Basil's ax

Basilius Axt (* 1486 in Frankfurt (Oder) , † March 9, 1558 in Koenigsberg ) was a German medic.

Life

Axt studied at the University of Frankfurt (Oder) from 1506 - without paying enrollment fees - and switched to the University of Wittenberg on May 21, 1520 . In Wittenberg he found access to the medical faculty as a baccalaureate in medicine on June 3, 1521 and, due to his lack of means, worked as a pharmacist with Lucas Cranach the Elder . On December 9 In 1523 he acquired under Augustin Schurff the licentiate in medicine and has been in the Senate of the medical faculty on 5 December 1524th Thereupon Philipp Melanchthon recommended him on December 25, 1524 as city doctor for Nuremberg and Martin Luther advocated him in 1525 for a chair in surgery at the Wittenberg University.

Since these mediations failed, Axt found a job with the Torgau council for 30 guilders as a doctor pharmacist in 1525 . At the end of his academic career he received his doctorate in medicine on July 22, 1527 in Wittenberg . After falling out with the pharmacist in Torgau, he left his position in 1528 and worked temporarily in Gotha . In August 1531 he became the personal physician of Duke Albrecht I of Brandenburg-Ansbach in Königsberg . The duke supported the move with 20 guilders, financed the establishment of a chemical laboratory in 1542 and made a trip to Germany with an ax in 1545, which also accompanied him on trips to Poland .

Axt's body was buried in the Löbenicht church. There an epitaph was erected for him, which was provided with a poem by Mathias Stojus (1526–1583).

Axt had married Ave von Schönfeld († 1541) in 1524 , whom Martin Luther, among others, had already had an eye on. She was one of the nuns who had fled the Nimbschen monastery with Katharina von Bora , and in this marriage gave birth to three sons and a daughter. The daughter married Stanislaus Rapagelanus in 1544 . His son, the physician Theobald Axt (* around 1520 in Wittenberg, † 1585 in Elbing) is also known. Axt married again in 1542, and his second wife died of the plague in 1549 .

literature

• Ernst Bahr, Gerd Brausch: Old Prussian Biography , Vol. 1, p. 24, Marburg, 1989
• Thomas Anselmino: Medicine and Pharmacy at the Court of Duke Albrechts of Prussia (1490–1568) , Heidelberg 2003
• Oskar Erhardt: Dr. Laurentius Wilde, Duke Albrecht's personal physician, and the beginnings of medical science in Prussia , Berlin 1905
• Martin Granzin: Die Torgauer Stadtärzte in the 16th Century , in: Ekkehard , Vol. 13 (1937), H. 6, P. 229
• Heinz Scheible, Corinna Schneider: Melanchthon's correspondence , Volume 11: People A – E, p. 102
• Hans ax: Dr. Basilius Axt, a friend of Martin Luther , in: Mitteilungen des Roland , vol. 3 (1918)
• Hans Theodor Koch: The Wittenberg Medical Faculty (1502–1652) - A biobibliographical overview , in: Stefan Oehmig: Medicine and social affairs in Central Germany during the Reformation , Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 978-3-374-02437-7