Johann Matthias Gesner

Johann Matthias Gesner (April 9, 1691 - August 3, 1761), German classical scholar and schoolmaster, was born at Roth an der Rednitz near Ansbach. He studied at the University of Jena, and in 1714 published a work on the Philopatiis ascribed to Lucian.

In 1715 he became librarian and corrector (vice-principal) at Weimar, Germany, where he became good friends with Johann Sebastian Bach (Bach later dedicated his Canon a 2 perpetuus BWV 1075 to Gesner), in 1729 rector of the gymnasium at Ansbach, and in 1730 rector of the Thomas school at Leipzig. On the foundation of the University of Göttingen he became professor of rhetoric (1734) and subsequently librarian. He died at Göttingen.

His special merit lies in the attention he devoted to the explanation and illustration of the subject matter of the classical authors.

Works

• editions of the Scriptores rei rusticae, of Quintilian, Claudian, Pliny the Younger, Horace and the Orphic poems (published after his death)
• Primæ lineæ isagoges in eruditionem universalem (1756)
• an edition of B Faber's Thesaurus eruditionis scholasticae (1726), afterwards continued under the title Novus linguae et eruditionis Romanae thesaurus (1749)
• Opuscula minora varii argumenti (1743—1745)
• Thesaurus epistolicus Gesnerianus (ed. Klotz, 1768—1770)
• Index etymologicus latinitatis (1749)

References

• JA Ernesti, Opuscula oratoria (1762), p. 305
• H Sauppe, Göttinger Professoren (1872)
• CH Pöhnert, J.M. Gesner und sein Verhaltnis zum Philanthropinismus und Neuhumanismus (1898), a contribution to the history of pedagogy in the 18th century
• articles by FA Eckstein in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie ix

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.