Danzig Notables -- Michael Hanow

Michael Christoph Hanow was born near Neustettin in 1695. His father was a poor country preacher and Michael Christoph became a scholarship student at the Danzig Academy in 1714. He studied in Leipzig beginning in 1718 and two years later earned a masters in law. Although his interests remained broad his entire life -- encompassing law, history and natural science -- his principled interest in natural law and the philosophy of Christian Wolff guided them all. In 1724 he returned to Danzig as a private tutor and in 1727 he became professor of Philosophy at the Danzig Academy, where he also had responsibility for the library. An interest in statistics led him to collect all kinds of local data (weather, trade, marriages, deaths, etc) which he published monthly, then weekly beginning in 1739 in his own periodical Danziger Erfahrungen. He hoped his statistic tables would benefit the locality. After the death of Christian Wolff, Hanow completed and published Wolff's Oeconomica, methodo scientifica pertractata (1755). He died in 1773.