Neander, JOHANN AUGUST WILHELM, the greatest of church historians, was born at Göttingen, 17th January 1789, of Jewish parentage. His name prior to baptism was David Mendel, and by the mother's side he was related to the philosopher Mendelssohn. He received his early education at the Johanneum in Hamburg, and had for companions Varnhagen von Ense and Chamisso the poet. Even while he was a boy, Plato and Plutarch were his favourite books, and he was profoundly stirred by Schleiermacher's famous Reden über die Religion (1799). Finally in 1806 he publicly renounced Judaism, and was baptised, adopting the name of Neander ('new man'), and taking his Christian names from several of his friends. His sisters and brothers, and later his mother also, followed his example. He now proceeded to Halle, where he studied theology under Schleiermacher, and concluded his academic course at Göttingen. In 1811 he took up his residence at Heidelberg as a privat-docent; in 1812 he was appointed there extra-ordinary professor of Theology; and in the following year he was called to the newly-established university of Berlin as professor of Church History. Here he laboured till his death, July 14, 1850. Students flocked to him not only from all parts of Germany, but from the most distant Protestant countries. And his sweetness of character was no less attractive than his genius. Profoundly devotional, sympathetic, glad-hearted, profusely benevolent, and without a shadow of selfishness, he inspired universal reverence, and was himself by the simplicity and sanctity of his life a more powerful argument on behalf of Christianity than even his writings. He used to give the poorer students free admission to his lectures, and to supply them with clothes and money. The greater portion of what he made by his books he bestowed upon missionary, Bible, and other societies, and upon hospitals.
Neander is believed to have contributed more than any other single Christian scholar to the overthrow, on the one side, of that anti-historical Rationalism, and on the other of that dead Lutheran formalism, from both of which the religious life of Germany had so long suffered. To the delineation of the development of historical Christianity he brought a generous and sympathetic, yet broad and impartial intellect. To him Christianity was a permeating force more than a series of dogmas, and the history of the church was throughout but the history of the divine life of Christ pervading humanity, to be understood only in proportion to the student's personal experience of the significance of the life of Christ. This is the meaning of Neander's famous aphorism—'Pectus est quod facit theologum.' The most striking characteristic of his great work is its objectivity in the portrayal of persons and the movement of events; its greatest merit is the admirable biographical skill with which the figures are made to pass before the reader; its one defect, the weakness with which the outstanding separate figures are fitted into their relation to the general movement of the history.
Neander's works, in the order of time, are monographs on Julian and his times (1812), St Bernard (1813), the Gnostics (1818), St Chrysostom (1822); Denkwürdigkeiten aus der Geschichte des Christenthums und des Christlichen Lebens (1822; 3d ed. 1845-46); Antignosticus (1826); the great Allgemeine Geschichte der Christlichen Religion und Kirche (6 vols. 1825-52); Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der Kirche durch die Apostel (2 vols. 1833; 4th ed. 1847); Das Leben Jesu Christi, written as a reply to Strauss's work (1837; 5th ed. 1853); Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen (1851); Geschichte der Christlichen Dogmen (1856). Most of these works are accessible in good English translations. See the studies by Hagenbach (1851), Otto Kraabe (1852), J. L. Jacobi (1882), and Adelbert Weigand, the last with a good bibliography appended (1889).