David von Schweinitz

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David von Schweinitz, contemporary copper engraving

David von Schweinitz (born May 28, 1600 in Seifersdorf, Duchy of Liegnitz , (today Rosochata , Lower Silesian Voivodeship ), †  March 27, 1667 in Liegnitz ) was a German administrative lawyer and author of edifying writings.

Life

Schweinitz came from the old Silesian noble family von Schweinitz . As the son of Christoph von Schweinitz, he was born in the family's ancestral palace in Seifersdorf in Silesia. He attended the schools in Schweidnitz (1612) and Liegnitz (1614) as well as the Elisabeth-Gymnasium in Breslau . In 1618 he went to the University of Heidelberg to jurisprudence and political science to study. While still a student, he served as an extraordinary court squire at the Electoral Palatinate court. In 1620 he undertook a cavalier tour , first to Groningen and the following year to Zeeland , France and England .

However, the news of his father's death made him break off the trip and return to Silesia. Here he was appointed court and chamberlain by Duke Georg Rudolf von Liegnitz in 1622 and in 1628 as a princely councilor in the government council. He took on various diplomatic tasks and was appointed governor of the Duchy of Wohlau in 1631 . Two years later, however, he had to seek refuge with the duke and his court because of the war events in Poland and Prussia .

Schweinitz was only able to return to Silesia in 1650. In 1651 he was appointed court judge in the Duchy of Liegnitz . After the death of Duke Georg Rudolf (1653), his three nephews and successors, Georg , Ludwig and Christian , dukes of Liegnitz, Brieg and Wohlau , appointed him to the council in the temporarily united three duchies. As a result of the division of the estate in 1654, Duke Ludwig, who had won the Duchy of Liegnitz by lot, appointed him his councilor and court judge, and in 1657 he was governor. Schweinitz also exercised this office after Ludwig's death under Duke Christian (from 1665) until the end of his life.

He was married twice. The first marriage was childless; from the second, closed in 1629, there were twelve children, of whom one son and six daughters survived their father.

plant

Throughout his life, Schweinitz was an Evangelical Lutheran Christian who was filled with deep piety. At a young age he was close to Jakob Böhme's circle , but despite all the criticism he remained Lutheran and can be seen as a representative of reform orthodoxy, which tried to combine right teaching and right living. He wrote a number of edifying writings, poems, and songs that made a name for him in edifying literature of his day. In particular, his Evangelical Thoughts of Death , a book in the tradition of the Ars moriendi , was a widely read, often published and translated into French and Swedish (by Carl Michael Bellman ) book of edification. Some of his numerous sacred songs found their way into hymn books for a while; including as early as 1645 in the Breslau hymn book My Jesus is mine , O man, you want God's kingdom and to you from the bottom of your heart . Philipp Jacob Spener held him in high regard, called him an expensive tool of God and published his Little Bible again in 1699.

Trivia

Thomas Mann owned his family's hereditary Bible, which “with Mr. David von Schweinitz's historical and moral verses about each chapter of salvation. Font “was equipped. He lets this Bible appear in his novel Doctor Faustus .

Works

Frontispiece of the Hundred Thoughts of Death , 1664
  • Soliloquia de examine conscientiae p. vera poenitentia or good thoughts of trial of conscience or true repentance. 1626
  • Penta-Decas Fidium Cordialium, that is: Sacred Hertzensharffe of five times ten pages / presented to all lovers of sacred music. Danzig 1640
  • The little Bible / That is / Summaries of the H. Bible / So much more historical texts / as the foremost doctrines and admonitions / of any chapter. Put in German verse. Danzig 1647
  • Geneaologia. Derer von Schweinitz / Before the time from Swentze Genennet. Dabey A Kurtzer Discours from the Old and Silesian Nobility: In honor of commemorating his gender and friends: Collected from the old watch customers. Lignitz 1661
  • Psalter of the heart, or spiritually devout prayers over the psalms. 1662
  • Evangelical thoughts of death, that is: Preparation of a Christian life for blessed death, formulated from the Sunday and festival gospels and epistles. Wroclaw 1663
from the second edition also: Hundred death thoughts ...

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quoted from Georg Gottfried Gervinus : History of German Poetry. Volume 3, Leipzig 1872 5 in the Google book search
  2. ↑ Ruprecht Wimmer, Stephan Stachorski: Doctor Faustus. Commentary (=  Thomas Mann. Large commented Frankfurt edition . No. 10.2 ). S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-048338-6 , pp. 194 .
  3. ↑ With regard to Jonathan Leverkühn, the protagonist's father: “On winter evenings, when his inheritance and his own were resting outside in snow, you could see him reading, primarily in an extensive hereditary Bible bound in pressed pigskin and closed with leather clasps was printed around 1700 with the ducal liberation of Braunschweig and included not only the "spirit-rich" prefaces and marginal glosses of D. Martin Luther, but also all sorts of summaries, locos parallelos and each chapter explanatory historical-moral verses by a Mr. David von Schweinitz. "
personal data
SURNAME Schweinitz, David von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author of the Baroque era, Governor of Wohlau
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1600
PLACE OF BIRTH Seifersdorf, Duchy of Liegnitz , today Rosochata , Lower Silesian Voivodeship
DATE OF DEATH March 27, 1667
Place of death Liegnitz