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Georg Friedrich Creuzer

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GEORG FRIEDRICH CREUZER (1771-1858), German philologist and archaeologist, was born on the 10th of March 1771, at Marburg, the son of a bookbinder. Having studied at Marburg and Jena, he for some time lived at Leipzig as a private tutor; but in 1802 he was appointed professor at Marburg, and two years later professor of philology and ancient history at Heidelberg. The latter position he held for nearly forty-five years, with the exception of a short time spent at the university of Leiden, where his health was affected by the Dutch climate. He was one of the principal founders of the Philological Seminary established at Heidelberg in 1807. The Academy of Inscriptions of Paris appointed him one of its members, and from the grandduke of Baden he received the dignity of privy councillor. He died on the r6th of February 1858. Creuzer's first and most famous work was his Symbolik and Mythologie der alten V dlker, besonders der Griechen (1810-1812), in which he maintained that the mythology of Homer and Hesiod came from an Eastern source through the Pelasgians, and was the remains of the symbolism of an ancient revelation. This work was vigorously attacked by Hermann in his Briefen fiber Homer and Hesiod, and in his letter, addressed to Creuzer, Ober das Wesen and die Behandlung der Mythologie; by J. H. Voss in his Antisymbolik; and by Lobek in his Aglaophamos. Of Creuzer's other works the principal are an edition of Plotinus; a partial edition of Cicero, in preparing which he was assisted by Moser; Die historische Kunst der Griechen (1803); Epochen der griech. Literaturgeschichte (1802); Abriss der riimischen Antiquitdten (1824); Zur Geschichte altromischer Cultur am Oberrhein and Neckar (1833); Zur Gemmenkunde (1834); Das Mithreum von Neuenheim (1838); Zur Galerie der alten Dramatiker (1839); Zur Geschichte der classischen Philologie (1854).

See the autobiographical Aus dem Leben eines alien Professors (Leipzig and Darmstadt, 1848), to which was added in the year of his death Paralipomena der Lebenskizze eines alien Professors (Frankfort, 1858); also Starck, Friederich Kreuzer, sein Bildungsgang and seine bleibende Bedeutung (Heidelberg, 1875).