1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hottinger, Johann Heinrich

HOTTINGER, JOHANN HEINRICH (1620–1667), Swiss philologist and theologian, was born at Zürich on the 10th of March 1620. He studied at Geneva, Groningen and Leiden, and after visiting France and England was in 1642 appointed professor of church history in his native town. The chair of Hebrew at the Carolinum was added in 1643, and in 1653 he was appointed professor ordinarius of logic, rhetoric and theology. He gained such a reputation as an Oriental scholar that the elector palatine in 1655 appointed him professor of Oriental languages and biblical criticism at Heidelberg. In 1661, however, he returned to Zürich, where in 1662 he was chosen principal of the university. In 1667 he accepted an invitation to succeed Johann Hoornbeck (1617–1666) as professor in the university of Leiden, but he was drowned with three of his children by the upsetting of a boat while crossing the river Limmat. His chief works are Historia ecclesiastica Nov. Test. (1651–1667); Thesaurus philologicus seu clavis scripturae (1649; 3rd ed. 1698); Etymologicon orientale, sive lexicon harmonicum heptaglotton (1661). He also wrote a Hebrew and an Aramaic grammar.

His son, Johann Jakob Hottinger (1652–1735), who became professor of theology at Zürich in 1698, was the author of a work against Roman Catholicism, Helvetische Kirchengeschichte (4 vols., 1698–1729); and his grandson, Johann Heinrich Hottinger (1681–1750), who in 1721 was appointed professor of theology at Heidelberg, wrote a work on dogmatics, Typus doctrinae christianae (1714).