Johann Bernhard Gottsleben

Johann Bernhard Gottsleb (en) (* around 1595 in Herborn ; † November 1, 1635 in Dillenburg ) was a Protestant clergyman in Frohnhausen and Dillenburg.

Life

Gottsleben was born as the second child of the pedagogue archen and professor Johannes Gottsleben and Anna Maria Hoen around 1595. With his four siblings Matthias, Andreas Jacobus, Jodocus Wilhelm and Margarete, he grew up in Herborn, his mother's hometown, then in Siegen, in the residential town of Dillenburg and in Krombach near Siegen . In Herborn and Siegen his father taught from 1587 to the winter semester 1599/1600 at that of Count Johann VI. from Nassau-Dillenburg founded pedagogy and the high school Herborn . After teaching, his father was appointed court preacher and spiritual inspector of the Dillenburg church class in Dillenburg and then worked as a pastor in Krombach. Johann's mother came from the respected official family Hoen.

After visiting the Herborn schola civica , Gottsleben switched to the one after the death of Count Johann VI. Pedagogy relocated again from Herborn to Siegen. Two years after his father's death, in the spring of 1614, under the supervision of the pedagogue archen Heinrich Gutberleth , he passed the matriculation examination with Christian Baum (1580–1626), the preceptor of the first class . On May 11, 1614, he began studying theology at the High School in Herborn. From his class, Johannes Molitor, Jacobus Schmollius, Johannes Wichelshausen, Johannes Langenhorst, Godfridus a Stolzenberg, Andreas Textor, Henricus Lanius and Johannes Polichius also studied in Herborn. Gottsleben's achievements in education and during the theology studies were very promising for a later position in the Count's Nassau school and church service.

Studied theology in Herborn (1614–1619)

The lessons at the Hohen Schule Johannea were very practice-oriented and aimed at applying the subject matter in the daily practice of future teachers, pastors and lawyers. Oratorics, rhetoric, eloquence and practical exercises ( exercitia ) were very important in the training. Disputations were firmly built into the timetable. For the theology students, preaching exercises were added in a shorter time. The struggle of the denominations required rhetorically well-trained graduates of the high school, who could instruct the subjects in both church and school in an understandable and convincing way, but at the same time had to be able to express their own dogmatic position, be it in conversation or in writing Form to represent against followers of another denomination.

Another aim of the lesson was to develop the student's ability to make judgments ( judicium ). Compared to the training of the judicium , the ability to memorize, which was taught to the student in the traditional school system, took a back seat and was only developed to the extent that it seemed useful for promoting the judicium . The high evaluation of the judicium required the student to develop his or her own thinking skills and gave him a degree of freedom for development that was well developed for the time. However, this was within defined limits. In disputations - and especially those that later went to print - the students were bound by the theological-dogmatic and scientific-theoretical guidelines of Ramism , which were laid down in the school laws and compliance with which the Senate strictly monitored. In the last quarter of a lesson, the students were given the opportunity to illuminate and deepen their understanding of what was presented by asking about the subject matter. The open nature of teaching was also expressed in a very close personal relationship between lecturer and student.

Although the monocratically ruled, early absolutist and Calvinist Nassau-Dillenburg - like all other reformed territorial states - paid special attention to church discipline and also developed the "social discipline" of its subjects in other areas of life, the high school allowed individual students to develop freely one of the essential principles of pedagogical practice. In addition to the development of the ability to make judgments, the emphasis on didactics, as it was taken up as a central category in the educational concept of the former student of the high school, Johann Amos Comenius , pointed further . At the high school, professors Matthias Martinius and Johann Heinrich Alsted began to present the knowledge of the time in an orderly and well-prepared form for teaching. This is how the drafts of the first German encyclopedia emerged , the seven volumes of which Johann Heinrich Alsted had printed in Herborn in 1630.

Despite the small number of staff with only three theological, two legal and three chairs for philosophy and medicine, Herborn was one of the most prominent centers of Calvinism . The high school owes its early good reputation primarily to Caspar Olevian , who explained the central Reformation question of attaining salvation with the conclusion of the covenant between God and the chosen person in order to achieve the certainty of salvation in reconciliation through the covenant. Also Johannes Piscator represents the federal theology, but does not make them the central moment of his doctrine of salvation. Through the juridification of the doctrine of salvation, federal theology pointed decisively beyond Lutheran dogmatics. The terminology used by the individual federal theologians seems to be taken more from the repertoire of the jurist than that of the theologian. And it is therefore not surprising that large parts of the basic figures of state theory in Calvinism and Puritanism - including the conceptual apparatus used here - have grown out of federal theology. Another focus of Herborn theology lies in canon law, which in its Reformed form was first established in the Johannea. The practical training of the theology students included preaching exercises in particular, for which Bernhard Textor compiled the important features and contents in his Pandectae sacrarum concionum, printed in 1599 .

The teachers who shaped Gottsleben were Johannes Piscator and Johann Jacob Hermannus in theology , with whom he disputed in 1614 and 1620, and in philosophy the young Johann Heinrich Alsted, who had made a decisive contribution to the spiritual formation of Johann Amos Comenius, who stayed in Herborn from 1611 to 1613 . The funeral sermon printed in memory of his revered teacher Johannes Piscator in 1625 enriched Gottsleben with a Latin consolation poem.

Rector (high school master) of the Latin school in Dillenburg (1619–1626)

Thanks to his good performance at the high school, the 24-year-old Gottsleben was appointed high school master in the residential city of Dillenburg immediately after completing his studies. There he took over from Philipp Textor, a son of the Herborn theology professor Bernhard Textor, at the Latin school in 1619. The third schoolmaster was Christoph Meyer from Strasbourg in Alsace.

Count Johann V laid the foundation stone for the Dillenburg Latin School on Christmas Eve in 1501. He set up a scholarship foundation to train a few talented boys who were needed in various religious services, especially in singing at the fair. In order to give the service a better order, Johann's son, Count Wilhelm , changed the foundation and in 1523 appointed the most suitable of the seven priests at the town church to be schoolmaster. From this he had "6 pious servant poor boys", who were fed at the count's expense in the castle, trained in school. Between 1535 and 1538, Johann Bernhard Gottsleben's great-grandfather, the highly respected Magister Jost Hoen, transformed the Latin school in the spirit of the Lutheran Reformation. Jost Hoen was soon promoted to head of the court school and educator of the later Prince Wilhelm of Orange , who had meanwhile reached the age of 6 , but his appointment expressly stipulated that he should "also have a look at the school in Dillenburg". The classrooms had been in the granary of the town church since about the middle of the 16th century. The salary for the first schoolmaster was 50, for the second 32 guilders per year. The teaching staff often changed, as most of the Preceptors, in line with their theological studies, viewed the education office as the transition to a higher-paid pastor.

After Wilhelm's death, the reign fell in 1559 to his second son, Count Johann VI. More than almost any other sovereign of his time, he was concerned with a religious and moral formation and enhancement of the education of his subjects. His close ties to the Netherlands, to which his brother, the Prince of Orange's eventful liberation struggle had brought him, and also to the Palatinate, the stronghold of Calvinism, from which he took his second wife, brought him closer to the Reformed Confession. With the replacement of the Lutheran doctrine by the Reformed doctrine, which took place in the years 1576 to 1581 and was initially largely spread by religious refugees from Electoral Saxony and the Palatinate, Count Johann VI. achieve a more free development of church life and its forms in Nassau-Dillenburg.

The school system also underwent a radical restructuring in the reformed sense. During this time, the Dillenburg Latin School was primarily supported by the county superintendent, the enlightened and learned Marburg clergyman Gerhard Eobanus Geldenhauer , known as Noviomagus, and the Junker Otto von Grünrade , who had left Saxony for denominational reasons and was the court master of the sons of Count Johann at the same time whose advisor on school matters had become deservedly made. In a memorandum submitted by Geldenhauer in 1581, Employment and Improvement of the Schuhl zu Dillenburgk, Concerns about how to order a good school for Dillenburg, it is detailed how the lessons in Greek, Latin and French are to be organized and how the students are to be led.

After Geldenhauer and Grünrade left the count's services, there was a lack of strict supervision of the school. Count Johann had to take the school supervision into his own hands again and again in order not to endanger the good name and fame that the school enjoyed inside and outside the county due to the negligence that crept into school operations.

In the middle of the 1580s - it was the time when the counts took full advantage of the political turmoil in the Netherlands after the assassination of his brother - Count Johann urged his councilors and the spiritual inspector Wilhelm Zepper to tighten supervision, to put an end to the torn evils. In the sharpest words he expressed his displeasure with the achievements and moral conditions of the institution: discipline among the boys was completely neglected, the teachers paid too little attention to them, they did not urge them to keep their bodies and clothes clean; dirty, ragged, torn, naked and only that one should be ashamed of them, they ran around in the alleys, where they were played, called, screamed and all mischief was allowed to drift. Their lack of discipline and modesty go so far that they "publicly do what they need to urinate without paying attention to their scolding against the people without having to talk to the people". Their “pronunciation” in singing as well as in speaking and their handwriting, which was “in use at this school before”, is immediately negligent, they are no longer encouraged to fear God. The methods of teaching do not focus on “how one brings things into their brain, heart and hands so that they can come to understanding, lust, love and good will, as well as practice and practice of the same, but one only sees it alone how to get things into the ears, mouth and memory of young people like atzeln, jackdaws, ravens and other unreasonable animals, if one learns to chatter and whistle. How they use their time usefully and wisely and get away with advantage in their studies is too little considered ”. The teachers did not give them any proper guidance on how to write down the sermons in the church, still less did they repeat them with them or prepared them beforehand for them. In the church they often “sing very indolently and badly”. It is also complained that "the praeceptors ugly bite are sometimes very hard, monstrous and immodest towards the boys and thus have given the cause that some have given up their studies or probably gone into pabsthumb". Not only the students, but also the teachers did not keep their lessons punctually, as was always the case before, but often came to school "wherever a majority of the time had passed or after the lesson had passed and had a long time off and on on both sides infeed ". In addition to the usual Wednesday, the boys held two or more game days a week, so that they “showed a great lack of due diligence and the continuation of their studies on the complaint of their parents”. Incidentally, the schoolmasters "had been so eager for a while now, as if they wanted to turn it into a craft, while afterwards they complained about lack of pay". The worst thing, however, is that at feasts where they bring older students up to carry wine, attend and make music, they come into contact with Herborn students, office relatives and the court servants and prevent the latter "from vocalizing and performing."

The count's complaints resulted in new school regulations in which the general teaching and education principles were reformulated. The grammar lessons should not be burdened with too large a set of rules, the memory should only be burdened with the bare essentials, the judgment exercised and sharpened, the understanding educated, in general the teaching method, the comprehension and the gradual progress of the pupils ( ad puerorum ingenia, profectus et captum ) be adapted understandingly. In all written work, the care of the handwriting is of the utmost importance. In the regulations on the behavior of pupils in school and in public, on personal hygiene and cleanliness, the details of which go as far as rinsing the mouth ( ora quoque eluant pueri ), one notices just as clearly the aftereffects of the armored memorandum of the Count as in the regulation the use of disciplinary drugs, which should be used in a fatherly manner , free from hardship and fights ( sine rigore aut plagositate ).

In the spring of 1618 the Thirty Years' War breaks out. The coexistence of people, which was increasingly shattered by the consequences of the war, as well as the epidemics brought in by the mercenaries, repeatedly questioned the continued existence of the Latin school. The bonds of order not only loosened among the students, but also noticeably among the adults. Even officials were no longer bound by their official duties. These relationships are unmistakably reflected in the school files. A few years after the start of the war, the high school master Gottsleben complained bitterly that he " could not only get the hard-earned wages from most parents ( paucos excipio ) either not at all or otherwise with great difficulty", but also from many parents " being shamefully reviled and blamed; Quite a few had left their children at home and out of schools at the time when he had started to demand school fees, but sent them back in after a fortnight or three weeks, until another quarter had passed; so they did it every quarter ”. In the meantime, the pupils had "forgotten everything they had previously learned, then desecrated and reviled the people for not having learned anything in school". The current mayor, Theis Göst, behaved particularly improperly, reminding him in a "friendly letter" of the school fees for his son that were in arrears for three goals; This, “a fellow in all the boys' pieces, none of which is too big for him, but especially stiff-necked and spoiled” in Garttendiebereyen, he has been keeping out of school for a long time, but he has given the mocking answer attached to the letter. Despite the express prohibition, others, who also owed him school fees, now sent their children to school in Oberschelt; if he has another pupil ask his parents about the reason for his absence, he will be "rejected with pranks and pelted with stones"; others used to beat the teacher with “shameful words, summa”, this is how Gottsleben sums up his complaint to Count Ludwig Heinrich , who has ruled since 1623 , “it means that everyone here at Dillenbergk ahn will soon think of the schoolmasters as a knight "He closes with the request" to steer such ignorance at the schools here, but in particular to urge Theis Göst that he should no longer pay him with such a scornful and mocking sarcasm, but owe him his outside wages immediately seye. "

Marriage to Magdalena Beigarten (1621), children, relatives

Two years after taking over the position of Rector in Dillenburg, Gottsleben became engaged to the daughter of Henrich (von) Bey (i) garten from Brussels and the wedding was held in Dillenburg on November 27, 1621. The father-in-law served as valet, Count Georg the Elder of Nassau-Beilstein , who ran the county’s government affairs for his brother Count Wilhelm Ludwig von Nassau-Dillenburg, who was governor in Friesland , and held court in Dillenburg. With his brother-in-law Philipp Beigarten (d. 1637), born in 1591, who succeeded his father at Count Georg in 1621 and rose to Dillenburg burgrave in 1624 under Georg's son Ludwig Heinrich, Gottsleben attended the Herborn Education Center. Gottsleben's cousin Philipp Heinrich Hoen is Nassau-Dillenburg's leading councilor and statesman, well known and highly honored, at the Grafenhof in Dillenburg as well as at the Kaiserhof in Vienna. As an important lawyer and professor, Hoen had already worked from the Herborn High School in the tradition and successor of the famous Johannes Althusius (1557–1638) through widely disseminated works . We know another brother-in-law, the wealthy baker and later Herborn mayor Jost Rücker, with whom Johann Bernhard's sister Margarete entered into marriage around 1627.

Johann Bernhard and Magdalena Gottsleben had eight children, five of whom had died in the hard years of war by 1634. We know by name Johann Philipp, born on September 19, 1622, Margarete, baptized on December 15, 1627, Maria Magdalena, born on April 17, 1629, and Anna Margreth, baptized on December 3, 1634.

Pastor in Frohnhausen (1626–1627); Court preacher and second pastor in Dillenburg (1627–1634), then first pastor (1634–1635)

After seven years of school service, Gottsleben was transferred to Frohnhausen in 1626 to the pastor's position vacated by the plague death of the local pastor, Johannes Wissenbach, but a year later he was called back as the second city pastor and court preacher to Count Ludwig Heinrich, who was almost the same age, in Dillenburg. For seven years Gottsleben remained the second pastor and a popular preacher at court, where he held morning and evening services in the castle. After the departure of the first pastor Matthias Gärtner, alias Kluck, Gottsleben received the first pastor's position. His successor in the second pastorate was Konrad Post from Herborn in 1634 . With the post, Johann Bernhard Gottsleben created the second baptismal register of the Dillenburg parish, which begins with the entry: “Tauff-Buch, this is a list of those children who are to be baptized by these Dillenburg parish and parish members, sometimes in a different random manner coveted. Beginning in the year 1634 in the month of Augusto, by me Johanne Bernhardo Gotslebio, after I was honored by Conrado Posthio the 10th of August, the pastorate and deaconate have been ordained and presented here. "

Plague times 1625/26 and 1635/36 in Nassau-Dillenburg. Plague death of the Johann Bernhard and Magdalena Gottsleben family (1635)

After the outbreak of the Great War, the sovereign Count Ludwig Heinrich, although he remained neutral for a long time, was not faced with an easy task. When his closest relatives, the Counts of Nassau-Siegen and Nassau-Hadamar, converted to the Catholic faith, the denominational quarrel was carried into his own family and it was extremely difficult for him to protect his country. While it was initially important to keep the foreign war peoples away from the national borders if possible or at least to alleviate the suffering of the population as much as possible, Count Ludwig Heinrich stepped out of his neutrality in 1631 and initially joined the Protestant side under the King of Sweden with his Nassau-Dillenburg regiments Gustav Adolf, later the imperial, and had inflicted many bloody defeats on his opponents on his campaigns across Germany.

During the war years, the Dillenburg region was repeatedly hit hard by epidemics that accompanied the army platoons. The mercenary troops were carriers and carriers of infectious diseases that quickly spread in the camps if physical hygiene was neglected. The mercenaries were subjected to great physical exertion, which made them less inclined to spend a great deal of energy on cleanliness and weakened their defenses. If they stayed in a camp at a fixed location for a long time, it became difficult to keep the premises clean from the excretions left behind - pathogenic excretions when they were sick themselves. The search for food was the most pressing problem for their leaders, for the men wanted to eat. There was no time for hygiene and cleanliness. The people displaced by fighting, looting and pillage also spread pathogens in their refugee quarters, where they lived crowded together. Grimmelshausen vividly describes the dying and torments of war at the end of his fifth book of Simplicissimus . "The cattle spoil with age / and the poor person with illness: one has the grind / the other has cancer / the third the Wolff / the fourth the Frantzosen / (...) the toe the lung addiction / the eylffte the fever / (... ) One dies in the cradle / the other in his youth on the bed / the third on the rope / the fourth on the heavy / the fifth on the bike / the sixth on the stake / the seventh in a wine glass / the eighth in a river of water / (...) the twelfth in a battle / the thirteenth through magic / (...) God world protect you / then I get tired of your conversation, the life you give us / is a miserable pilgrimage / an inconstant / uncertain / hard / rough / fleeting and impure life / full of poverty and error / which should rather be called a death than a life (...) Then although nothing is more certain than the dead / so the person is not insured / how / when and where he die / and (which that most pathetic is) where se go there in Seel / and how it will end up (...) ”.

If serious plague cases had hit the Dillenburger Land earlier , these by far exceeded the previous level in the course of the Great War. The two great plague epidemics that struck Dillenburg in 1625/26 and 1635/36 exceeded anything that had been experienced so far. "Anno 1625, December 18th, the dying started all here in Dillenburg", is the inscription on the first of six narrow, yellowed sheets, which list the individual plague cases, sorted by days. At that time, in the course of 10 months - the directory closes on October 30, 1626 - a total of 379 people, including around 250 children, of the urban population of that time fell victim to the epidemic. According to precise calculations, there were 166 different families named by name who made these sacrifices. We count at least twelve families in which both parents and seven others in which five children were killed. Among the dead was the chronicler and Dillenburg town clerk Johann Textor (1582–1626), who died on October 30, 1626 after seeing two children and a maid fall in front of him. The long list of citizens and widows in the city bill of 1626, who got tree trunks from the Eberhard and cut them into boards for the death shop, is shocking.

Ten years later, the soldiers of Peter Ernst II von Mansfeld brought the pestilence back into the Dillenburg area, which killed 209 people in Dillenburg. The unusually high number of deaths caused the pastor Gottleben to create the first book of the dead for the Dillenburg parish. It bears the title "Todtenbuch, that is - directory of those persons, So in this parish, both outside in the villages, as Eybach and Nantzenbach, item Donsbach, Ober- and Niederscheld, as also here in the place of Dillenberg of men and women , Old and young alike. It all started in 1635 when the church served this place: Johannes Bernhartus Gotsleb and Conratus Posthius uterque Herbornensis. Surgite mortui, venite ad judicium! ”(Both from Herborn. Rise up, you dead, come to judgment).

This time, too, the plague attacked some families with uncanny cruelty, three, four and five members of which were placed in a grave. The contradicting hygienic and ecclesiastical countermeasures of the state government clearly reflect their perplexity. While in the edict of September 12, 1635 she sharply rebuked that “that here in the valley during the torn plagues of the land and the heavy plague of the pestilence there was such a mixture, lack of order and humility, yes, even with many such mutt will and sacrilege, that it almost wants to gain the reputation that the healthy and the immaculate should give way to the sick and the tainted "and those" who are viciously lusted to bring this plague and hardship to their neighbors and fellow citizens "are threatened with severe punishments For this unambiguous intention of sharply separating the healthy from the sick, two months later, on November 21, 1635, the population was instructed to be particularly concerned about common public prayer and “at the end not to miss the ordinary meetings , but always and without ceasing to visit, as often and thickly as they are employed in the church of God. “As always at such times, the Church remained the last refuge for the people.

The fate of the Gottsleben family is moving, which is particularly awakened by participation because he himself entered the records in the church book:

“1635 September 23rd at 6 o'clock in the evening Joh. Bernhard Gotsleben pastorn a little daughter, called Anna Margreth, died.” The child was baptized on December 3, 1634. Gottsleben had already lost a daughter Margarete earlier, who was baptized on December 15, 1627 and named after Johann Bernhard's sister.

“1635 octobris 12th, Magdalena, mine of the pastor Joh. Bernhard Gotslebii, is the one who loves hauszfraw sel., After she became weak on the 9th of the night between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. and lay gently until the 12th, when the eylf bell had just struck and fell asleep happily in the gentleman and buried the following day with a lot of frequentz with many good-hearted pious people crying and complaining. God grant her a happy resurrection. Just in this month of octobri in the 1621st year, namely the 22nd I got it, held the 31st ejusdem wine purchase and the 27th novembris wedding and therefore lived peacefully and lovingly for almost 14 years in marriage, eight children, two sons , sex daughters conceived with each other, because sex kills, but two still, a son and a daughter, as long as god wills, still live. "

"[1635 octobris] 16th in the morning at 6 o'clock is my dear son blessed Joh. Philipps, who lay down on Wednesday the 14th and became weak, died and was buried on the 17th in the morning at 8 o'clock; natus hic erat anno 1622, 19th septembris. "

"[1635 octobris] 17th in the evening a quarter past 5 o'clock is my remaining dearest daughter Maria Magdalena, just like the previous day in the hour in which Joh. Philipps sel. Different, relaxed and weak fallen asleep gently and calmly in the master's house and buried the following day. This child was born on April 17th, 1629 shortly after 12 o'clock in the night. "

“So I have four souls to dear god in this dying within three weeks, the mother with three children, otherwise five children during our marital marriage, and so the kingdom of my god in heaven has been increased by me with nine souls. The pious god ahm will cheerfully raise the corpse to the last day, unite it with their souls and thus take them with body and soul into his eternal kingdom. God, who is loyal and does not want to be tempted to lash out at his own, but to put an end to the temptation so that you can endure it, also wants to act fatherly with me according to his promise, to comfort and strengthen me, to be patient and patient even happy overcoming for the sake of my dear lord and heylandt Jesus Christ. Amen."

Through constant contact with his family, suffering from plague, Gottsleben himself became infected. He died on November 1, 1635. Ten days after his last daughter, he was buried with his wife and children.

The Dillenburg church book says about this: “1635 novembris 1st John Bernhard Gotslebii, pastor and church servant of Dillenberg, who fell asleep blissfully at 7 o'clock in the morning without any pain after he lay down on October 29th. The lord god wants to show his flock graciously and does not scatter them after robbing their teachers. Et sequenti uffm kirchhoff was buried with his wife and children. "

The family name Gottsleben died out with him in Dillenburg. The Christian lament and consolation sermon given by Konrad Post, the second Dillenburg pastor, in the town church in front of a large mourning congregation, was in 1636 with mourning and consolation poems by his friends and students Justus Henricus Heidfeldt , Georg Corvinus , Johannes Daum and RG in the Christoff Rab office printed at Herborn.

literature

• Emil Becker: Johann Bernhard Gottsleben . In: Heimatblätter to maintain and promote the idea of ​​home. Supplement to the dill newspaper . Volume 8, 1935, p. 32 and Volume 10, 1937, pp. 22 and 36.
• Max von Domarus: A victim of the plague of 1635 in Dillenburg . In: Messages of the Association for Nassau Antiquity and Historical Research . [11.] 1907/08, col. 26-31.
• Klaus Gottsleben: Johann Bernhard Gottsleb (en). A Life in the Troublesome Thirty Years War ( online publication ).
• Funeral sermon Gotslebius, John Bernhardus ; Pastor of Dillenburg; Birthday, place: (Herborn); Date and place of death: November 1, 1635; Day and place of burial: November 2, 1635; Title: Christian Lament and Consolation Sermon; Author of the funeral sermon: Posthius, Conradus, from (Herborn), then servant at the Word of God in Dillenburg, now pastor in Burbach; Author of Epicedien: Heidfeldt, Justus-Henricus, from (Nassau), French / Corvinus, Georgius, Latin / Greek / Daum, Johannes, Latin / French / RG, French; Place of printing, printer, year of publication: Herborn, Christoff Rab, 1636, number of pages (paginated / unpaginated pages): 40/0; Format (spine height / bibliographic format = sheet fold): 8/4; Pictorial representation (head vignette): 4, 35 / final vignette: title sheet; Locations: Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg; Signature: VB 434; Hessian Main State Archive Wiesbaden; Signature: 1001 / 23.1; Hessian State Library Wiesbaden; Signature Oct. Gl 6131; Explanations of the Marburg copy: Large water stain top right; to the copy of the main state archive: large dark brown stain with paper decomposition, water stains; Tied into a volume with personal files from Herborn Professors, contemporary handwritten inscription on the title page.
• Antonius van der Linde: The Nassauer prints of the Royal State Library of Wiesbaden. I. 1467-1817 . 1882, pp. 170, 253 and 396 [list of the printed disputations by Johann Bernhard Gottsleben].
• Gottfried Zedler and Hans summer (eds.): The matriculation of the high school and the pedagogy of Herborn . Bergmann, Wiesbaden 1908. (= Publications of the Historical Commission for Nassau; 5), pp. 63, 235, 243, 717, 719 [here entries of school attendance and studies by Johann Bernhard Gottsleben].
• Otto Renkhoff : Johann Bernhard Gottsleben . In: Nassau biography. Short biographies from 13 centuries. 2nd, completely revised and expanded edition, Historical Commission for Nassau, Wiesbaden 1992, p. 241.