Youth and Education
He was born at Saalfeld in the Electorate of Saxony, the son of a poor clergyman. He grew up in pietistic surroundings, which powerfully influenced him his life through, though he never became a Pietist. In his seventeenth year he entered the University of Halle, where he became the disciple, afterwards the assistant, and finally the literary executor of the orthodox rationalistic professor SJ Baumgarten. He also wrote Latin poems. In 1749 he accepted the position of editor, with the title of professor, of the Coburg official Gazette. But in 1751 he was invited to Altdorf as professor of philology and history, and in 1752 he became a professor of theology in Halle.
Read more about this topic: Johann Salomo Semler
Famous quotes containing the words youth and/or education:
“People have this obsession. They want you to be like you were in 1969. They want you to, because otherwise their youth goes with you.... It’s very selfish, but it’s understandable.”
—Mick Jagger (b. 1942)
“Shakespeare, with an improved education and in a more enlightened age, might easily have attained the purity and correction of Racine; but nothing leads one to suppose that Racine in a barbarous age would have attained the grandeur, force and nature of Shakespeare.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)