Heinrich Ewald

Georg Heinrich August Ewald (16 November 1803 – 4 May 1875) was a German orientalist, Protestant theologian, and Biblical exegete.

But in the spring of 1824 he was recalled to Göttingen as theological tutor (German: Repetent), and in 1827 (the year of Eichhorn's death) he became professor extraordinarius in philosophy and lecturer in Old Testament exegesis.

[4]: 206  In 1831 Heinrich Ewald was promoted to professor ordinarius in philosophy; in 1833 he became a member of the Royal Scientific Society, and in 1835, after Tychsen's death, he entered the faculty of theology, taking the chair of Oriental languages.

In 1837, on 18 November, along with six of his colleagues he signed a formal protest against the action of King Ernst August in abolishing the liberal constitution of 1833, which had been granted to the House of Hanover by his predecessor William IV.

Early in 1838 Ewald received a call to Tübingen, and there for upwards of ten years he held a chair as professor ordinarius, first in philosophy and afterwards, from 1841, in theology.

In 1847, "the great shipwreck-year in Germany," as he has called it, he was invited back to Göttingen on honourable terms—the liberal constitution having been restored.

In June 1874 he was found guilty of a libel on Otto von Bismarck, whom he had compared to Frederick the Great in "his unrighteous war with Austria and his ruination of religion and morality," to Napoleon III in his way of "picking out the best time possible for robbery and plunder."

[3] In his public life Ewald displayed characteristics such as simplicity and sincerity, moral earnestness, independence, absolute fearlessness.

His disciples were not all of one school, but many eminent scholars who apparently have been untouched by his influence have in fact developed some of the many ideas which he suggested.

He was the chief promoter of the Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, begun in 1837; and he frequently contributed on various subjects to the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen.