Johann Angelius Werdenhagen

Johann Angelius Werdenhagen, contemporary copper engraving

Johann Angelius (von) Werdenhagen (born August 1, 1581 in Helmstedt , † December 26, 1652 in Ratzeburg ) was a German philosopher, political scientist and diplomat.

Life

Werdenhagen, who comes from a middle-class family, was enrolled at the University of Helmstedt as a child . A university degree of his studies cannot be proven. In 1606 he traveled to the universities of Jena, Altdorf and Tübingen as well as Heidelberg and Strasbourg. In 1607 he became vice principal in Salzwedel . Soon afterwards he went to the University of Leipzig as court master of young noblemen for three years , and in 1612 he was at the University of Giessen . At the same time he was appointed diplomatically by the dukes of Brunswick, for example in Strasbourg in 1611, at the coronation of Emperor Matthias in 1612 , and was sent to Saxony and Denmark.

In 1616 he became professor of ethics in Helmstedt against resistance from the university and faculty . The resistance against his person was based on his religiously founded rejection of humanism . In 1618 he complied and became syndic of the city of Magdeburg , where he got into a dispute with the cathedral chapter about the settlement between the city and the administrator of the archbishopric, Margrave Christian Wilhelm von Brandenburg, which he advocated . He laid down his views in 1622 under the pseudonym Chilobert Jonas . In Magdeburg, he knew how to mediate the unrest of the tipper and wipper era with the angry citizens. In 1626 he entered the service of the administrator and represented him at the Lower Saxony Imperial Circle .

Title De rebuspublicis Hanseaticis

After he was not accepted as a lawyer in the Hanseatic city of Hamburg in 1627 , he retired to the Netherlands to study at the University of Leiden and The Hague until 1632 . His history of the Hanseatic cities De rebuspublicis Hanseaticis earumque nobili confederatione (2nd edition 1641 in Frankfurt am Main with illustrations by Matthäus Merian ) was written in Leiden in 1631 . The work was heavily criticized in particular by his contemporary Hermann Conring . Because of his Christian writings, in which he sympathized with the teachings and knowledge of Jakob Boehme , Lutheran orthodoxy accused him of enthusiasm and even atheism . For the publication of these writings he partly used the pseudonym Angelus Marianus .

In 1632 he became a privy councilor to Archbishop Johann Friedrich of Bremen . After his death in 1634 he returned to the service of the city of Magdeburg and of the Duke August von Braunschweig-Lüneburg . In 1634 he became a privy councilor after the death of Duke Friedrich Ulrich and represented the Duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg diplomatically. In 1637 he became the imperial envoy to the Hanseatic cities with the seat in Lübeck and was raised to the nobility. He died in Ratzeburg while visiting his daughter, who was married to Abraham Keyser for the first time and had just recently been widowed.

Fonts

• Introductio Universalis in omnes Respublicas, Sive Politica Generalis. Amsterdam: Apud Guilielmum Blaeu 1632 ( full text at CAMENA )
• Psychologia vera IBT XL quaestionibus explicata. Amsterdam 1632 ( online ).

literature

• Stefan Brüdermann: Werdenhagen, Johann Angelius von . In: Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Dieter Lent u. a. (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon : 8th to 18th century . Appelhans, Braunschweig 2006, ISBN 3-937664-46-7 , pp. 732f.
• Paul Zimmermann :  Werdenhagen, Johann Angelius (from) . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 41, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1896, pp. 759-762.

Web links

• Works by and about Johann Angelius Werdenhagen  in the German Digital Library
• Publications by and about Johann Angelius Werdenhagen in VD 17 .