Johann Christoph Wolf
Johann Christoph Wolf ( born February 21, 1683 Wernigerode, † July 25, 1739 in Hamburg ) was a German theologian and polymath.
Life
Wolf visited in Hamburg, where his father, Johann Wolf was appointed as senior pastor at the Nikolai Church, the Johanneum and the Academic Gymnasium. In 1703 he enrolled in the University of Wittenberg, specializing in oriental languages and literature. A year later he passed the master's examination. There was a time, often changed his stay in the wolf. He initially held lectures in Wittenberg, but then returned back to Hamburg and took the Konrektorat the Latin school in Flensburg. In between, he traveled to the Netherlands, England and Denmark. 1710 Wolf, who had acquired a reputation as Orientalist, was appointed again to Wittenberg as an adjunct and later as an associate professor of philosophy. Two years later he accepted the professorship of Oriental languages at the high school of his native town in 1716 finally to change as Senior Pastor at St. Catherine's Church. In this position he found time for his scientific work. Wolf built to a large library of 25,000 volumes, books and oriental manuscripts. Among other things, he acquired the collection of the Frankfurt Councillor Zacharias Konrad von Uffenbach.
His library he bequeathed to the Hamburg city library whose stock has doubled it. Its collection of scholarly letters, even supplemented his brother, the philologist Johann Christian Wolf, also arrived in the city library. It includes 40,000 letters in 200 volumes.
His most important work is the Bibliotheca Hebraea, Hamburg 1715-33, about Hebrew literature. His statements about the Talmud remain relevant for one and a half centuries.
After his brother's death, the Hamburg Senate erected a cenotaph two scholars at the City Library, designed by the Swedish sculptor Johann Wilhelm Manstadt.