Christian Gottfried Schütz (19 May 1747 – 7 May 1832) was a German classical scholar and humanist, known for his contributions in philosophy and philology, and for his work as an academic and literary editor and publisher.
Shortly after his birth his father was appointed to a senior preaching position in nearby Aschersleben, to where the family relocated, and it was here that the boy received his early schooling.
[3] Later he attended the Latin orphanage school in Halle before moving on in 1765 to the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg where he was taught Theology by Johann Jakob Semler,[4] who talent spotted him and set him on his life's career as an academic.
[3] He moved in 1779, taking a post as Professor of "Poetry and eloquence" ("Poesie und Beredsamkeit") at Jena University, where he would play a key role in communicating in the German heartland and, on occasion defending, the new philosophical perspectives of Immanuel Kant.
[5] With Christoph Martin Wieland and Friedrich Justin Bertuch, in 1785 Schütz founded the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (daily literary journal)[1] which could boast more than 2,000 subscribers within two years of its launch and continued to be produced, latterly from Halle, till 1849.
He also won for Kant (whose home town of Königsberg was even then considered by some to be somewhat peripheral, intellectually as geographically, to the German cultural heartland) the right to make his own contributions in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, and entered into discussions with him on the influential "Kritik der reinen Vernunft" "(Critique of Pure Reason)" (1781).