Johann Melchior Goeze
Johann Melchior Goeze (known as Zionswächter; * October 16, 1717 in Halberstadt, † May 19, 1786 in Hamburg) was a Lutheran theologian, who worked in Hamburg and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was the main opponent in the dispute fragments.
Life
Goeze, son of a Lutheran pastor, studied Protestant theology from 1724, first in Jena. Two years later he moved to the University of Halle. There he was taught by Siegmund Jacob Baumgarten, then the most important representatives of Lutheran orthodoxy in the transition to enlightenment. After studying Goeze was appointed preacher in 1741 Aschersleben and after a year already a deacon. With the marriage of the daughter of the mayor of Aschersleben 1746 began for Goeze the time of a happy marriage, emerged from the four children. 1750 Goeze was called as pastor to Magdeburg, where he also began his career as a writer. Goeze made himself a name in this way as a church publicist, whose loyalty was to the Bible and the Confessions as final. The appointment as senior pastor in 1755 at St. Catherine's Church in Hamburg was an immediate fruit of this literary activities Goezes. From there, he was one of the main opponents of the Enlightenment, since Hamburg was at that time a stronghold of Lutheranism. In the course of 5 years, Goeze developed the spokesman of the Lutheran Stadtgeistlichkeit and woke up in this role beyond simply teaching. Firstly Goeze used his sermons to his views publicly distribute, on the other hand he intensified his journalistic activities in the newspaper " Hamburg News from the realm of scholarship ." So Goeze also contributed significantly to a programmatic change in this magazine. Soon they appeared only under the title " Frey willing contributions to the Hamburg News from the realm of scholarship " and was called by their opponents due to their emphasized anti -Enlightenment and ecclesiastically and politically orthodox Lutheranism committed orientation " black newspaper".
Goeze as representatives of Lutheran orthodoxy was mainly through his guided by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing dispute over issued by such fragments of an unnamed ( parts of a font by Hermann Samuel Reimarus ) known (fragments dispute ). In the course of this debate that has gone down as the most famous religious disputes of the 18th century in the story, Lessing wrote, among other things, eleven responses against Goeze, which became known under the title Anti- Goeze ( 1778).
In his drama Nathan the Wise, Lessing was the patriarch trains Goezes.
Goeze turned against his colleague Julius Gustav Alberti (1723-1772) in Hamburg as well as against Karl Friedrich Bahrdt, Johann Bernhard Basedow, Anton Friedrich Büsching and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ( because of its Sorrows of Werther ) and in the second the Hamburg theater dispute in 1769 against Johann Ludwig Schlosser and Johann Heinrich Vincent Nölting.
Goeze possessed an extensive Bible collection, preserved in the Library of the City of Hamburg and 1943 during the so-called Operation Gomorrah, the British bombing of Hamburg, was almost completely destroyed.
The brother of Johann Melchior Goeze was the pastor and naturalist Johann August Ephraim Goeze ( 1731-1793 ).