Reima'rus

Reima'rus, HERMANN SAMUEL, scholar and theologian, was born 22d December 1694, at Hamburg. He studied at Jena and Wittenberg, travelled afterwards in Holland and England, and was on his return elected rector of the school at Wismar, and subsequently professor of Hebrew and Mathematics at the gymnasium of Hamburg. He died there, 1st March 1768. He is the author of the so-called 'Wolfenbüttelsche Fragmente eines Ungenannten,' first published by Lessing in 1777. These 'Fragmente,' up to that time only known in MS. by a few of Reinarius' most intimate friends, produced the profoundest sensation throughout Germany: since in them the author, in the boldest and most trenchant manner, denied the supernatural origin of Christianity. Another work in the same direction is his Vornchmste Wahrheiten der Natürlichen Religion; of a miscellaneous character are his Primitia Wismariensia, De Vita Fabrieii, and his edition of Dio Cassius. See the monograph by D. F. Strauss (1860; 2d ed. 1878).