Johann Ernst Fabri was a German

Germans

The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 geographer

Geographer

A geographer is a scholar whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society.Although geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography...

 and statistician

Statistician

A statistician is someone who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. The core of that work is to measure, interpret, and describe the world and human activity patterns within it...

.

In 1776 he began his studies of theology

Theology

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

 at the University of Halle, but his focus soon turned to geography and history. Later he served as a Privat-docent at the University of Göttingen, where he was influenced by distinguished scholars that included Johann Christoph Gatterer

Johann Christoph Gatterer

Johann Christoph Gatterer was a German historian who was a native of Lichtenau, Bavaria. He was the father of cameralist Christoph Wilhelm Jacob Gatterer and poet Magdalena Philippine Engelhard ....

, August Ludwig von Schlözer

August Ludwig von Schlözer

August Ludwig von Schlözer was a German historian who laid foundations for the critical study of Russian history.-Early career:...

 and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach was a German physician, physiologist and anthropologist, one of the first to explore the study of mankind as an aspect of natural history, whose teachings in comparative anatomy were applied to classification of what he called human races, of which he determined...

.

In 1786 he moved to Jena

Jena

Jena is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. It has a population of approx. 103,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.-History:Jena was first mentioned in an 1182 document...

 as an associate professor of geography

Geography

Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

 and statistics

Statistics

Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

, and in 1794 became a professor at the University of Erlangen. For much of his career Fabri received no pay for his lectures, only in 1815 did he begin to receive a fixed salary.

Selected publications

• Elementargeographie (Elementary Geography), Halle 1780–90, 4 volumes
• Handbuch der neuesten Geographie für Akademien und Gymnasien (Textbook of New Geography for Academics and Gymnasium), Halle 1784–85
• Verzeichniss von aeltern und neuern Land- und Reisebeschreibungen, 1784 (with Gottlieb Heinrich Stuck)
• Abriß der Geographie für Schulen, (Outline of Geography), 1785
• Geographisches Magazin (Geographic Magazine), Dessau und Leipzig 1783–85, 4 volumes
• Neues geographisches Magazin (New Geographic Magazine), 1785–87
• Geographie für alle Stände (Geography for all Status Groups), 1786–1808, 5 volumes
• Magazin für die Geographie (Magazine for Geography), Nürnberg 1797, 3 volumes
• Abriß der natürlichen Erdkunde (Outline of Natural Geography), 1800
• Encyklopädie der historischen Hauptwissenschaften und Hülfsdoctrinen etc., 1808