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Daniel Georg Morhof

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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DANIEL GEORG MORHOF (1639-1691), German man of letters, was born at Wismar on the 6th of February 1639. He first studied jurisprudence and then literae humaniores at the university of Rostock, where his elegant Latin versification procured for him in 1660 the chair of poetry. In 1665 he went to the new university of Kiel as professor of eloquence and poetry; this chair he exchanged for that of history in 1673. He died at Lubeck on the 30th of July 1691. Of his numerous writings the most important are Unterricht von der deutschen Sprache and Poesie (1682; 3rd ed., 1718), the first attempt in Germany at a systematic survey of European literature, and Polyhistor, sive de auctorum notitia et rerum commentarii (Lubeck, 1688, not completed till 1707; 4th ed., 1747), a kind of encyclopaedia of the knowledge and learning of his time.

See Eymer, Morhof and sein Polyhistor (in the Xenia Austriaca, Vienna, 1893); and biography by R. v. Liliencron in Allgem. Deutsche Biographic (1885).