David Assur Assing (12 December 1787,

Königsberg Königsberg (, ) was the historic Prussian city that is now Kaliningrad, Russia. Königsberg was founded in 1255 on the site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement ''Twangste'' by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, and was na ...

– 25 April 1842,

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...

) was a

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an ...

n physician and poet.

Biography

Assing studied at the universities of Tübingen, Halle, Vienna, and Göttingen. He received his doctorate from the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded i ...

in August 1807, his thesis being ''Materiæ Alimentariæ Lineamenta ad Leges Chemico-Dynamicas Adumbrata'' (). This was published at Göttingen in 1809. Three years later he went to Hamburg with the intention of settling there as a practising physician; but hardly a year passed before the war occurred for the liberation of Germany from Napoleonic rule, and he entered the army, joining a regiment of cavalry in the capacity of physician. He served first in the Russian, then in the Prussian, army. In 1815 he returned to Hamburg, and the following year married Rosa Maria Varnhagen, the daughter of a physician of that city. Assing converted to Christianity upon marriage, and changed his surname to Assing. He was known as a student of Greek medicine, making a special study of

Hippocrates Hippocrates of Kos (; grc-gre, Ἱπποκράτης ὁ Κῷος, Hippokrátēs ho Kôios; ), also known as Hippocrates II, was a Greek physician of the classical period who is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history o ...

. He also contributed lyric poems to the ''Musenalmanach'', published by his friends Kerner and Chamisso; to the ''Tübinger Morgenblatt''; and in ''Isidorus Hesperiden''. After the death of his wife on 22 June 1840, he published "Rosa Maria's Poetischer Nachlass" (Altona, 1841). The last years of his life were passed in solitude.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Assing, David 1787 births 1842 deaths German people of Jewish descent Converts to Lutheranism from Judaism 19th-century German poets 19th-century German male writers 19th-century German writers Jewish physicians 19th-century German physicians 19th-century Lutherans German male poets