Editing Christian Gottlob Heyne

{{Short description|German classical philologist (1729–1812)}}
{{EngvarB|date=July 2017}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2017}}
{{Infobox person
| name        = Christian Gottlob Heyne
| image       = File:Christian Gottlob Heyne Tischbein 1772.jpg
| alt         = Christian Gottlob Heyne
| caption     = By [[Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein]]
| other_names = 
| occupation  = German classical scholar, archaeologist, director of the [[Göttingen State and University Library]]
| birth_place = [[Chemnitz]], [[Electorate of Saxony|Saxony]]
| death_place = [[Göttingen]], [[Kingdom of Westphalia|Westphalia]]
| birth_date  = {{birth date|df=yes|1729|09|25}}
| death_date  = {{Death date and age|1812|07|14|1729|09|25|df=yes}}
| alma_mater  = [[Leipzig University]]
}}

'''Christian Gottlob Heyne''' ({{IPA|de|ˈhaɪnə|lang}}; 25 September 1729 – 14 July 1812) was a German [[classical scholar]] and [[archaeologist]] as well as long-time director of the [[Göttingen State and University Library]]. He was a member of the [[Göttingen school of history]].

==Biography==
Heyne was born in [[Chemnitz]], [[Electorate of Saxony|Saxony]]. His father was a poor weaver who had left [[Silesia]] and moved to Saxony to maintain his Protestant faith; Christian's education was paid for by his godfather. In 1748 he entered the [[University of Leipzig]], where he was often short of the necessaries of life. He was helped by the classicist {{Interlanguage link multi|Johann Friedrich Christ|de}}, who encouraged him and loaned him Greek and Latin texts. He obtained a position as tutor in the family of a French merchant in [[Leipzig]], which enabled him to continue his studies. In 1752 law professor Johann August Bach awarded Heyne a master's degree, but he was for many years in very straitened circumstances.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

An elegy written by Heyne in [[Latin]] on the death of a friend attracted the attention of [[Heinrich, count von Brühl|Count von Brühl]], the prime minister, who expressed a desire to see the author. Accordingly, in April 1752, Heyne journeyed to [[Dresden]], believing that his fortune was made. He was well received and promised a secretaryship and a good salary, but nothing came of it. Another period of poverty followed, and only by persistent solicitation was Heyne able to obtain the post of under-clerk in the count's library, with a salary of less than twenty pounds sterling.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

Heyne increased this pittance by translation: in addition to some French novels, he rendered into German ''The Loves of Chaereas and Callirrhoe'' of [[Chariton]], the Greek romance writer. He published his first edition of [[Tibullus]] in 1755, and in 1756 his [[Epictetus]]. In the latter year the [[Seven Years' War]] broke out and the library was destroyed, and Heyne was once more in a state of destitution. In 1757 he was offered a tutorship in the household of [[Frau von Schönberg]], where he met his future wife.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

In January 1758 Heyne accompanied his pupil to the [[University of Wittenberg]], but the Prussian invasion drove him out in 1760. The bombardment of Dresden, on 18 July 1760, destroyed all his possessions, including an almost finished edition of [[Lucian]], based on a valuable codex of the Dresden Library. In the summer of 1761, still without any fixed income, he married, and became land-steward to the Baron von Löben in Lusatia. At the end of 1762, however, he was able to return to Dresden, where he was commissioned by P. D. Lippert to prepare the Latin text of the third volume of his ''Dactyliotheca'' (art account of a collection of gems).{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

On the death of [[Johann Matthias Gesner]] at the [[University of Göttingen]] in 1761, the vacant chair was refused first by [[Johann August Ernesti|Ernesti]] and then by [[David Ruhnken|Ruhnken]], who persuaded Münchhausen, the Hanoverian minister and principal curator of the university to bestow it on Heyne (1763). His emoluments were gradually augmented, and his growing celebrity brought him most advantageous offers from other German governments, which he persistently refused.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} Heyne was simultaneously given the post of director of the university library, a position he held until his death in 1812. Under his directorship, the library, today known as the [[Göttingen State and University Library]], grew in size and reputation to be one of the leading academic libraries of the world, due to Heyne's innovative cataloguing methods and aggressive international acquisitions policy.<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/lib.1999.15.1.13 |title=The University Library at Gottingen as Germany's National Library for the Eighteenth Century: Christian Gottlob Heyne's Contemporary Acquisitions Strategy and the Sammlung Deutscher Drucke 1701-1800 on the Threshold of the Millennium |last=Botte |first=Gerd-J |date=1999 |journal=Library History |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=13–21 |doi=10.1179/lib.1999.15.1.13 |access-date=November 3, 2022|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

Unlike [[Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann|Gottfried Hermann]], Heyne regarded the study of [[grammar]] and language only as the means to an end, not as the chief object of philology. But, although not a critical scholar, he was the first to attempt a scientific treatment of [[Greek mythology]], and he gave an undoubted impulse to [[philology|philological]] studies. He taught both [[Wilhelm von Humboldt|Wilhelm]] and [[Alexander von Humboldt|Alexander Humboldt]] in classical philology and managed to harness both brothers' interest in linguistic questions.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Drechsel |first=Emanuel J. |title=Wilhelm von Humboldt and early American linguistics: resources and inspirations |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2024 |isbn=978-1-108-83304-2 |location=Cambridge, United Kingdom New York, NY |pages=52-53 |language=En}}</ref>
[[File:Christian Gottlob Heyne - Imagines philologorum.jpg|thumbnail|Christian Gottlob Heyne]]
Of Heyne's numerous writings, the following may be mentioned: editions, with copious [[Commentary (philology)|commentaries]], of Tibullus (ed. SC Wunderlich, 1817), [[Virgil]] (ed. GP Wagner, 1830–1841), [[Pindar]] (3rd ed. by GH Schafer, 1817), Apollodorus, ''[[Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)|Bibliotheca Graeca]]'' (1803), Homer, ''Iliad'' (1802); and ''Opuscula academica'' (1785–1812), containing more than a hundred academic dissertations, of which the most valuable are those relating to the colonies of Greece and the antiquities of Etruscan art and history. His ''Antiquarische Aufsätze'' (1778–1779) is a valuable collection of essays connected with the history of ancient art. His contributions to the ''Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen'' are said to have been between 7,000 and 8,000 in number.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

For further details on Heyne's life, see the biography by [[Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren|Heeren]] (1813) which forms the basis of the essay by [[Thomas Carlyle]] (''[[Critical and Miscellaneous Essays|Misc. Essays]]'', ii.); [[Hermann Sauppe]], ''Göttinger Professoren'' (1872); [[Conrad Bursian]] in ''[[Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie]]'' xii.; [[John Edwin Sandys|JE Sandys]], ''Hist. Class. Schol'' iii. 36–44;{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} and [[Friedrich Klingner]], ''Christian Gottlob Heyne'' (Leipzig: Poeschel & Trepte, 1937, 25 pages).

Heyne was elected a [[Fellow of the Royal Society]] in April 1789.<ref>{{cite web| url = https://catalogues.royalsociety.org/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Persons&id=NA2710&pos=1| title = Library and Archive catalogue| publisher = Royal Society| accessdate = 27 January 2022}}</ref>

He died in [[Göttingen]].

== Personal life ==
In 1761, Heyne married his first wife Therese, the daughter of lutenist [[Silvius Leopold Weiss]]. They had four surviving children, including [[Benjamin Heyne]], botanist, naturalist, and surgeon who worked in British India as a Botanist to Samalkot in the Madras Presidency under the British East India Company, and [[Therese Huber]], who became one of the first well-known journalists in Germany<ref name="kuhlmann">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=StfmDQAAQBAJ&pg=PR349 |title=Geschichte der Altertumswissenschaften: Biographisches Lexikon |last1=Kuhlmann |first1=Peter |last2=Schneider |first2=Helmuth |date=2017-01-14 |publisher=Springer-Verlag |isbn=978-3-476-00083-5 |pages=349 |language=de}}</ref> as editor of the {{lang|de|[[Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände]]}}. After the 1775 death of his first wife, Heyne married Georgine Brandes in 1777.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iuP0If673dUC&pg=PA100 |title=Christian Gottlob Heyne und die Alte Geschichte |last=Heidenreich |first=Marianne |date=2012-02-14 |publisher=Walter de Gruyter |isbn=978-3-11-093872-2 |language=de}}</ref> The couple had six children.<ref name="kuhlmann"/>

==See also==
*[[Johann Christian Gottlieb Ackermann]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|30em}}

==References==
*{{EB1911|wstitle=Heyne, Christian Gottlob|volume=13|page=438}}

==Further reading==
{{commons category}}
*{{Cite book |last=Carlyle |first=Thomas |title=[[Critical and Miscellaneous Essays|Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Volume I]] |publisher=[[Charles Scribner's Sons]] |year=1828 |series=The Works of Thomas Carlyle in Thirty Volumes |volume=XXVI |location=New York |publication-date=1904 |pages=319–354 |chapter=The Life of Heyne |author-link=Thomas Carlyle |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/worksofthomascar26carliala/page/318/mode/2up}}
* [[Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren]]: ''Christian Gottlob Heyne, biographisch dargestellt'', Göttingen 1813.
* [[Alfred Schmidt (philosopher)|Alfred Schmidt]]: "Deutungen des Mythos im achtzehnten und neunzehnten Jahrhundert. Von Heyne zu Marx", in: Peter Kemper: ''Macht des Mythos – Ohnmacht der Vernunft?'' Frankfurt am Main 1989, {{ISBN|3-596-26643-2}}. pp.&nbsp;125–147.

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heyne, Christian Gottlob}}
[[Category:1729 births]]
[[Category:1812 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Chemnitz]]
[[Category:Archaeologists from Saxony]]
[[Category:German classical scholars]]
[[Category:People from the Electorate of Saxony]]
[[Category:Leipzig University alumni]]
[[Category:Academic staff of the University of Göttingen]]
[[Category:Fellows of the Royal Society]]
[[Category:Members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres]]
[[Category:18th-century German scholars]]