The Correspondent

Johann Philipp Murray’s paternal grandfather left Scotland for Germany in the later seventeenth century. His father, Andreas Murray, was born near Memel, in East Prussia. After theological studies at Königsberg and Jena, he became a pastor in Schleswig-Holstein in 1725. He married Leva Catharina Stricker, who gave birth to Johann Philipp on 30 July 1726. Some time after the death of his wife, in 1731, Andreas Murray moved to Stockholm, becoming an assistant pastor of its German church in 1734. He married his second wife, Johanna Christiana Golitz, the daughter of that congregation’s pastor. He succeeded to the pastor’s post in 1738, after the death of his father-in-law. His second wife eventually presented Johann Philipp with three half brothers, each of whom was to have a notable career.

Johann Philipp (originally Johan Filip) matriculated at Königsberg in 1742 and at Uppsala in 1746. In October of 1747 he matriculated at Göttingen as a theology student. On 1 August 1748, during King George II’s visit to Göttingen, he was awarded the master’s degree. From 1750 until 1762 he was a secretary of the Deutsche Gesellschaft. In the philosophical faculty he was an extraordinary professor from 1755 until 1762, when he was promoted to Ordinarius, in conjunction with his appointment as secretary of the GdW. He lectured on a wide variety of topics, especially in the realms of rhetoric and history.

Murray compiled a modest record of publications.

Several of his eulogies and other occasional pieces that he presented to the Deutsche Gesellschaft over the years appeared in print. His only book-length publications were translations from the Swedish, including the first two volumes of Pehr Kalm’s journals of his travels in North America. In addition, he contributed scores of reviews to the GGA. The subjets of some of these were the original papers that he presented at meetings of the GdW.

In May 1766 Murray married Sophia Dorothea Friedrichs, the daughter of a royal war commisary in Göttingen. The couple had four children. In his correspondence with Haller, Murray mentioned his wife only in his final two surviving letters. By that time her chronic cough had become so alarming that he described the symptoms and attempted treatments and asked Haller to suggest other medicines that might be effective. In his last letter, dated 12 July 1774, Murray wrote that the concoction of “China” and milk that Haller had recommended did not agree with her. She died ten days later.

Murray himself died on 12 January 1776, not quite fifty years old. His final illness and death were detailed in a letter that his brother Johann Andreas, professor of medicine at Göttingen, wrote to Haller six days later. Johann Andreas held that a contributing factor in his death was his protracted worry about his pecuniary situation and the slights that he thought he suffered in Göttingen and in Hanover. He went on to petition the Privy Council in Hanover to assist his brother’s four children, now orphans.

On 16 February the council informed King George III that those minors were living in extreme “Dürftigkeit,” and it therefore sought permission to bestow on each an annual pension of 20 taler until he or she reached the age of twenty.

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After his death Johann Philipp Murray was warmly remembered by various colleagues. At the GdW its secretary, Christian Gottlob Heyne, delivered a Latin eulogy of him on 20 January. At the Deutsche Gesellschaft its senior, Abraham Gotthelf Kästner, gave an “Erinnerung” of him seven days later. The former Göttingen professor Anton Friedrich Büsching followed from Berlin with a sympathetic “Andenken” in his Wöchentliche Nachrichten.