Johan Radermacher the Elder

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Johan Radermacher, copperplate engraving

Johan Radermacher the Elder (humanist name: Joannes Rotarius ; born March 13, 1538 in Aachen , † February 15, 1617 in Middelburg , Netherlands ) was a merchant and humanist who came from a Protestant patrician family . He was the second son of the copper master Wilhelm Radermacher (* 1501) and his wife Maria Houppers (1510–1555).

Life

In 1554, at the age of 16, Radermacher was apprenticed to the merchant and banker Gillis Hooftman (Aegidius Hauptmann; 1521–1581) , who lived in Antwerp and came from Eupen . Through this he got to know the geographer and cartographer Abraham Ortelius , with whom a lifelong friendship developed. Radermacher quickly became a successful business partner for Hooftman and sold around 200 Hebrew Bibles to the Jewish community in Morocco on his behalf around 1566 , with a not inconsiderable profit for Radermacher himself. As a result of this success, Hooftman was able to order another 400 to 500 Hebrew Bibles from the Antwerp printer Christoffel Plantijn .

In 1567, Radermacher moved to London as the official representative of the Hooftman company and received considerable tax privileges. In London he became a member of the Italian-Calvinist community, to which numerous well-known Dutch people belonged at the time. Three years later he met his wife Johanna Racket (Racquet; 1547–1600), a niece of Gillis Hooftman, and married her. The couple had 12 children, including Daniel Radermacher (1588–1637), who became the progenitor of the ennobled Dutch lords of Nieuwerkerke , including the Freemason Grand Master Johan Radermacher the Younger and his son, the Dutch botanist Jacob Cornelis Mattheus Radermacher , counting.

Johan Radermacher the Elder moved to Antwerp again in 1580 , but had to leave the city in 1585 because of persistent persecutors and went back to his hometown Aachen. There he became a member of the city council in 1989 and took over the office of city wine master in 1598. A year later he was punished with the imperial ban as part of the Aachen religious unrest and banished from the city. He finally settled in Middelburg on the Walcheren peninsula in the province of Zeeland , where he died in 1617. Radermacher was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk next to his wife, who had died in 1600.

Coat of arms of the Johan Radermacher family

Radermacher was an advocate of his Protestant faith and earned an excellent reputation among scholars of his time with his Latin writings. Among other things, Radermacher began to write a Dutch grammar in 1568, but he never finished or published it. It was not until years after his death in 1634 that the true extent of Johan Radermacher's writings became apparent in an auction in the house of his son Steven (* 1575): in addition to the numerous works in Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, English and German were in the auction catalog also listed over 150 titles in Dutch.

Radermacher opted for the motto “mediocritas” (moderate measure, middle path), which was placed on a pole and placed between two wheels and incorporated into the later family coat of arms. His portrait appeared in 1781 as a copper engraving in volume 2 of the Adelyk en aanzienelyk Wapen-boek van de zeven Provincien , published by Abraham Ferwerda.

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personal data
SURNAME Radermacher, Johan the Elder
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Businessman and humanist
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1538
PLACE OF BIRTH Aachen
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1617
Place of death Middelburg , Netherlands