John Christian Jacobi

John Christian Jacobi, also Johann Christian Jacobi, (1670-1750) was a German-born translator and dealer in religious books, particularly those connected with Halle Pietism. He served as keeper of the Royal German Chapel, St James's Palace from 1714 until his death.

In the 1680s Jacobi attended the University of Halle, one of the main centres of Lutheranism, where the leading Pietist August Hermann Francke set up various educational institutions. While at Halle, he came into contact with English students; and in 1708 he moved to England to start work as a translator and bookseller in London, opening a bookshop near Somerset House in the Strand, London in 1709. He specialised in religious tracts, using his contacts with Francke in Halle and John Downing of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in London. Known as the "German bookseller on the Strand", his bookshop imported German bibles, prayer books and hymnals for the German Lutheran community in London, whose activities centred around the Lutheran chapel of St Mary in Savoy. (Heinrich Eler in Halle was one of his main suppliers.) He produced several English translations including Estrid: An Account of a Swedish Maid, who hath Lived Six Years without Food (1711).

In 1712 Jacobi was already married; the baptism of his son John Owen with Mary Magdalen Jacobi was recorded in June 1712 at St Paul's, Covent Garden. Jacobi's bookshop moved to Southampton Row on the Strand in the same year. In 1714 he was appointed "chapel-keeper" (or verger) of the Royal German Chapel, St James's Palace, which provided Lutheran services for the Hanoverian court. The first chaplain there was Francke's main associate in England, Anthony William Boehm, a close friend of Jacobi. In 1717 he moved his business further along the Strand to the less expensive Exeter Exchange, which housed a number of foreign language bookshops. Although Jacobi had tried to diversify to serve a French readership, he stopped selling books by 1719. His German bookshop was the first of its kind in England and it was 30 years before another one opened in London.

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