REIMARUS, HERMANN SAMUEL. - Deist, b. at Hamburg on 22 Dec. 1694, d. there on 1 March 1768.
Rector at Wismar in 1723, professor of Oriental languages at the Gymnasium of Hamburg from 1727 until his death. He wrote: Abhandlungen von den Vernehmsten Wahrheiten der natürlichen Religion (Hamburg 1775), and above all: Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes, which he did not publish, considering it a work beyond the mentality of his time. After R.’s death, Lessing published important fragments of it under the title: Fragmente des Wollenbüttelschen Ungenannten (1774–78), dealing with tolerance toward deists; the bad habit of discrediting reason from the pulpit; the impossibility of admitting the Israelites’ crossing of the Red Sea; 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 preached only 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 aroused heated discussions in Germany.