Johann Peter Süßmilch or Süssmilch (September 3, 1707 in
Zehlendorf – March 22, 1767 in
Berlin) was a German
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to ...
pastor
A pastor (abbreviated as "Pr" or "Ptr" , or "Ps" ) is the leader of a Christian congregation who also gives advice and counsel to people from the community or congregation. In Lutheranism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy and A ...
,
statistician
A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors.
It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...
and
demographer
Demography () is the statistical study of populations, especially human beings.
Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as ed ...
.
Education and career
Süßmilch studied
medicine
Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practice ...
and
theology
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
at
Jena
Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a popu ...
and
Halle and in 1741 was an
army chaplain in the
First Silesian War
The First Silesian War (german: Erster Schlesischer Krieg, links=no) was a war between Prussia and Austria that lasted from 1740 to 1742 and resulted in Prussia's seizing most of the region of Silesia (now in south-western Poland) from Austria. T ...
. On Sunday, 13 August 1741, the former field preacher gave his inaugural sermon as pastor of the community
Etzin.
[Eckart Elsner: Süßmilchs time Etzin](_blank)
/ref> In 1742 he took a post as Provost in the St. Petri parish in Berlin-Cölln. He became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
The Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences (german: Königlich-Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften) was an academy established in Berlin, Germany on 11 July 1700, four years after the Prussian Academy of Arts, or "Arts Academy," to which "Berli ...
in 1745. He conversed with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (, ; 22 January 1729 – 15 February 1781) was a philosopher, dramatist, publicist and art critic, and a representative of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the developme ...
and Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aes ...
.
Süßmilch's most important publication on ''The Divine order in the circumstances of the human sex, birth, death and reproduction'', which he wrote in 1741, is regarded as a seminal and pioneering work in demography and the history of population statistics
Demographic statistics are measures of the characteristics of, or changes to, a population. Records of births, deaths, marriages, immigration and emigration and a regular census of population provide information that is key to making sound decisio ...
. Süssmilch discovered that, in the long term, there is a constant sex ratio of 1,000 female births to 1,050 male births. He saw this as a proof of the Divine working in this World. Due to this work, he can be regarded as one of the founding fathers of demography in Germany. However, he refers in his work to Caspar Neumann
Caspar (or Kaspar) Neumann (14 September 1648 – 27 January 1715) was a German professor and clergyman from Breslau with a special scientific interest in mortality rates.
Biography
Caspar Neuman was born September 14, 1648 in Breslau, to M ...
's work, who calculated a monthly statistics of deaths by age and death cause already between 1687 and 1691 in Breslau (present-day Wrocław
Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, rou ...
). Süssmilch also worked on life tables
In actuarial science and demography, a life table (also called a mortality table or actuarial table) is a table which shows, for each age, what the probability is that a person of that age will die before their next birthday ("probability of dea ...
.
Works
*''The Royal Residence of Berlin's Growth and Rapid Construction'', 1752
Digitalisat
*''The Divine order in the changes in the human sex from birth, death and reproduction of the same'', 2 parts, 1761-1762 (Digitalisa
demography/demography/suessmilch_1761 Part 1
Part 2
*
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sussmilch, Johann Peter
1707 births
1767 deaths
German statisticians
German Protestant clergy
Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
Writers from Berlin
People from the Margraviate of Brandenburg
University of Jena alumni
University of Halle alumni
German military chaplains
German male writers
Demographers