Georg Friedrich Creuzer

Having studied at Marburg and Jena[?], he for some time lived at Leipzig as a private tutor; but in 1802 he was appointed professor at Marburg, and two years later professor of philology and ancient history at Heidelberg. The latter position he held for nearly forty-five years, with the exception of a short time spent at the university of Leiden, where his health was affected by the Dutch climate. He was one of the principal founders of the Philological Seminary established at Heidelberg in 1807. The Academy of Inscriptions of Paris appointed him one of its members, and from the grandduke of Baden he received the dignity of privy councillor.

Creuzer's first and most famous work was his Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders der Griechen (1810-1812), in which he maintained that the mythology of Homer and Hesiod came from an Eastern source through the Pelasgians, and was the remains of the symbolism of an ancient revelation. This work was vigorously attacked by Hermann in his Briefen über Homer und Hesiod, and in his letter, addressed to Creuzer, Über das Wesen und die Behandlung der Mythologie; by JH Voss in his Antisymbolik; and by Lobek in his Aglaophamos.

Of Creuzer's other works the principal are:

• an edition of Plotinus
• a partial edition of Cicero, in preparing which he was assisted by Moser
• Die historische Kunst der Griechen (1803)
• Epochen der griech. Literaturgeschichie (1802)
• Abriss der römischen Antiquitaten (1824)
• Zur Geschichte altrömischer Cultur am Oberrhein und Neckar (1833)
• Zur Gemmenkunde (1834)
• Das Mithreum von Neuenheim (1838)
• Zur Galerie der alten Dramatiker (1839)
• Zur Geschichte der classischen Philologie (1854).

See the autobiographical Aus dem Leben eines alten Professors (Leipzig and Darmstadt, 1848), to which was added in the year of his death Paralipomena der Lebenskunde eines alten Professors (Frankfurt, 1858); also Starck, Friederich Kreuzer, sein Bildungsgang und seine bleibende Bedeutung (Heidelberg, 1875).

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.