ESCHENBURG, JOHANN JOACHIM (1743-1820), German critic and literary historian, was born at Hamburg on the 7th of December 1743. After receiving his early education in his native town, he studied at Leipzig and Göttingen. In 1767 he was appointed tutor, and subsequently professor, at the Collegium Carolinum in Brunswick. The title of “Hofrat” was conferred on him in 1786, and in 1814 he was made one of the directors of the Carolinum. He is best known by his efforts to familiarize his countrymen with English literature. He published a series of German translations of the principal English writers on aesthetics, such as J. Brown, D. Webb, Charles Burney, Joseph Priestley and R. Hurd; and Germany owes also to him the first complete translation (in prose) of Shakespeare’s plays (William Shakespear’s Schauspiele, 13 vols., Zürich, 1775-1782). This is virtually a revised edition of the incomplete translation published by Wieland between 1762 and 1766. Eschenburg died at Brunswick on the 29th of February 1820.
Besides editing, with memoirs, the works of Hagedorn, Zachariä and other German poets, he was the author of a Handbuch der klassischen Literatur (1783); Entwurf einer Theorie und Literatur der schönen Wissenschaften (1783); Beispielsammlung zur Theorie und Literatur der schönen Wissenschaften (8 vols., 1788-1795); Lehrbuch der Wissenschaftskunde (1792); and Denkmäler altdeutscher Dichtkunst (1799). Most of these works have passed through several editions. Eschenburg was also a poet of some pretensions, and some of his religious hymns, e.g. Ich will dich noch im Tod erheben and Dir trau’ ich, Gott, und wanke nicht, are contained in many hymnals to this day.
ESCHENMAYER, ADAM KARL AUGUST VON (1768-1852), German philosopher and physicist, was born at Neuenburg in Württemberg in July 1768. After receiving his early education at the Caroline academy of Stuttgart, he entered the university of Tübingen, where he received the degree of doctor of medicine. He practised for some time as a physician at Sulz, and then at Kirchheim, and in 1811 he was chosen extraordinary professor of philosophy and medicine at Tübingen. In 1818 he became ordinary professor of practical philosophy, but in 1836 he resigned and took up his residence at Kirchheim, where he devoted his whole attention to philosophical studies. Eschenmayer’s views are largely identical with those of Schelling, but he differed from him in regard to the knowledge of the absolute. He believed that in order to complete the arc of truth philosophy must be supplemented by what he called “non-philosophy,” a kind of mystical illumination by which was obtained a belief in God that could not be reached by mere intellectual effort (see Höffding, Hist. of Mod. Phil., Eng. trans. vol. 2, p. 170). He carried this tendency to mysticism into his physical researches, and was led by it to take a deep interest in the phenomena of animal magnetism. He ultimately became a devout believer in demoniacal and spiritual possession; and his later writings are all strongly impregnated with the lower supernaturalism.
His principal works are—Die Philosophie in ihrem Übergange zur Nichtphilosophie (1803); Versuch die scheinbare Magie des thierischen Magnetismus aus physiol. und psychischen Gesetzen zu erklären (1816); System der Moralphilosophie (1818); Psychologie in drei Theilen, als empirische, reine, angewandte (1817, 2nd ed. 1822); Religionsphilosophie (3 vols., 1818-1824); Die Hegel’sche Religionsphilosophie verglichen mit dem christl. Princip (1834); Der Ischariotismus unserer Tage (1835) (directed against Strauss’s Life of Jesus); Konflikt zwischen Himmel und Hölle, an dem Dämon eines besessenen Mädchens beobachtet (1837); Grundriss der Naturphilosophie (1832); Grundzüge der christl. Philosophie (1840); and Betrachtungen über den physischen Weltbau (1852).
ESCHER VON DER LINTH, ARNOLD (1807-1872), Swiss geologist, the son of Hans Conrad Escher (1767-1823), was born at Zürich on the 8th of June 1807. In 1856 he became professor of geology at the École Polytechnique at Zürich. His researches led him to be regarded as one of the founders of Swiss geology. With B. Studer he produced (1852-1853) the first elaborate geological map of Switzerland. He was the author also of Geologische Bemerkungen über das nördliche Vorarlberg und einige angrenzenden Gegenden, published at Zürich in 1853. He died on the 12th of July 1872.
ESCHSCHOLTZ, JOHANN FRIEDRICH (1793-1831), Russian traveller and naturalist, was born in November 1793, at Dorpat, where he died in May 1831. He was naturalist and physician to Otto von Kotzebue’s exploring expedition during 1815-1818. On his return he was appointed extraordinary professor of anatomy (1819) and director of the zoological museum of the university at Dorpat (1822), and in 1823-1826 he accompanied Kotzebue on his second voyage of discovery. He became ordinary professor of anatomy at Dorpat in 1828. Among his publications were the System der Akalephen (1829), and the Zoologischer Atlas (1829-1833). The botanical genus Eschscholtzia was named by Adelbert von Chamisso in his honour.