, 1754;

literature

• Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  Fresenius, Johann Philipp. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 2, Bautz, Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-032-8 , Sp. 119-120.
• Wilhelm Fresenius:  Fresenius. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 405 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Wolfgang Klötzer (Hrsg.): Frankfurter Biographie . Personal history lexicon . First volume. A – L (=  publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission . Volume XIX , no. 1 ). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-7829-0444-3 , p. 218-219 .
• Tobias Kraft, The history of Nieder-Wiesens, the parish and its churches : Special edition on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the bell in 2005 . Nieder-Wiesen 2005, pp. 17–24
• Tobias Kraft, The Nieder-Wiesener Pastor Fresenius - A Family History in Pietism of the Early Enlightenment In: 500 Years Reformation in Rheinhessen - A Reading Book for Alzey and the Surrounding Area Frankfurt / M. 2017, pp. 271–280
• Georg Eduard Steitz :  Fresenius, Johann Philipp . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, p. 353 f.

Web links

• Works by and about Johann Philipp Fresenius  in the German Digital Library
• Fresenius, Johann Philipp. Hessian biography (as of August 5, 2014). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on June 17, 2015 . 

predecessor	Office	successor
Heinrich Andreas Walther	Senior of the Ministry of Preachers in Frankfurt am Main 1748–1761	Johann Jakob Plitt