Johannes Classen

John Classen ( born November 21, 1805 in Hamburg, † August 31, 1891 ) was a German classical scholar and educator.

Life

Classen was a student of Johanneums in his native city and in 1825 a member of the Masonic Lodge Absalom to three nettles.

He studied philology and history with Barthold Georg Niebuhr in Bonn, where he habilitated in 1829. Since 1827 he lived in the house of his teacher, whose son Marcus he taught. As Niebuhr died in 1831 and was succeeded by his wife, only nine days later, Classen of the three orphaned children took them. He brought to Kiel and remained there for a year until he was initially launched in 1832 as an adjunct to the Joachimsthalsche Gymnasium in Berlin, a year later as a professor at the Katharineum to Lübeck, where he is also director of the Company from 1848 to 1851 for the carriage of community service had.

In 1853 he became director of the Municipal Gymnasium in Frankfurt am Main. Under his predecessor Johann Theodor Vömel, who led the school since 1823, the traditional high school had experienced a decline. Vömel was considered inadequate, in trifles self-conscious schoolmaster. In Classen's line held a new spirit in the school catchment, the Friedrich Jacob had described in Lübeck as follows:

"Because the school is a moral institution, because the spirit of the teacher is to have an invigorating effect on the mind of the student, so must that freedom of thought and freedom of effectiveness, so far it is always possible, conceded, maintained in this free receptivity especially be. "

1855 began classes at the consistory, the school supervisory authority of the Free City of Frankfurt, a reform of the curriculum, the examination regulations and school rules by. The granting of the baccalaureate was now a seven-year school (previously six years). Main audit performance was a free Latin work that had to be finished in the last semester of high school graduate, next to the notes in all compulsory school subjects as well as in behavior and diligence were the teachers' conference noted.

In Classen's leadership, the school came quickly back to great reputation, not least because of the qualified teachers who are able to bring to Frankfurt Classen. Among them were the historian Johannes Janssen and Georg Ludwig Kriegk and classical scholar Alfred spot iron.

In 1861 he was with spot iron philologists President of the Frankfurt Assembly.

Classen 1864 took up an appointment as director of the Johanneums in his native city of Hamburg, after he had in 1860 declined the offer. His successor at the Frankfurt School was Tycho Mommsen.

1874 Classen was retired and devoted himself to his scientific work, especially his main work, the publication of the complete works of Thucydides in an eight-volume edition school. In 1879 he received the occasion of his fifty-year anniversary, a doctoral scholarship for a longer period of study in Italy and Greece.

Classen died on August 31, 1891 in Hamburg.

Works

• Biography of Jacob Micyllus (1859 )
• Publication of the works of Thucydides ( eight volumes, 1862-1889 )