Johann Jakob Pfeiffer

Johann Jakob Pfeiffer (6 October 1740 – 26 November 1791) was a German evangelical theologian, as well as a professor, and later, dean, at the University of Marburg. Life and career Pfeiffer was the son of Kassel master dyer, Hieronymus Pfeiffer (30 December 1714 – 3 July 1774) and his wife Anne Elisabeth (née Schaumberg; 15 March 1718 – 23 March 1779). He was educated in Kassel's preparatory schools, and in 1755 he enrolled at the Collegium Carolinum. There, he studied under Johann Gottlieb Stegmann and Justus Heinrich Wetzel. In 1757, Pfeiffer began his studies at the University of Marburg. At university, he studied theology, mathematics, logic, and metaphysics. By 1760 he was attending the University of Göttingen and continuing his education in Theology under Samuel Christian Hollmann, Johann David Michaelis and Christian Wilhelm Franz Walch. By the next year, he had returned to his home as a preaching candidate, and in 1761 he was ordained and given a position as a preacher in Cassel. When he wasn’t actively preaching, he was known to continue his own theological education, as well as instruct his parishioners and neighbors in both Old and New Testament exegesis. In 1765, Pfeiffer was assigned to a preaching position in Langenschwalbach. By his own testimony, taken many years later, the years he spent in Langenschwalbach were the happiest of his life. He returned to Cassel in 1769 to take up the position of preacher at Karlskirche, the central church of the Oberneustadt community.