et copiose,” in fact with a fulness of learning, a force of logic and
a minuteness of detail that had never before been approached.
The Meditationes sacrae (1606), a work expressly devoted to the
uses of Christian edification, has been frequently reprinted in Latin
and has been translated into most of the European languages,
including Greek. The English translation by R. Winterton (1631)
has passed through at least nineteen editions. There is also an
edition by W. Papillon in English blank verse (1801). His life,
Vita Joh. Gerhardi, was published by E. R. Fischer in 1723, and by
C. J. Böttcher, Das Leben Dr Johann Gerhards, in 1858. See also
W. Gass, Geschichte der protestantischen Dogmatik (1854–1867), and
the article in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie.
GERHARDT, CHARLES FRÉDÉRIC (1816–1856), French chemist, was born at Strassburg on the 21st of August 1816. After attending the gymnasium at Strassburg and the polytechnic at Karlsruhe, he was sent to the school of commerce at Leipzig, where he studied chemistry under Otto Erdmann. Returning home in 1834 he entered his father’s white lead factory, but soon found that business was not to his liking, and after a sharp disagreement with his father enlisted in a cavalry regiment. In a few months military life became equally distasteful, and he purchased his discharge with the assistance of Liebig, with whom, after a short interval at Dresden, he went to study at Giessen in 1836. But his stay at Giessen was also short, and in 1837 he re-entered the factory. Again, however, he quarrelled with his father, and in 1838 went to Paris with introductions from Liebig. There he attended Jean Baptiste Dumas’ lectures and worked with Auguste Cahours (1813–1891) on essential oils, especially cumin, in Michel Eugéne Chevreul’s laboratory, while he earned a precarious living by teaching and making translations of some of Liebig’s writings. In 1841, by the influence of Dumas, he was charged with the duties of the chair of chemistry at the Montpellier faculty of sciences, becoming titular professor in 1844. In 1842 he annoyed his friends in Paris by the matter and manner of a paper on the classification of organic compounds, and in 1845 he and his opinions were the subject of an attack by Liebig, unjustifiable in its personalities but not altogether surprising in view of his wayward disregard of his patron’s advice. The two were reconciled in 1850, but his faculty for disagreeing with his friends did not make it easier for him to get another appointment after resigning the chair at Montpellier in 1851, especially as he was unwilling to go into the provinces. He obtained leave of absence from Montpellier in 1848 and from that year till 1855 resided in Paris. During that period he established an “École de chimie pratique” of which he had great hopes; but these were disappointed, and in 1855, after refusing the offer of a chair of chemistry at the new Zürich Polytechnic in 1854, he accepted the professorships of chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences and the École Polytechnique at Strassburg, where he died on the 19th of August in the following year. Although Gerhardt did some noteworthy experimental work—for instance, his preparation of acid anhydrides in 1852—his contributions to chemistry consist not so much in the discovery of new facts as in the introduction of new ideas that vitalized and organized an inert accumulation of old facts. In particular, with his fellow-worker Auguste Laurent (1807–1853), he did much to reform the methods of chemical formulation by insisting on the distinction between atoms, molecules and equivalents; and in his unitary system, directly opposed to the dualistic doctrines of Berzelius, he combined Dumas’ substitution theory with the old radicle theory and greatly extended the notion of types of structure. His chief works were Précis de chimie organique (1844–1845), and Traité de chimie organique (1853–1856).
See Charles Gerhardt, sa vie, son œuvre, sa correspondance, by his son, Charles Gerhardt, and E. Grimaux (Paris, 1900).
GERHARDT, PAUL (c. 1606–1676), German hymn-writer,
was born of a good middle-class family at Gräfenhainichen, a
small town on the railway between Halle and Wittenberg, in
1606 or 1607—some authorities, indeed, give the date March 12,
1607, but neither the year nor the day is accurately known.
His education appears to have been retarded by the troubles
of the period, the Thirty Years’ War having begun about the
time he reached his twelfth year. After completing his studies
for the church he is known to have lived for some years at
Berlin as tutor in the family of an advocate named Berthold,
whose daughter he subsequently married, on receiving his first
ecclesiastical appointment at Mittelwald (a small town in the
neighbourhood of Berlin) in 1651. In 1657 he accepted an
invitation as “diaconus” to the Nicolaikirche of Berlin; but,
in consequence of his uncompromising Lutheranism in refusing
to accept the elector Frederick William’s “syncretistic” edict
of 1664, he was deprived in 1666. Though absolved from
submission and restored to office early in the following year, on
the petition of the citizens, his conscience did not allow him to
retain a post which, as it appeared to him, could only be held on
condition of at least a tacit repudiation of the Formula Concordiae,
and for upwards of a year he lived in Berlin without fixed employment.
In 1668 he was appointed archdeacon of Lübben in the
duchy of Saxe-Merseburg, where, after a somewhat sombre
ministry of eight years, he died on the 7th of June 1676. Gerhardt
is the greatest hymn-writer of Germany, if not indeed of Europe.
Many of his best-known hymns were originally published in
various church hymn-books, as for example in that for Brandenburg,
which appeared in 1658; others first saw the light in
Johann Crüger’s Geistliche Kirchenmelodien (1649) and Praxis
pietatis melica (1656). The first complete set of them is the
Geistliche Andachten, published in 1666–1667 by Ebeling, music
director in Berlin. No hymn by Gerhardt of a later date than
1667 is known to exist.
The life of Gerhardt has been written by Roth (1829), by Langbecker (1841), by Schultz (1842), by Wildenhahn (1845) and by Bachmann (1863); also by Kraft in Ersch u. Gruber’s Allg. Encycl. (1855). The best modern edition of the hymns, published by Wackernagel in 1843, has often been reprinted. There is an English translation by Kelly (Paul Gerhardt’s Spiritual Songs, 1867).
GÉRICAULT, JEAN LOUIS ANDRÉ THÉODORE (1791–1824),
French painter, the leader of the French realistic school, was
born at Rouen in 1791. In 1808 he entered the studio of Charles
Vernet, from which, in 1810, he passed to that of Guérin, whom
he drove to despair by his passion for Rubens, and by the unorthodox
manner in which he persisted in interpreting nature.
At the Salon of 1812 Géricault attracted attention by his
“Officier de Chasseurs à Cheval” (Louvre), a work in which he personified
the cavalry in its hour of triumph, and turned to account the
solid training received from Guérin in rendering a picturesque
point of view which was in itself a protest against the cherished
convictions of the pseudo-classical school. Two years later
(1814) he re-exhibited this work accompanied with the reverse
picture “Cuirassier blessé” (Louvre), and in both subjects
called attention to the interest of contemporary aspects of life,
treated neglected types of living form, and exhibited that
mastery of and delight in the horse which was a feature of his
character. Disconcerted by the tempest of contradictory
opinion which arose over these two pictures, Géricault gave way
to his enthusiasm for horses and soldiers, and enrolled himself
in the mousquetaires. During the Hundred Days he followed
the king to Bethune, but, on his regiment being disbanded,
eagerly returned to his profession, left France for Italy in 1816,
and at Rome nobly illustrated his favourite animal by his great
painting “Course des Chevaux Libres.” Returning to Paris,
Géricault exhibited at the Salon of 1819 the “Radeau de la
Méduse” (Louvre), a subject which not only enabled him to
prove his zealous and scientific study of the human form, but
contained those elements of the heroic and pathetic, as existing
in situations of modern life, to which he had appealed in his
earliest productions. Easily depressed or elated, Géricault
took to heart the hostility which this work excited, and passed
nearly two years in London, where the “Radeau” was exhibited
with success, and where he executed many series of admirable
lithographs now rare. At the close of 1822 he was again in Paris,
and produced a great quantity of projects for vast compositions,
models in wax, and a horse écorché, as preliminary to the production
of an equestrian statue. His health was now completely
undermined by various kinds of excess, and on the 26th of
January 1824 he died, at the age of thirty-three.
Géricault’s biography, accompanied by a catalogue raisonné of his works, was published by M. C. Clément in 1868.
