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Johann August Zeune (12 May 1778 –14 November 1853) was a German academic, an authority on geography and Germanic languages, as well as the founder of the Berlin Blind School.
Zeune was born on 12 May 1778 in Wittenberg as the son of Johann Karl Zeune, professor of Greek at the University of Wittenberg. He was educated in his parents' house by his father and tutors. In 1798 he started studying at the University of Wittenberg. He graduated with his doctoral thesis on the history of geography, and was awarded for a short time the academic dignity of a docent, roughly the equivalent of a professorship in geography. His forward-thinking work the "Topological map" (Höhenschichten-Karte) of the earth, made him known in academic circles.
In 1803, he moved to Berlin and became a teacher at the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster. In Berlin, where he lived as a scholar, he was on friendly terms with Johann Gottlieb Fichte and the historian Johannes von Müller. He applied unsuccessfully for a place on an expedition into the interior of Africa, and shortly thereafter went into the "inner world of the blind". In the field of ophthalmology Zeune expanded his knowledge with the founder of the first European institution for the blind, Valentin Haüy in Paris. King Frederick William III decreed on 11 August 1806 the creation of a foundation for the blind in Berlin and Zeune was offered the appointment. On 13 October the same year he was able to start classes. Opened as the Königliche Blindenanstaltt and still operating as the Johann-August-Zeune-Schule für Blinde, it was the first blind school in Germany. During the hardships of the War of the Fourth Coalition (1806–07) he was only able to save the school by using up his own money, supported by gifts from friends.
In his geographical work, in 1809 he commissioned from the manufacturer Carl August Mencke the production in Mencke's imitation bronze ( Holzbronze ) of his relief globes, which were sold worldwide until 1818. From 1810 Zeune was a professor of geography in Berlin. From 1811 to 1821 he also lectured at the University of Berlin about German language and literature. His pedagogic skills were demonstrated in his manual of education of the blind, Belisarius (1808), and the work ''Goea. Versuch einer wissenschaftlichen Erdbeschreibung ("Gea. Attempt at a scientific geography"). In this work Zeune was the first to propose the name "Balkan Peninsula" (Balkanhalbinsel) to describe the region between the Black Sea and the Adriatic. [1]
After the French occupation of the Napoleonic period, he became known as a political journalist of decidedly patriotic stance. As a Germanist, Zeune was under the influence of contemporary Romantic ideas. He fought against the usage of foreign words in the German language and worked on the publication of the Nibelungenlied, of which he published a prose translation (1813) and a paperback edition (1815).
Along with Johann Jacob Baeyer and others he was a co-founder in 1828 of the Berlin Geographical Society (Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin).
Zeune died on 14 November 1853 in Berlin, after he had lost his eyesight in old age. He was buried at the Old St. George's Cemetery, 229/234 Greifswaldstrasse, Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin.
In his honor, the Johann-August-Zeune-Schule für Blinde or Zeune-Schule (Johann August Zeune School for the Blind) in Steglitz and the nearby Zeunepromenade were named after him.
Johann Christian Günther was a German poet from Striegau in Lower Silesia. After attending the gymnasium at Schweidnitz, he was sent in 1715 by his father, a country doctor, to study medicine at Wittenberg; but he was idle and dissipated, had no taste for the profession chosen for him, and came to a complete rupture with his family. In 1717 he went to Leipzig, where he was befriended by Johann Burkhard Mencke (1674–1732), who recognized his genius; and there he published a poem on the peace of Passarowitz which acquired him reputation. A recommendation from Mencke to Frederick Augustus II of Saxony, king of Poland, proved worse than useless, as Günther appeared at the audience drunk. From that time he led an unsettled and dissipated life, sinking ever deeper into the slough of misery, until he died at Jena on March 15, 1723, when only in his 28th year. Goethe pronounces Günther to have been a poet in the fullest sense of the term. His lyric poems as a whole give evidence of deep and lively sensibility, fine imagination, clever wit, and a true ear for melody and rhythm; but an air of cynicism is more or less present in most of them, and dull or vulgar witticisms are not infrequently found side by side with the purest inspirations of his genius.
Karl Immanuel Nitzsch was a German Lutheran church leader. He was the father of theologian Friedrich August Nitzsch.
Johann Gottfried Gruber was a German critic and literary historian.
Johannes Bugenhagen, also called Doctor Pomeranus by Martin Luther, was a German theologian and Lutheran priest who introduced the Protestant Reformation in the Duchy of Pomerania and Denmark in the 16th century. Among his major accomplishments was organization of Lutheran churches in Northern Germany and Scandinavia. He has also been called the "Second Apostle of the North".
Rudolph Goclenius the Elder was a German scholastic philosopher. He is sometimes credited with coining the term psychology in 1590, though the term had been used by Pier Nicola Castellani and Gerhard Synellius 65 years earlier.
Francis Lambert was a Protestant reformer, the son of a papal official at Avignon, where he was born between 1485 and 1487.
Johannes Praetorius or Johann Richter was a Bohemian German mathematician and astronomer.
Leopold Wilhelm von Dobschütz was a Prussian "general of cavalry", the "hero of Dennewitz" and "liberator of Wittenberg", military governor of the Rhine province and of Breslau. He was Gutsherr of Zölling, which his wife had inherited, and the Gütern Ober- and Nieder-Briesnitz as well as Schönbrunn, all in the district Sagan.
Otto Kleinschmidt was a German ornithologist, theologist and pastor. He was also an artist and taxidermist who produced specimens and illustrations of birds for his writings. He was critical of Darwinian ideas on evolution and natural selection and developed a kind of creationist superspecies concept called Formenkreis which involved variation with geographic dispersal that he illustrated with what he called "geogramms". He edited a periodical Falco which was a companion to a monograph series called Berajah. After speculating on the variations of birds he also examined human variation and gave theories that have been interpreted variously as a form of scientific racism.
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Rudolf II, Duke of Saxe-Wittenberg, nicknamed Rudolf the Blind, was a member of the House of Ascania. He was Elector of Saxony and Duke of Saxe-Wittenberg from 1356 until his death. He was the eldest son of Duke Rudolf I of Saxe-Wittenberg and his wife, Judith of Brandenburg-Salzwedel.
Julius Wilhelm Albert Wigand, known as Albert Wigand, was a German botanist, pharmacologist and pharmacognostician. His is most well known for being the director of the Alter Botanischer Garten Marburg from 1861 to 1886, and for his opposition to Charles Darwin and the theory of Evolution on religious grounds.
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Heinrich Ferdinand Mannstein, real name Heinrich Ferdinand Steinmann, was a German singing teacher, writer and music critic.
Friedrich Kauffmann was a German philologist who specialized in Germanic studies.
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