JOHANN

MATTHIAS

See also:

• GESNER
• GESNER, ABRAHAM (1797-1864)
• JOHANN MATTHIAS GESNER (1691—1761)

GESNER (1691—1761)  , German classical scholar and schoolmaster, was born at Roth near Ansbach on the 9th of April 1691 . He studied at the university of Jena, and in 1714 published a work on the Philopatris ascribed to Lucian . In 1715 he became librarian and conrector (vice-principal) at Weimar, 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 Gottingen he became professor of rhetoric (1734) and subsequently librarian . He died at Gottingen on the 3rd of August 1761 . His special merit lies in the attention he devoted to the explanation and illustration of the subject matter of the classical authors . His principal works are; editions of the Scriptores rei rusticae, of Quintilian, Claudian, Pliny the Younger, Horace and the Orphic poems (published after his death) ; Primate. lineae 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 arumenti (1743–1745) ; Thesaurus epistolicus Gesnerianus (ed . Klotz, 1768-1770); Index etymologicus latinitatis (1749) . See J . A . Ernesti, Opuscula oratoria (1762), p .

305; H . Sauppe, Gottinger Professoren ((1872) ; C . H . Pohnert, /` . M,

Gesner and sein Vcrhaltnis zum Philanthropinismus and Neuhumanismus (1898), a contribution to the history of pedagogy in the 18th century; articles by F . A . Eckstein in Allgemeine deutsche Biographic ix.; and Sandys, Hist. of Class . Schol. iii . (1908), 5-9 .