Johann Reiffenstein

Johann Reiffenstein , also Johannes Reiffenstein , (* around 1507 ; † early summer 1528 in the Taunus ) was a German humanist and friend of Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon . He was the first who published Melanchthon's poems in print and thus received them for posterity, since the latter himself did not consider his poetic talent to be significant enough.

Life

He is the youngest son of the Königsteiner Schultheiss Wilhelm Curio Reiffenstein and Elisabeth Schäffner from Bommersheim. The humanist Wilhelm Reiffenstein is his brother.

Johann Reiffenstein was a gifted and very precocious child who was enthusiastic about the ideas of humanism from an early age. Between 1520 and 1522 he studied in Leuven and heard there a. a. Erasmus and Goclenius, with whom he developed a personal relationship.

In February 1523 Reiffenstein went to Wittenberg and heard Luther and Melanchthon there. He felt particularly close to the latter. He collected his works of poetry and rhetoric and gave them together with some works by other humanists at the age of early twenties in January 1528 under the title Farrago Aliqvot Epigrammatvm, Philippi Melanchthonis, & alioru [m] quorundam eruditorum. Opusculum sanË elegans ac nouum together with Jacob Micyllus (1503–1558) in Hagenau from Johann Setzer.

Just a few months after the publication of this work Johann Reiffenstein came in early summer 1528 while hunting near Koenigstein im Taunus by an apoplexy killed. He had been invited there by his co-author Micyllus and Count Ludwig zu Stolberg . His youthful body, weakened by overwork, was not able to cope with the exertions of the unaccustomed hunt, so that he died unexpectedly. Micyllus later, when he was already a widely read neo-Latin poet, described the circumstances of his childhood friend's death.

literature

• Eduard Jacobs : The Reiffenstein family of humanists. In: Quarterly magazine for culture and literature of the Renaissance. 2 (1887), pp. 71-96.
• Ulf Sauter: In Martin Luther's footsteps in Stolberg / Harz. Personalities from the family and business environment of Luther in Stolberg / Harz. Insights into the development of the Reformation. Stolberg / Harz, self-published, 2016, pp. 48–49.

Web links

• Luther was here | Places | Stolberg - Rittergasse 7

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wolfgang Metzger, Veit Probst: Philipp Melanchthon and Wilhelm Reiffenstein. In: Daphnis 27 (1998).