He was born in Chur, Switzerland, and was educated at the gymnasium of Stuttgart, and at the universities of Tübingen, Halle and Berlin. He then traveled through Italy and Sicily as tutor to Baron Krischer. In 1842 he was Privatdozent in the University of Berlin, and in 1843 he was called to become professor of church history and Biblical literature in the German Reformed Theological Seminary of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, then the only seminary of that church in America. Material adapted from the Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh Edition), now in the public domain.