Hamann

Hamann, JOHANN GEORG, a German writer, born at Königsberg in Prussia, 27th August 1730. The incompleteness and aimlessness which characterised his education clung to him all his days: he made numerous starts in life, but followed no one calling for long; in turn, student of philosophy, of theology, of law, private tutor, merchant, tutor again, commercial traveller, student of literature and the ancient languages, and clerk, he at length settled down in Königsberg in 1767 as an official in the excise. Nevertheless he lived but meanly until the present by a patron, in 1784, of a sum of money raised him above want. He died at Münster, 21st June 1788. His writings are, like his life, desultory and without system; but even as such they exercised a perceptible influence upon Jacobi, Herder, Goethe, and Jean Paul. For in spite of their symbolical and oracular style, qualities which led to their author being designated the 'Magus of the North,' they contain the results of thoughtful and extensive reading, are rich in suggestive thought, encrusted with paradox and sarcasm, and thoroughly bristle with literary allusions. Hamann's independence and love of honest truth made him, however, unpopular with his contemporaries, except the more thoughtful few. Compare Roth's edition of his Sämtliche Schriften (8 vols. 1821-45) or Gildemeister's (6 vols., including biography, 1857-73). See Lives by Poel (1874-76) and Claasen (1885).