CHRISTIAN HEINRICH

See also:

• CHRISTIAN HEINRICH HEINECKEN (1721-1725)

HEINECKEN (1721-1725)  , a child remarkable for precocity of intellect, was born on the 6th of February 1721 at Lubeck, where his father was a painter . Able to speak at the age of ten months, by the time he was oae year old he knew by heart the principal incidents in the Pentateuch . At two years of age he had mastered sacred history; at three he was intimately acquainted with history and geography, ancient and modern, sacred and profane, besides being able to speak French and Latin; and in his fourth year he devoted himself to the study of religion and church history . This wonderful precocity was no mere feat of memory, for the youthful savant could reason on and discuss the knowledge he had acquired . Crowds of people flocked to Lubeck to see the wonderful child; and in 1724 he was taken to Copenhagen at the desire of the king of Denmark . On his return to Lubeck he began to learn writing, but his sickly constitution gave way, and he died on the 22nd of June 1725 . The Life, Deeds, Travels and Death of the Child of Liibeck were published in the following year by his tutor Schoneich . See also Teutsche Bibliothek, xvii., and Memoires de Trevoux (Jan . 1731) .