Background
Hermann Samuel Reimarus was born on December 22, 1694 in Hamburg, Germany.
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Hermann Samuel Reimarus was born on December 22, 1694 in Hamburg, Germany.
Reimarus was educated by his father and by the famous scholar J. A. Fabricius, whose son-in-law he subsequently became. He studied theology, ancient languages, and philosophy at Jena, became Privatdozent in the university of Wittenberg in 1716, and in 1720-21 visited Holland and England.
In 1723 Reimarus became rector of the high school at Wismar in Mecklenburg, and in 1727 professor of Hebrew and Oriental languages in the high school of his native city. This post he held till his death, though offers of more lucrative positions were made to him. His duties were light, and he employed his leisure in the study of philology, mathematics, philosophy, history, political economy, natural science and natural history, for which he made large collections. His house was the centre of the highest culture of Hamburg, and a monument of his influence in that city still remains in the Haus der patriotiscken Gesellschaft, where the learned and artistic societies partly founded by him still meet. Reimarus's reputation as a scholar rests On the valuable edition of Dio Cassius (1750 - 52) which he prepared from the materials collected by J. A. Fabricius.
He is remembered for his Deism, the doctrine that human reason can arrive at a knowledge of God and ethics from a study of nature and our own internal reality, thus eliminating the need for religions based on revelation. He denied the supernatural origin of Christianity, According to Reimarus, Jesus was a mortal Jewish prophet, and the apostles founded Christianity as a religion separate from Jesus’ own ministry.
Quotes from others about the person
Richard N. Soulen points out that Reimarus "is treated as the initiator of ‘Lives of Jesus Research’ by Schweitzer and accorded special honor by him for recognizing that Jesus' thought-world was essentially eschatological, a fact overlooked until the end of the 19th century. "
Reimarus had seven children, only three of whom survived him-the distinguished physician Johann Albrecht Heinrich, and two daughters, one of them being Elise, Lessing's friend and correspondent.
