EICHHORN, JOHANN GOTTFRIED (1752-1827), German theologian, was born at Dörrenzimmern, in the principality of Hohenlohe-Oehringen, on the 16th of October 1752. He was educated at the state school in Weikersheim, where his father was superintendent, at the gymnasium at Heilbronn and at the university of Göttingen (1770-1774), studying under J.D. Michaelis. In 1774 he received the rectorship of the gymnasium at Ohrdruf, in the duchy of Gotha, and in the following year was made professor of Oriental languages at Jena. On the death of Michaelis in 1788 he was elected professor ordinarius at Göttingen, where he lectured not only on Oriental languages and on the exegesis of the Old and New Testaments, but also on political history. His health was shattered in 1825, but he continued his lectures until attacked by fever on the 14th of June 1827. He died on the 27th of that month. Eichhorn has been called “the founder of modern Old Testament criticism.” He first properly recognized its scope and problems, and began many of its most important discussions. “My greatest trouble,” he says in the preface to the second edition of his Einleitung, “I had to bestow on a hitherto unworked field—on the investigation of the inner nature of the Old Testament with the help of the Higher Criticism (not a new name to any humanist).” His investigations led him to the conclusion that “most of the writings of the Hebrews have passed through several hands.” He took for granted that all the so-called supernatural facts relating to the Old and New Testaments were explicable on natural principles. He sought to judge them from the standpoint of the ancient world, and to account for them by the superstitious beliefs which were then generally in vogue. He did not perceive in the biblical books any religious ideas of much importance for modern times; they interested him merely historically and for the light they cast upon antiquity. He regarded many books of the Old Testament as spurious, questioned the genuineness of 2 Peter and Jude, denied the Pauline authorship of Timothy and Titus, and suggested that the canonical gospels were based upon various translations and editions of a primary Aramaic gospel. He did not appreciate as sufficiently as David Strauss and the Tübingen critics the difficulties which a natural theory has to surmount, nor did he support his conclusions by such elaborate discussions as they deemed necessary.
His principal works were—Geschichte des Ostindischen Handels vor Mohammed (Gotha, 1775); Allgemeine Bibliothek der biblischen Literatur (10 vols., Leipzig, 1787-1801); Einleitung in das Alte Testament (3 vols., Leipzig, 1780-1783); Einleitung in das Neue Testament (1804-1812); Einleitung in die apokryphischen Bücher des Alten Testaments (Gött., 1795); Commentarius in apocalypsin Joannis (2 vols., Gött., 1791); Die Hebr. Propheten (3 vols., Gött., 1816-1819); Allgemeine Geschichte der Cultur und Literatur des neuern Europa (2 vols., Gött., 1796-1799); Literärgeschichte (1st vol., Gött., 1799, 2nd ed. 1813, 2nd vol. 1814); Geschichte der Literatur von ihrem Anfange bis auf die neuesten Zeiten (5 vols., Gött., 1805-1812); Übersicht der Französischen Revolution (2 vols., Gött., 1797); Weltgeschichte (3rd ed., 5 vols., Gött., 1819-1820); Geschichte der drei letzten Jahrhunderte (3rd ed., 6 vols., Hanover, 1817-1818); Urgeschichte des erlauchten Hauses der Welfen (Hanover, 1817).
See R.W. Mackay, The Tübingen School and its Antecedents (1863), pp. 103 ff.; Otto Pfleiderer, Development of Theology (1890), p. 209; T.K. Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism (1893), pp. 13 ff.
EICHHORN, KARL FRIEDRICH (1781-1854), German jurist, son of the preceding, was born at Jena on the 20th of November 1781. He entered the university of Göttingen in 1797. In 1805 he obtained the professorship of law at Frankfort-on-Oder, holding it till 1811, when he accepted the same chair at Berlin. On the call to arms in 1813 he became a captain of horse, and received at the end of the war the decoration of the Iron Cross. In 1817 he was offered the chair of law at Göttingen, and, preferring it to the Berlin professorship, taught there with great success till ill-health compelled him to resign in 1828. His successor in the Berlin chair having died in 1832, he again entered on its duties, but resigned two years afterwards. In 1832 he also received an appointment in the ministry of foreign affairs, which, with his labours on many state committees and his legal researches and writings, occupied him till his death at Cologne on the 4th of July 1854. Eichhorn is regarded as one of the principal authorities on German constitutional law. His chief work is Deutsche Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte (Göttingen, 1808-1823, 5th ed. 1843-1844). In company with Savigny and J.F.L. Göschen he founded the Zeitschrift für geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft. He was the author besides of Einleitung in das deutsche Privatrecht mit Einschluss des Lehnrechts (Gött., 1823) and the Grundsätze des Kirchenrechts der Katholischen und der Evangelischen Religionspartei in Deutschland, 2 Bde. (ib., 1831-1833).
See Schulte, Karl Friedrich Eichhorn, sein Leben und Wirken (1884).
EICHSTÄTT, a town and episcopal see of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria, in the deep and romantic valley of the Altmühl, 35 m. S. of Nuremberg, on the railway to Ingolstadt and Munich. Pop. (1905) 7701. The town, with its numerous spires and remains of medieval fortifications, is very picturesque. It has an Evangelical and seven Roman Catholic churches, among the latter the cathedral of St Wilibald (first bishop of Eichstätt),—with the tomb of the saint and numerous pictures and relics,—the church of St Walpurgis, sister of Wilibald, whose remains rest in the choir, and the Capuchin church, a copy of the Holy Sepulchre. Of its secular buildings the most noticeable are the town hall and the Leuchtenberg palace, once the residence of the prince bishops and later of the dukes of Leuchtenberg (now occupied by the court of justice of the district), with beautiful grounds. The Wilibaldsburg, built on a neighbouring hill in the 14th century by Bishop Bertold of Hohenzollern, was long the residence of the prince bishops of Eichstätt, and now contains an historical museum. There are an episcopal lyceum, a clerical seminary, a classical and a modern school, and numerous religious houses. The industries of the town include bootmaking, brewing and the production of lithographic stones.
Eichstätt (Lat. Aureatum or Rubilocus) was originally a Roman station which, after the foundation of the bishopric by Boniface in 745, developed into a considerable town, which was surrounded with walls in 908. The bishops of Eichstätt were princes of the Empire, subject to the spiritual jurisdiction of the archbishops of Mainz, and ruled over considerable territories in the Circle of Franconia. In 1802 the see was secularized and incorporated in Bavaria. In 1817 it was given, with the duchy of Leuchtenberg, as a mediatized domain under the Bavarian crown, by the king of Bavaria to his son-in-law Eugène de Beauharnais, ex-viceroy of Italy, henceforth styled duke of Leuchtenberg. In 1855 it reverted to the Bavarian crown.