Jenisch, Daniel

Jenisch, Daniel a German theologian of some note, was born at Heiligenbeil, in East Prussia, April 2, 1762, and educated at the University of Königsberg. In 1786 he became pastor at the Mary Church, and afterwards at the Nicholas Church. Endowed with great natural abilities, and a very earnest worker, Jenisch, soon secured for himself one of the foremost places as a theologian and a philosophical writer. But too close application to study resulted in a derangement of his mental powers and he is supposed to have violently ended his life Feb. 9, 1804. His works of interest to us are Ueber Grund u. Werth d. Entdeckungen Kant's in der Metaphysik, Moral, u. Aesthetik (Berl. 1796, large 8vo): — Sollte Religion dem Menschen jemals entbehrlich werden: (ibid. 1797, 8vo). Besides these, he published, after his mind began to be seriously affected, Ueber Gottesverehrung u. Kirchliche Reformen (ibid. 1802, 8vo), rather the work of a skeptical Christian, if we may use the expression, though it contains also many just criticisms on the liturgy and homiletics of the Lutheran Church of his day; and Kritik des dogmatisch-idealischen u. hyperidealischen Religions u. Moralsystems (Lpz. 1804, 8vo), which was the last work of Jenisch. See Döring, Gelehrte Theologen Deutschlands, 2, 20 sq. (J.H.W.)