REIMARUS, Hermann Samuel. - Deist, born at Hamburg on 22 Dec. 1694, died there on 1 Mar. 1768.
Rector at Wismar in 1723, professor of Oriental languages at the Hamburg Gymnasium from 1727 until his death. He wrote: *Abhandlungen von den Vormehnten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion* (Hamburg 1775), and above all: *Apologie oder Schutzeschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes*, which he did not publish, considering it beyond the mentality of his time. After R.'s death, Lessing published important fragments of it under the title: *Fragmente des Wolfenbüttelschen Ungenannten* (1774–78), dealing with tolerance toward deists; the bad habit of disparaging reason from the pulpit; the impossibility of admitting the passage of the Red Sea by the Israelites; the impossibility of finding a religion in the Old Testament; the contradictions in the accounts of Christ’s Resurrection; and the purpose of Jesus and His disciples. According to R., Jesus did not preach anything other than the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven; the miracles were invented by the disciples of the Nazarene, who had died despairing on the Cross. R.’s ideas provoked heated discussions in Germany.