Background
Morgenstern was born in Magdeburg.
Librarian linguist university professor
Morgenstern was born in Magdeburg.
He studied at the University of Halle under Johann August Eberhard in philosophy and Friedrich August Wolf in philology.
He coined the term Bildungsroman. In 1802 he moved to Dorpat in Livonia, Russian Empire (now Tartu, Estonia) where he would spend the rest of his life. He held the chair for rhetoric, classical philology, aesthetics, and history of art and literature at the newly refounded University of Dorpat and was the first director of its library.
The character of his work changed in Dorpat.
He discontinued his Plato studies and wrote about literature, art, philology, and philosophy. lieutenant was in the course of this work that Morgenstern coined "Bildungsroman".
Even after his retirement in 1834 Morgenstern stayed in Dorpat. He bequeathed his 12,000-volume library, containing many manuscripts and a good part of the Kant estate, to the university.
Russian Academy of Sciences. Russian Academy of Sciences.