Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten

Who was Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten?

Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten was a German Protestant theologian. He was a brother to philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten.

He studied theology at the University of Halle, and in 1728 the 22-year old Baumgarten, a Hallensian Pietist and bibliophile, was appointed as minister of the "Marktkirche Unser Lieben Frauen". In 1730 he became an associate professor at Halle, where in 1734 he was appointed a full professor of theology. In 1748 he was named as university rector. At the end of his life he translated encyclopedic articles and biographies from English into German.

Baumgarten was a follower of the philosophical teachings of Christian Wolff, and is regarded as a transitional theologian from the Pietism of Philipp Jakob Spener and August Hermann Francke to that of modern rationalism. He was a prodigious writer and published works on exegesis, hermeneutics, dogmatics and history. He was author of the first sixteen volumes of the Allgemeine Welthistorie, which after his death, was continued by his assistant Johann Salomo Semler.