Hermann Adolph Meinders

Hermann Adolph Meinders

Hermann Adolph Meinders (born July 31, 1665 near Halle (Westphalia) , Grafschaft Ravensberg ; † June 17, 1730 in Halle (Westphalia)) was a German lawyer , historian and historian .

Life

Youth and education

Hermann Adolph Meinders was born at Steinhausen Castle (Halle) as the son of Conrad Meinders (* June 6, 1627; † June 8, 1673) and Anna Elsabein Rhode (* 1643; † February 11, 1703) and raised a Catholic. Because of the lack of schools in Westphalia, Meinders received private lessons, including religion and the Latin language. After his father's death, he was sent to a Franciscan monastery in Bielefeld for four years, after which he was taught by Jesuits in Paderborn. At the age of 17 he received the dignity of the Baccalauréat ( equivalent to the Abitur ), a year later he received the spiritual tonsure . In 1685 Meinders began studying law at the Philipps University in Marburg and went to Strasbourg a year later, where he also began studying history. During a one-year study visit to Tübingen , he converted to the Protestant faith in 1686 . After only one year traveled through several stages further suffering to at the local university to put his history studies continued. He continued his studies in the fatherland from 1689.

job

1693 Meinders got a job as court administrator at the Gogericht in Halle and later for the entire Ravensberg office . After the marriage of Franzisca Elisabeth Pott (1696) and the death of his father-in-law, he became rentmaster at the Gogericht in Halle in 1696 . In 1713 he became a gographer at the Ravensberg court in Halle. Friedrich Wilhelm I , King of Prussia, soon appointed him historiographer and judicial advisor . Meinders wrote numerous writings in mostly Latin, including the Monumenta Ravensbergensis , a chronicle of the County of Ravensberg , in 12 volumes in Latin, as well as descriptions of the Westphalian judiciary. Many of his writings were never printed, including poems in Latin. On the orders of Friedrich Wilhelm I, he wrote a treatise on the witch trials of 1714.

Meinders had four children, his wife died in 1729; he died a year later of complications from dropsy .

Web links

• Works by and about Hermann Adolph Meinders  in the German Digital Library
• Moeller, Katrin: Meinders, Hermann Adolph. In: Lexicon for the history of witch persecution , ed. v. Gudrun Gersmann, Katrin Moeller and Jürgen-Michael Schmidt, in: historicum.net: Short biography (2013)
• Family tree of Meinders, Hermann Adolf
• Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz: Publications by Meinders, Hermann Adolf

literature

• Peter Florenz Weddigen: Historical-geographic-statistical description of the Grafschaft Ravensberg in Westphalen , Volume 2, OCLC 165305432 , digitized edition , pp. 168–177.