Johannes Oettinger

Johannes Oettinger , also Oetinger , (born July 19, 1577 in Nuremberg , † March 15, 1633 in Stuttgart ) was a German geographer , cartographer and geodetician who worked in Stuttgart. In the service of Württemberg as full professor , secretary and geographer , he created quite a remarkable and varied work. One of his most important cartographic work was the contribution of five maps to the Forest Atlas by Georg Gadner (1522–1605). He also wrote two commemorative publications on events at the royal court in Stuttgart, which were also interesting from a geographical point of view. Another work was a land book , a reference work with important geographical and regional descriptions. Then there was the Tractatus , his most important work, in which the border was thematized in general, technical and legal form.

Origin and development

Johannes Oetinger (Oettinger) came from a respected Nuremberg family. His father, Cunrad Oetinger was Kaufmann ( merchant ). The mother's maiden name was Ursula Bernad (Bernadtin). (The family was not related to the Swabian family of the same name from Sindringen , from which the theologian and theosophist Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702–1782) came.) Strongly supported by the city of Nuremberg, the gifted Johannes received a good education He graduated from the then famous Protestant grammar school in Neuburg an der Donau . After that he became a student.

On July 25, 1596 Johannes Oettinger was enrolled in the University of Wittenberg : Johannes Ottingerus Noribergensis . A subject was not specified, but it is very likely that his studies will have been very diverse. Soon, at the age of 19, he received his master's degree: the Gradum Secundae Laureae. Then he went on a longer journey. Together with some companions he visited Meissen , Bohemia , Silesia , Austria and Hungary . A travel diary he kept has been lost.

Around 1600 Johannes Oettinger returned to Nuremberg, where he apparently could not find a job and finally accepted a job as a scribe with the Princely Württemberg Chamber Master Hans Jakob Gut von Sulz. In 1609 he was taken over as a feudal renovator in the princely chancellery and soon after switched to the princely rent chamber.

Fields of activity

Johannes Oettinger certainly developed and proved his cartographic skills during his time as a scribe at Gut von Sulz. There are no known works from this period.

Liebenzeller Vorst : watercolor drawing, 1608

After Johannes Oettinger had made a sample sheet from the Liebenzeller Forest (picture) in 1608, he was commissioned to supplement Georg Gadner's chart series Chorographia Ducatus Wirtembergici in 1596 . The reason for this work was the extension of the Wuerttemberg area, which should be mapped. The work consisted of five maps: 1609 Liebenzeller Forest; 1609 Office and Forest Oberkirch; 1609 Baiersbronn and Reichenbach forest; 1611 Altensteiger Forest; 1612 Tuttlingen and Hohentwiel offices. The first four cards are island cards . Gadner's and Oettinger's cards differ in some ways. Oettinger (with the exception of the Baiersbronner and Reichenbachischer Forst sheet) has included the administrative districts (offices) in his maps and provided all of them with a scale and grid lines. In addition, further cartographic work is attributed to Johannes Oettinger: A map of the Alpirsbacher Vorst with Sultzer office ; a “map of the Murg between Reichenbach and Röt with mills planned there”; a map of the Altensteiger forest; an untitled map showing the area around today's Lauterbach.

Works of a completely different kind by Johannes Oettinger were two festschrifts that have some cultural and historical significance: a poem published in 1607 about the religious festival of Duke Friedrich and a depiction of the wedding of Duke Johann Friedrich and Margravine Barbara Sophia von Brandenburg published in 1610 .

In 1623 Johannes Oettinger completed the Landbuch , a manuscript for which he must have traveled a lot in the Duchy of Würtemberg and collected data. The work is tightly structured and almost consistently lexical. The first part deals with the offices, the second with the monasteries. The sections on the offices begin with a list of the cities, villages, hamlets, courtyards and the number of ducal subjects. Among other things, castles, deserts , all types of mills, vineyards, rivers and streams and lakes including species of farmed fish are also recorded. The original manuscript of the Landbuch, which was copied several times but never printed, is now in the HStA Stuttgart.

Johannes Oettinger's most important work was published posthumously in 1642: the Tractatus de jure et controversiis limitum ac finibus regundis. Or a thorough report by Gräntzen and Marcksteinen . The work, which is aimed primarily at surveyors and lawyers, was initially unsuccessful. A second edition was not published until 25 years later, which was followed by one in Augsburg three years later, followed by another ten years later. In 1711 and 1715 the Tractatus was published in Hanover . 1722 Oettinger's work became through the book Tractatus de jure Limitum. Replaced by the law of boundaries and milestones of the lawyer Johann Jodocus Beck (1684–1744), which was not a new scientific creation, but largely a plagiarism of Oettinger's work . ( Beck has by no means quoted Oettinger in every case where it would have been appropriate. He also took over the quotations from Oettinger's work without hesitation. ) All in all, Johannes Oettinger's Tractatus has seen six editions and has been an important one for almost a century A standard work with a focus on the legal field, which is why Johann Heinrich Zedler (1706–1751) counted Oettinger among the legal scholars in his Great Universal Lexicon (Volume 25, 1740).

reception

Johannes Oettinger's great achievements in cartography, surveying and geography were not fully appreciated until very late. This was first done by the German cartographer and geographer Ruthardt Oehme (1901–1987) in his monograph on Oettinger (1982), in which he introduced that Oettinger had been neglected by literature and was in the shadow of Georg Gadner, although it can be placed at its side on an equal footing. And elsewhere, in a comment on the Liebenzeller Vorst map series, Oehme says almost euphorically that Oettinger has mastered the art of cartography almost better than his predecessor Gadner.

The work of Johannes Oettinger as a poet and narrator in the two commemorative publications, however, is not rated as highly. In any case, the art historian Werner Fleischhauer (1903–1997) rates Oettinger's intellectual contribution to these writings as very small. At least, however, the literary historian Karl Goedeke (1814–1887) included the two writings in his Outline of the History of German Poetry (1886, p. 327) and counted Oettinger among the Pritschmeisters, one of those lower-ranking poets, the princely and imperial city festivities describe in verse.

The land book and its author are mentioned in the bibliography of Württemberg history published in 1895 by the historian Wilhelm Heyd (1823-1906), in which Oettinger is counted among the most important authors or chroniclers and emphasizes that the book is important because of its information on population numbers .

But long before that, scholars such as Eberhard David Hauber (1695–1765) and Johann Jakob Moser (1701–1785) had recognized the land book. In his book Attempting a Complicated History of the Land Charts, etc. , Hauber wrote in 1724, among other things: The so-called land books, in which all cities, spots, villages, hamlets, courtyards, mills, wine presses, brooks, Weyher are to be used primarily , etc. are described and told in the whole country. Such distinctive manuscripts go around the country, among which one of the best is respected, which Mr. Oettinger reported above has produced. (P. 139/140). In the same book and context, Hauber also mentioned the Tractatus by Johannes Oettinger: Oettinger also wrote the familiar and learned tract, which was recently reissued in Hanover, of which Gräntzen and Marck-Steinen. Before that, the lawyer Ahasverus Fritsch (1629–1701) had also rated the Tractatus positively and included Oettinger's remarks on the sea, rivers, alluvions, etc. in his compilation Jus fluviaticum 1672 .

Fonts

• Tractatus de jure et controversiis limitum ac finibus regundis. Or a thorough report by Gräntzen and Marcksteinen ... , Baltasar Kühnen, Ulm 1667 ( digitized version )
• Real historical description of the princely wedding and the highly respectable Beylager / So der Durchleuchting Hochgeborn ... Johann Friederich Hertzog zu Würtemberg ... , printed in the princely capital of Stuttgart 1610 ( digital copy )

literature

• Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe: The Renaissance in the German Southwest between the Reformation and the Thirty Years War . An exhibition by the state of Baden-Württemberg, 2 volumes, Karlsruhe 1986, p. 85. ISBN 3-923132-08-5
• Ruthardt Oehme: Johannes Oettinger 1577–1633: geographer, cartographer and geodetician . W. Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 1982. ISBN 3-17-007699-X
• Ruthardt Oehme: The history of the cartography of the German southwest . Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Konstanz and Stuttgart 1961, p. 37

Web links

• Index entry for Johannes Oettinger in the Deutsche Biographie

Remarks

1. ↑ Ruthardt Oehme: Johannes Oettinger 1577–1633: Geograph, Kartograph und Geodät (1982), p. 46
2. ↑ Ruthardt Oehme: Johannes Oettinger 1577-1633: Geograph, Kartograph und Geodät (1982), p. 103
3. ^ Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe: The Renaissance in the German Southwest between the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War , (1986), p. 85
4. ↑ Werner Fleischhauer: Renaissance in the Duchy of Württemberg (1971), pp. 326–337
5. ↑ Ruthardt Oehme: Johannes Oettinger 1577-1633: Geograph, Kartograph and Geodät (1982), p. 27
6. ↑ Ruthardt Oehme: Johannes Oettinger 1577-1633: Geograph, Kartograph and Geodät (1982), p. 38
7. ↑ Ruthardt Oehme: Johannes Oettinger 1577–1633: Geograph, Kartograph und Geodät (1982), p. 39
8. ↑ Ruthardt Oehme: Johannes Oettinger 1577-1633: Geograph, Kartograph and Geodät (1982), p. 38
9. ↑ Ruthardt Oehme: Johannes Oettinger 1577–1633: Geograph, Kartograph und Geodät (1982), p. 45