Johann August Wilhelm Neander

1789-1850. German Protestant church historian. Born David Mendel, he changed his name after his conversion to Christianity in 1806. He studied under Schleiermacher and afterward was professor of church history at Berlin for nearly four decades (from 1813), where he was a determined opponent of the rationalistic views of F.C. Baur,* D.F. Strauss,* and others. He is generally regarded as the founder of modern Protestant historiography. His two-volumed Geschichte der Pflanzung und Leitung der christlichen Kirche durch die Apostle (1832-33; ET of 2nd ed., History of the Planting and Training of the Christian Church by the Apostles, 2 vols., 1887-88) was a model for subsequent histories of the apostolic age. He authored many church-historical monographs, including works on Julian the Apostate (1812), Bernard of Clairvaux (1813), Gnosticism (1818), Chrysostom (1822), and Tertullian (1824). His multivolumed church history (6 vols., 1826-52) concentrated on personalities rather than institutions and set the tone for subsequent evangelical historical work (e.g., P. Schaff).