Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer

Friedrich Philipp Immanuel Niethammer (March 6, 1766 – April 1, 1848) was a German theologian, religious philosopher and Lutheran educational reformer who was a native of Württemberg.

He received instruction at the Maulbronn monastery, and in 1784 became a student at Tübinger Stift, where he met Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854). In 1790 he moved to Jena, where he studied Kantian philosophy under Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757–1823). Subsequently, he became an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Jena, where he remained until 1804. In 1806 he was Protestant Oberschulkommissar (Upper school administrator) of Franconia, and during the following year, became Central Commissioner of Education and a member of the Protestant General Consistory of Bavaria.

In 1797 with Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), Niethammer was co-editor of the Philosophische Journal. In 1798 the journal published Friedrich Karl Forberg's "Entwicklung des Begriffs der Religion" (Development of the Concept of Religion), an essay that Fichte prefaced with "Über den Grund unsers Glaubens an eine göttliche Weltregierung" (Grounds of our belief in a divine government of the universe). Reaction to the article included accusations of atheism, sparking the so-called 1798–99 Atheismusstreit (Atheism Dispute), an event that eventually led to Fichte's 1799 departure from Jena.

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