Johann Daniel Major

Johann Daniel Major ( born August 16, 1634 Breslau, † August 23, 1693 in Stockholm ) was a German polymath.

Life

Born the son of Wroclaw rector of Elizabeth Grammar School Elias Major (1587-1669), he was a protégé of the famous baroque poet Christian Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau, he studied at the University of Wittenberg and Leipzig University medicine and physics, operational next art historical studies and then went to the University of Padua, where he received his doctorate in medicine. After working in Wittenberg and Hamburg, where he practiced as a plague doctor and made ​​a name, Major was 1665 with 31 years appointed to the newly established Christian -Albrechts- University of Kiel, to teach there medicine and botany.

Major quickly caused a stir because it was first in Northern Germany undertook public sections ( on executed criminals ), he also was responsible for the establishment of a Hortus Medicus, which should have been oriented to the garden of the University of Padua. In addition, Major was also active as a writer, he wrote in 1670 a remarkable, but forgotten today utopia called Lake - Farth to the New World without a ship and sailing, in which he described the kingdom Cosmophorum, the ideal land of the free sciences. Major took the view that a good scholar should be familiar with all the sciences; he worked on sketches for flying machines, also devoted himself as a polymath soon with zeal archeology and built in Kiel Public Museum Cimbricum on. At the opening of 1688 was Major coin a commemorative medal and printed a museum guide. His writings on the organizing principles of collections made ​​in addition to Major Samuel Quiccheberg a founder of museology.

A century before the discipline of archeology should be justified in the strict sense, the Kiel professor opened using by students and by farmers who let detach for this purpose the Duke, several prehistoric grave mounds and developed in his work Bevölckertes Cimbrien (1692 ) which - then - sensational theory, the indigenous people of the Cimbrian peninsula were descended from Noah's grandson Gomar and were soon arrives to Jutland after the Tower of Babel Russia and Sweden. Although we had previously believed to be able to reduce the Jutes and the Cimbri on Gomar, but Major contradicted the prevailing view that " natives " of Schleswig and Holstein had come across the Baltic Sea, and spoke with quite "modern" sounding arguments for the land from.

Major was determined to confirm this hypothesis by excavations, and therefore traveled in 1693 via Denmark to Sweden; he is thus one of the earliest explorers in the modern sense. But he did not get far; in Stockholm asked one of the famous physician and scholar, to heal the mortally ill Queen Ulrica Eleonora. Major could not help the dying; worse than that, he infected himself and died a week later. His body was transferred to Kiel and then as the remains of the other professors in the Kiel Bordesholmer monastery church to be buried, but the ship sank, and Major found his grave in the Baltic Sea. His bust in the laurel wreath is obtained.