Gotthard Friedrich Stender

Gotthard Friedrich Stender ( or Ģederts Fridriks Štenders; 27 August 1714 – 17 May 1796), also called Old Stender (Vecais Stenders), was a Baltic German Lutheran pastor who played an outstanding role in Latvia's history of culture. He was the first Latvian grammarian and lexicographer, founder of the Latvian secular literature in the 18th century. In the spirit of Enlightenment, he wrote the first Latvian-German and German-Latvian dictionaries, wrote the first encyclopedia “”, and wrote the first illustrated Latvian alphabet book (1787).

Biography

Gotthard Friedrich Stender was born in in the family of the Lutheran pastor Hermann Konrad Stender. His grandfather was also a pastor in the Selonia region of Duchy of Courland. He got his first education from his father, but later studied in Subate German school where one of his main interests was Latin. From 1736 until 1739, Stender studied theology, rhetoric and ancient languages in universities of Jena and Halle. Upon returning to Courland he worked as a private tutor in Lielbērstele, a teacher in Jelgava and from 1744 a Lutheran pastor in Linde-Birzgale and later Žeimelis parish.

In 1759, together with his family, Stender relocated to Königslutter in Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, where he worked as a rector for a local school, but a few months later after a conflict with a local clergyman, they moved to Copenhagen, where he worked as a geography teacher at a cadet school. There, using an innovative approach he made a globe for King of Denmark Frederik V.