Caspar Schütz

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Caspar Schütz (* around 1540 in Eisleben ; † September 16, 1594 in Danzig ) was a Prussian historian .

As a professor of poetics at the University of Königsberg (1562 to 1565) he developed an interest in the history of Prussia . He became the town clerk of Danzig and collected old writings. His main work was published in Zerbst in 1592 , the Historia Rerum Prussicarum or "a true description of the Prussian region in 10 books from the beginning to the year 1525" . Duke Albrecht von Brandenburg had commissioned Lucas David to write a Prussian chronicle of the country, but he was dissatisfied with the slow working method. He therefore tried to win Caspar Schütz for this task. He should write a kind of ultimate Prussian chronicle; The Duke's efforts to acquire source texts for the Ducal Palace Library in Königsberg resulted primarily in this large-scale project. In December 1562 Schütz was appointed professor of poetics at the Königsberg University . While still in this position, in 1563, Schütz published his first book on Prussian history: Prussiae liber primus sermone ligato - a Latin poem. In 1564 he left Königsberg and took over the post of the lowest town clerk in Danzig. He continued his work on the Prussian Chronicle, even if the Königsberg government refused him access to the manuscript of Lucas David.

After the first printing of the Historia Rerum Prussicarum book in Latin, David Chytraeus printed the expanded Historia Rerum Prussicarum by Caspar Schütz in German in 1599.

Other historians also continued his work, for example Gottfried Lengnich in the 1720s .

literature

  • U. Arnold: Studies on Prussian Historiography of the 16th Century . Bonn 1967 (diss.)
  • Karl Lohmeyer :  Schütz, Kaspar . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 33, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1891, p. 132 f.
  • A. Mentzel-Reuters: From the order chronicle to the national history. The development of the old Prussian regional historiography in the 16th century , in: In: Cultural history of East Prussia in the early modern times. Edited by Klaus Garber and Manfred Komorowski. Tübingen 2001 (early modern times; 56), pp. 581–637
  • E. Maschke: The older historiography of Prussia in: Scriptores rerum Prussicarum 6 (1968), 1-21
  • Max Toeppen : History of Prussian Historiography by P. v. Dusburg except for K. Schütz, or: Documentation and criticism of the printed and unprinted chronicles on the history of Prussia under the rule of the German Order . Berlin 1853 (Repr. Walluf near Wiesbaden 1973).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Max Pollux Toeppen, Petrus, Kaspar Schütz, Max Töppen: History of Prussian Historiography , [1]
personal data
SURNAME Schütz, Caspar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian historian
DATE OF BIRTH around 1540
PLACE OF BIRTH Eisleben
DATE OF DEATH September 16, 1594
Place of death Danzig