Christoph Cellarius (1638-1707)
Namesake of the library
Life
The philologist, historian and geographer Christoph Cellarius was born on 22.11.1638 in Schmalkalden.
He studied ancient and oriental languages, history, theology and mathematics in Jena and Gießen, was a teacher in Weißenfels from 1667, headmaster at the grammar school in Weimar in 1673 and head of the cathedral school in Zeitz from 1676. In 1688 he became headmaster of the Merseburg Cathedral School and in 1694 professor of eloquence and history at the newly founded university in Halle. He wrote the statutes of the Faculty of Philosophy and took over the library and the Seminarium Praeceptorum of August Hermann Francke in 1696.
In 1697 he directed the first German philosophical seminar and is the fourth prorector of the University of Halle in 1697/98.
Cellarius published textbooks of classical and oriental languages and works on Roman history as well as on the newly introduced subject of geography.
He died on 04.06.1707 in Halle.
Works
With his work printed posthumously in 1709, summarized as "Historia universalis", the periodization of history into Ancient-Medieval-Modern became standard.
Christoph Cellarius published a series of books on the geography of classical antiquity, but also on the geography of his time. He devoted himself to the production of map works, which were distributed throughout Europe.
On 04.06.2007 the library of the University of Applied Sciences Schmalkalden was named “Cellarius Bibliothek".
