Christoph Samuel John (11 August 1747 – 1 September 1813) was a German missionary in the service of the

Danish-Halle Mission The Tranquebar Mission (; ) was established in 1706 by two German missionaries from Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle namely, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau. Ziegenbalg and Plütschau responded to the appeal of ...

in southern India at the Danish settlement of

Tranquebar Tharangambadi (), formerly Tranquebar (, ), is a town in the Mayiladuthurai district of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu on the Coromandel Coast. It lies north of Karaikal, near the mouth of a distributary named Uppanar of the Kaveri River. It wa ...

(Tharangambadi). He promoted schools, natural theology, and collected specimens of local natural history which he sent to collaborators and several species have been named from his collections including the plant '' Impatiens johnii'', the snake ''

Eryx johnii ''Eryx johnii'' is a species of nonvenomous snake in the subfamily Erycinae of the Family (biology), family Boidae. The species is native to Iran, Pakistan, and India. There are no subspecies which are recognized as being valid. Common names in ...

'' and the fish genus '' Johnius'' and the species '' Lutjanus johnii''.

Life and work

John was born in Frobersgrün near

Greiz Greiz ( ; ) is a town in the state of Thuringia, Germany, and is the capital of the Greiz (district), district of Greiz. Greiz is situated in eastern Thuringia, east of the state capital Erfurt, on the White Elster river. Greiz has a large park ...

to priest Julius Gerhard (1708–1780) and Catharina Dorothea Pyrläus (c. 1710–1780). He studied theology at the university of Halle while also teaching at an orphanage under Johann Georg Knapp. He was ordained in 1769 at Copenhagen and went with the mission to Tranquebar along with Wilhelm Jacobus Müller, leaving on 16 March 1771 after a previous plan to sail on January 6, 1770, had to be cancelled due to winter ice. C_S_John

In India he lived in poverty for a while and then began to follow the system of Serampore to be involved in education. He then became involved in establishing a school for the children of Europeans as well as one for Indians where the children paid for the education by working on plantations. The funding crunch was brought on by the clash between England and Denmark and John made use of local teachers. John was influenced into the study of natural history by

Johann Gerhard König Johann Gerhard König (29 November 1728 – 26 June 1785) was a Baltic Germans, Baltic German botanist and physician who served in the Tranquebar Mission, India before joining service under the Nawab of Arcot, and then the English East India Compan ...

and began to collect specimens. He sent fishes, along with illustrations made by natives to Patrick Russell and to Marcus Élieser Bloch in Berlin. He began a botanical garden and sent plant specimens to

William Roxburgh William Roxburgh FRSE FRCPE Linnean Society of London, FLS (3/29 June 1751 – 18 February 1815) was a Scottish people, Scottish surgeon and botanist who worked extensively in India, describing species and working on economic botany. He is known ...

. He used sessions of observation under the microscope as part of his religious teaching. In 1770 he visited J. H. Chemnitz in Elsinore and corresponded with him subsequently. Chemnitz was a promoter of a form of

natural theology Natural theology is a type of theology that seeks to provide arguments for theological topics, such as the existence of a deity, based on human reason. It is distinguished from revealed theology, which is based on supernatural sources such as ...

known as testaceotheology or the use of molluscs for preaching. Patrick Russell named ''

'' and Bloch named '' Lutjanus johnii'' after him. The naturalist

Heinrich Julius Lebeck Heinrich Julius Lebeck (1772 – 12 June 1800) was a Ceylon-born Dutch naturalist and specimen collector. He was educated in southern India, at a school run by missionary Christoph Samuel John, and later became a student of naturalist Carl Peter T ...

(1772–1800), a former student of John, made two visits to Tranquebar. John called Lebeck as the crown of his former educational establishment and had Bloch name the fish ''Uranoscopus lebeck'' after him. John could speak English, Portuguese and Tamil apart from German. John fell afoul of many in the mission and faced much opposition to his involvement in education. John married Christina Sophia Guldberg at Tranquebar on 27 November 1776. John suffered from blindness and lung disease and died of a stroke in Tranquebar and is buried at the New Jerusalem Cemetery.

References

External links

Travel notes "Reisetagebuch von Christoph Samuel John"
{{DEFAULTSORT:John, Christoph Samuel 1747 births 1813 deaths German Christian missionaries German missionary educators German natural history collectors Danish India Lutheranism in India