author
Johann Jakob Hottinger
1783–1860
A Zurich historian and writer, he helped bring Swiss history to a wider public through lively works on the Reformation, the Swiss Confederation, and the city of Zurich. Trained in theology but remembered for history, he spent much of his career teaching and writing in his native city.
1 Audiobook
The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli
by Johann Jakob Hottinger
About the author
Born in Zurich on May 18, 1783, he studied theology at the Carolinum and was ordained in 1804. Afterward he taught at a girls’ school and at an art school in Zurich, showing the broad educational interests that shaped his later work as a historian.
His reputation rests on books about Swiss history and Protestant reformers, especially Ulrich Zwingli. He also continued Johann von Müller’s history of the Swiss Confederation and wrote about old and new Zurich, helping preserve local and national history in an accessible way.
Later in life he became associated with the University of Zurich as a professor of history. He died in Zurich on May 17, 1860, just one day before his seventy-seventh birthday.