KISTEMAKER, JOHANN HYAZINTH. — Professor of classical languages at the Gymnasium and later also at the University of Münster (Westphalia), an exegete of profoundly Catholic spirit, born at Nordhausen (Hannover) on 15 Aug. 1754, died at Münster on 2 March 1834. Ordained a priest in 1777, in 1779 he became professor at the Gymnasium of Münster through the intervention of F. F. W. von Fürstenberg, who was vicar general and the spiritual and temporal head of the diocese; from 1785 he was professor of philology, and from 1795 also of exegesis at the University. In 1794 he was appointed director of the Gymnasium, and in 1798 examinator prosynodalis; from 1816 to 1818 he was a member of the Consistory for the new province of Westphalia; in 1823 he became a cathedral canon.
For many years K., together with B. Overberg, a pedagogue of great renown, Kaspar Max and Klemens August von Droste zu Vischering, Friedrich Leopold, Count of Stolberg, and other illustrious men, was a highly esteemed member of the celebrated circle surrounding Amalia, Princess of Gallitzin, a German noblewoman (d. in 1806). This circle was the most serious and tranquil association of distinguished Catholic figures in Germany at that time. Remaining director of the Gymnasium until 1819, he played a major role in the reform of higher educational institutions inaugurated by Fürstenberg. As an exegete, with as much firmness as modesty, he opposed the van Ess translation of the New Testament, later placed on the Index (1821), and resisted with equal success the rationalistic tendencies of his colleague at the University, Michael Wecklein, professor of the Old Testament. In good health until 1825, he suffered from serious illnesses during the last ten years of his life.
Works: Greek, Latin, and German schoolbooks (1787–1801); Notae in Thucydidem (1790); *Kritik der griechischen,
lateinischen und deutschen Sprachen (1793, a work that had been honorably mentioned in a competition at Mannheim); Prüfung der von Ess'schen Übersetzung des Neuen Testamentes (1816); Die hl. Evangelien übersetzt und erklärt (4 vols., 1818–20); Die hl. Schriften des Neuen Test. übers. und evtl. (7 vols., 1818–23; 3rd ed. 1845); Geschichte der Apostel übers. mit Anmerkungen (1821); Sondschreiben der Apostel übers. und evtl. nebst der Apokalypse (2 vols., 1822 ff.); Bibbia sacra Vulgatae editionis iuxta exemplar Vaticanum (3 vols., 1823 ff.); Die hl. Schrift des Neuen Test. übers. ohne Anmerk. zum Gebrauch für Kirche und Schule* (1825; 4th ed. 1844; the pocket edition of 1853, which was very widely circulated, largely supplanted that of van Ess).