Johann Heinrich Jung

Johann Heinrich Jung (12 September 1740 - 2 April 1817), best known by his assumed name of Heinrich Stilling was a German author.He was born in the village of Grund near Hilchenbach in Westphalia. His father, Wilhelm Jung, schoolmaster and tailor, was the son of Eberhard Jung, charcoal-burner, and his mother was Dortchen Moritz, daughter of a poor clergyman. Jung became, by his fathers desire, schoolmaster and tailor, but found both pursuits equally wearisome.

After various teaching appointments he went in 1768 with half a French dollar to study medicine at the university of Strasbourg. There he met Goethe, who introduced him to Herder. The acquaintance with Goethe ripened into friendship; and it was by his influence that Jungs first and best work, "Heinrich Stillings Jugend" was written. In 1772 he settled at Elberfeld as physician and oculist, and soon became celebrated for operations in cases of cataract. Surgery, however, was not much more to his taste than tailoring or teaching; and in 1778 he was glad to accept the appointment of lecturer on agriculture, technology, commerce and the veterinary art in the newly established Kameralschule at Kaiserslautern, a post which he continued to hold when the school was absorbed in the university of Heidelberg.

In 1787 he was appointed professor of economical, financial and statistical science in the University of Marburg. In 1803 he resigned his professorship and returned to Heidelberg, where he remained until 1806, when he received a pension from the grand-duke, Charles Frederick of Baden, and removed to Karlsruhe, where he remained until his death in 1817.

He has been described as "an able defender of Christianity against German rationalism [and] an ardent and eminent Universalist."Rev. John McClintock and James Strong. " [http://www.ovrlnd.com/Universalism/Universalism_Cyclopedia.html Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature] ". Volume 10, 1895, pp. 109-33.] A Professor Tholuck wrote in 1835 that the doctrine of universalism

"came particularly into notice through Jung-Stilling, that eminent man who was a particular instrument in the hand of God for keeping up evangelical truth in the latter part of the former century, and at the same time a strong patron to that doctrine."

He was married three times, and left a numerous family. Of his works, his autobiography "Heinrich Stillings Leben," from which he came to be known as Stilling, is the only one now of any interest and is the chief authority for his life. His early novels reflect the piety of his early surroundings.

A complete edition of his numerous works, in 14 vols. 8vo, was published at Stuttgart in 1835-1838. There are English translations by Sam. Jackson of the "Leben" (1835) and of the "Theorie der Geisterkunde" (London, 1834, and New York, 1851); and of "Theobald, or the Fanatic", a religious romance, by the Rev. Sam. Schaeffer (1846). See biographies by F. W. Bodemann (1868), j. v. Ewald (1817), Peterson (1890).

www.jung-stilling-forschung.de (with bibliography, partly in english language)

References

* Ghervas, Stella: "Réinventer la tradition. Alexandre Stourdza et l'Europe de la Sainte-Alliance." Paris, Honoré Champion, 2008. ISBN 978-2-7453-1669-1