HOFMANN, AUGUST WILHELM VON (1818-1892), German chemist, was born at Giessen on the 8th of April 1818. Not intending originally to devote himself to physical science, he first took up the study of law and philology at Göttingen, and the general culture he thus gained stood him in good stead when he turned to chemistry, the study of which he began under Liebig. When, in 1845, a school of practical chemistry was started in London, under the style of the Royal College of Chemistry, Hofmann, largely through the influence of the Prince Consort, was appointed its first director. It was with some natural hesitation that he, then a Privatdozent at Bonn, accepted the position, which may well have seemed rather a precarious one; but the difficulty was removed by his appointment as extraordinary professor at Bonn, with leave of absence for two years, so that he could resume his career in Germany if his English one proved unsatisfactory. Fortunately the college was more or less successful, owing largely to his enthusiasm and energy, and many of the men who were trained there subsequently made their mark in chemical history. But in 1864 he returned to Bonn, and in the succeeding year he was selected to succeed E. Mitscherlich as professor of chemistry and director of the laboratory in Berlin University. In leaving England, of which he used to speak as his adopted country, Hofmann was probably influenced by a combination of causes. The public support extended to the college of chemistry had been dwindling for some years, and before he left it had ceased to have an independent existence and had been absorbed into the School of Mines. This event he must have looked upon as a curtailment of its possibilities of usefulness. But, in addition, there is only too much reason to suppose that he was disappointed at the general apathy with which his science was regarded in England. No man ever realized more fully than he how entirely dependent on the advance of scientific knowledge is the continuation of a country’s material prosperity, and no single chemist ever exercised a greater or more direct influence upon industrial development. In England, however, people cared for none of these things, and were blind to the commercial potentialities of scientific research. The college to which Hofmann devoted nearly twenty of the best years of his life was starved; the coal-tar industry, which was really brought into existence by his work and that of his pupils under his direction at that college, and which with a little intelligent forethought might have been retained in England, was allowed to slip into the hands of Germany, where it is now worth millions of pounds annually; and Hofmann himself was compelled to return to his native land to find due appreciation as one of the foremost chemists of his time. The rest of his life was spent in Berlin, and there he died on the 5th of May 1892. That city possesses a permanent memorial to his name in Hofmann House, the home of the German Chemical Society (of which he was the founder), which was formally opened in 1900, appropriately enough with an account of that great triumph of German chemical enterprise, the industrial manufacture of synthetical indigo.
Hofmann’s work covered a wide range of organic chemistry, though with inorganic bodies he did but little. His first research, carried out in Liebig’s laboratory at Giessen, was on coal-tar, and his investigation of the organic bases in coal-gas naphtha established the nature of aniline. This substance he used to refer to as his first love, and it was a love to which he remained faithful throughout his life. His perception of the analogy between it and ammonia led to his famous work on the amines and ammonium bases and the allied organic phosphorus compounds, while his researches on rosaniline, which he first prepared in 1858, formed the first of a series of investigations on colouring matters which only ended with quinoline red in 1887. But in addition to these and numberless other investigations for which he was responsible the influence he exercised through his pupils must also be taken into account. As a teacher, besides the power of accurately gauging the character and capabilities of those who studied under him, he had the faculty of infecting them with his own enthusiasm, and thus of stimulating them to put forward their best efforts. In the lecture-room he laid great stress on the importance of experimental demonstrations, paying particular attention to their selection and arrangement, though, since he himself was a somewhat clumsy manipulator, their actual exhibition was generally entrusted to his assistants. He was the possessor of a clear and graceful, if somewhat florid, style, which showed to special advantage in his numerous obituary notices or encomiums (collected and published in three volumes Zur Erinnerung an vorangegangene Freunde, 1888). He also excelled as a speaker, particularly at gatherings of an international character, for in addition to his native German he could speak English, French and Italian with fluency.
See Memorial Lectures delivered before the Chemical Society, 1893-1900 (London, 1901).
HOFMANN, JOHANN CHRISTIAN KONRAD VON (1810-1877), Lutheran theologian and historian, was born on the 21st of December 1810 at Nuremberg, and studied theology and history at the university of Erlangen. In 1829 he went to Berlin, where Schleiermacher, Hengstenberg, Neander, Ranke and Raumer were among his teachers. In 1833 he received an appointment to teach Hebrew and history in the gymnasium of Erlangen. In 1835 he became Repetent, in 1838 Privatdozent and in 1841 professor extraordinarius in the theological faculty at Erlangen. In 1842 he became professor ordinarius at Rostock, but in 1845 returned once more to Erlangen as the successor of Gottlieb Christoph Adolf von Harless (1806-1879), founder of the Zeitschrift für Protestantismus und Kirche, of which Hofmann became one of the editors in 1846, J. F. Höfling (1802-1853) and Gottfried Thomasius (1802-1875) being his collaborators. He was a conservative in theology, but an enthusiastic adherent of the progressive party in politics, and sat as member for Erlangen and Fürth in the Bavarian second chamber from 1863 to 1868. He died on the 20th of December 1877.
He wrote Die siebzig Jahre des Jeremias u. die siebzig Jahrwochen des Daniel (1836); Geschichte des Aufruhrs in den Cevennen (1837); Lehrbuch der Weltgeschichte für Gymnasien (1839), which became a text-book in the Protestant gymnasia of Bavaria; Weissagung u. Erfüllung im alten u. neuen Testamente (1841-1844; 2nd ed., 1857-1860); Der Schriftbeweis (1852-1856; 2nd ed., 1857-1860); Die heilige Schrift des neuen Testaments zusammenhängend untersucht (1862-1875); Schutzschriften (1856-1859), in which he defends himself against the charge of denying the Atonement; and Theologische Ethik (1878). His most important works are the five last named. In theology, as in ecclesiastical polity, Hofmann was a Lutheran of an extreme type, although the strongly marked individuality of some of his opinions laid him open to repeated accusations of heterodoxy. He was the head of what has been called the Erlangen School, and “in his day he was unquestionably the chief glory of the University of Erlangen” (Lichtenberger).
See the articles in Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyklopädie and the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie; and cf. F. Lichtenberger, History of German Theology in the Nineteenth Century (1889) pp. 446-458.
HOFMANN, MELCHIOR (c. 1498-1543-4), anabaptist, was born at Hall, in Swabia, before 1500 (Zur Linden suggests 1498). His biographers usually give his surname as above; in his printed works it is Hoffman, in his manuscripts Hoffmann. He was without scholarly training, and first appears as a furrier at Livland. Attracted by Luther’s doctrine, he came forward as a lay preacher, combining business travels with a religious mission. Accompanied by Melchior Rinck, also a skinner or furrier, and a religious enthusiast, he made his way to Sweden. Joined by Bernard Knipperdolling, the party reached Stockholm in the autumn of 1524. Their fervid attacks on image worship led to their expulsion. By way of Livonia, Hofmann arrived at Dorpat in November 1524, but was driven thence in the following January. Making his way to Riga, and thence to Wittenberg, he found favour with Luther; his letter of the 22nd of June 1525 appears in a tract by Luther of that year. He was again at Dorpat in May 1526; later at Magdeburg. Returning to Wittenberg, he was coldly received; he wrote there his exposition of Daniel xii. (1527). Repairing to Holstein, he got into the good graces of Frederick I. of Denmark, and was appointed by royal ordinance to preach the Gospel at Kiel. He was extravagant in denunciation, and developed a Zwinglian view of the Eucharist. Luther was alarmed. At a colloquy of preachers in Flensburg (8th April 1529) Hofmann, John Campanus and others were put on their defence. Hofmann maintained (against the “magic” of the Lutherans) that the function of the Eucharist, like that of preaching, is an appeal for spiritual union with Christ. Refusing to retract, he was banished. At Strassburg to which he now turned, he was well received (1529) till his anabaptist development became apparent. He was in relations with Schwenkfeld and with Carlstadt, but assumed a prophetic rôle of his own. Journeying to East Friesland, (1530) he founded a community at Emden (1532), securing a large following of artisans. Despite the warning of John Trypmaker, who prophesied for him “six months” in prison, he returned in the spring of 1533 to Strassburg, where we hear of his wife and child. He gathered from the Apocalypse a vision of “resurrections” of apostolic Christianity, first under John Hus, and now under himself. The year 1533 was to inaugurate the new era; Strassburg was to be the seat of the New Jerusalem. In May 1533 he and others were arrested. Under examination, he denied that he had made common cause with the anabaptists and claimed to be no prophet, a mere witness of the Most High, but refused the articles of faith proposed to him by the provincial synod. Hofmann and Claus Frey, an anabaptist, were detained in prison, a measure due to the terror excited by the Münster episode of 1533-1534. The synod, in 1539, made further effort to reclaim him. The last notice of his imprisonment is on the 19th of November 1543; he probably died soon after.
Two of his publications, with similar titles, in 1530, are noteworthy as having influenced Menno Simons and David Joris (Weissagung vsz heiliger götlicher geschrifft, and Prophecey oder Weissagung vsz warer heiliger götlicher schrifft). Bock treats him as an antitrinitarian, on grounds which Wallace rightly deems inconclusive. With better reason Trechsel includes him among pioneers of some of the positions of Servetus. His Christology was Valentinian. While all are elected to salvation, only the regenerate may receive baptism, and those who sin after regeneration sin against the Holy Ghost, and cannot be saved. His followers were known as Hofmannites or Melchiorites.