Krzysztof Celestyn Mrongovius

Christoph Celestine Mrongovius (Polish Krzysztof Celestyn Mrongowiusz, born July 19, 1764 in Hohenstein in the Kingdom of Prussia, † June 3, 1855 in Gdańsk ) was a Protestant pastor, writer, philosopher, linguist, teacher and translator.

Mrongovius was born in Hohenstein at Osterode in East Prussia. Mrongovius went to Saalfeld to school and began a study in 1782 in Königsberg, where he received contact with the writings of the philosophers, then working in Königsberg Immanuel Kant. Between 1790 and 1796 he worked at the Collegium Fridericianum as a teacher of Polish and Greek.

In 1796 he married Wilhelmina Luise couple man and took over in 1798 the Protestant St. Anne's church in Gdansk. In addition to his pastor, he worked from 1812 to 1817 as a college teacher of Polish and was also teaching the languages ​​of Greek, Kashubian, Czech and Russian.

Mrongovius was considered one of the outstanding connoisseur and disseminator of Slavic culture of Gdańsk and the further East Prussia. He wrote German -Polish, Polish- German dictionaries and wrote in 1805 a Polish grammar for German. He had a collection of over 1,000 valuable books, including original manuscripts, which are owned by the Gdansk Library today.

1947, the Masurian city Sensburg was renamed ( Masurian Ządźbork ) of the People's Republic of Poland after him in Mrągowo.