Julius Gustav Alberti

Engraving by Christian Fritzsch (1761)

Julius Gustav Alberti (born August 26, 1723 in Hanover , † March 30, 1772 in Hamburg ) was an Evangelical Lutheran German preacher .

Life

Alberti studied theology at the Georg August University in Göttingen and in 1753 took over his first preaching position in the Michaeliskirche of Groß Schneen , a village a few kilometers south of Göttingen. After the death of Arnold Greve , he was called to Hamburg as a well-known enlightened theologian and there initially a deacon at St. Catherine's Church . The enlightened party among those entitled to vote placed great hope in this election that it would have come closer to the appointment of a first enlightener as chief pastor of one of the Hamburg churches. The senior of the Spiritual Ministry Friedrich Wagner was correspondingly unhappy about Alberti's election. The literary circles in Hamburg around the poet Klopstock , on the other hand, welcomed him into their ranks with stormy enthusiasm. To the great disappointment of this party, Alberti was defeated in the elections in autumn 1755 to his Orthodox opponent Johann Melchior Goeze for the main pastor's position at St. Nikolai . The two opponents initially came up with an arrangement, which, however, could not last in the long term. In 1770 there was a scandal between the warring parties in the Hamburg Church . This escalated in December 1771 with a publication by Alberti. He died of consumption before the Ministry of Spiritual Investigation could be completed.

family

He left eleven children alongside his wife Dorthea Charlotte, née Offeney. Two other children had already died before Alberti. The family was provided for by his supporters in the Hamburg Church. The household of his wife, who in Hamburg was called Mother Alberti after his death , played an important role for the most enlightened circles. The poet and translator Johann Heinrich Voss was a frequent guest in her house. The daughter Johanna (1755–1827) first married the poet Peter Wilhelm Hensler (1742–1779) and in 1783 the composer Reichardt . Amalie (1769–1837) was the wife of Ludwig Tieck in 1798 .

literature

• Karl Rudolf Wilhelm Klose :  Alberti, Julius Gustav . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 213 f.
• Heinrich Döring: The learned theologians of Germany in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries , Volume AH S.5 digitized
• Hans Schröder : Lexicon of Hamburg writers up to the present , first volume: Abatz - Dassovius, 1851.