Johann Cristoph Brotze was born on 12 September 1742, in G\u00f6rlitz, a small town in Silesia,\ninto the family of a salt weigher. He was educated at the Universities of G\u00f6rlitz, Leipzig, and\nWittenberg, where he studied Religious Studies and Linguistics, and obtained a Doctor of\nPhilosophy degree at Wittenberg. Brotze lived most of his life, 46 years in fact, in Riga,\nworking as an educator and local history researcher. Brotze\u2019s life\u2019s work was a collection of\ncultural history texts and manuscripts \u2013 3,130 pages - containing hundreds of drawings and\ntexts about people, towns, castles, buildings, and landscapes of Latvia and Estonia. The title\nof the German-language work is Sammlung verschiedener Liefl\u00e4ndischer Monumente,\nProspecte, M\u00fcnzen, Wappen, etc. (Collection of various Livonian monuments, objects, coins,\ncoats of arms, etc) and it is held in the Latvian Academic Library in Riga. Brotze\nenthusiastically collected all the historical and contemporary information he could get his\nhands on, sketching with photographic precision and annotating all the material available to\nhim. For his magnum opus, Brotze collaborated with a wide range of local historians, pastors,\nliterati, and intellectuals. One of his most important assistants in Estonia was the pastor\nEduard Philipp K\u00f6rber (1770-1850), who contributed more than 80 drawings to the\ncollection, including a view from the north of the ruins of Viljandi\u2019s old fortress gate. Johann\nCristoph Brotze died in Riga, in August 1823.<\/p>\n
According to August Wilhelm Hupel (1737-1819), after the great fire of 1765, there were\nonly 46 wooden buildings and two stone houses left in Viljandi in 1774. By order of the\nGovernor-General, the new houses had to be built with stone roofs, and the thatched and\nwooden roofs also had to be replaced with stone. This requirement changed the general\nappearance of the town, as can be seen in the painting View of Viljandi (1800), which features\nSt. John\u2019s Church and the surrounding buildings and gardens. The manor house on the left\nwas situated outside the town borders. At that time, the town had a population of 600\u2013700\n(Vallikivi, 2020).<\/p>\n