Calendar maker
A calendar maker is a person who designs and compiles a written calendar - usually for a calendar year . The largely synonymous terms calendar writer and calendariograph emphasize the literary part in the calendar. At the beginning the activity combined a subset of the professions astronomer , astrologer , mathematician , editor and poet . In some cases the calendar maker was also the publisher and even printer of the calendar work. From the 18th century, the activities of the calendar maker were usually divided between several members of a calendar editorial team.
Information in calendar works
The calendar makers had to have a wide range of knowledge and skills, because they provided their customers with a range of very different information:
- Correct allocation of days , months and weeks in a calendar year, taking leap years into account
- Differences that resulted from the decades delayed introduction of the Gregorian calendar in different areas
- Calculation of the Easter date and the other movable holidays in the church year
- Moon phases
- Solar and lunar eclipses and other constellations
- Explanations of the astronomical observations and calculation methods
- Name days , saints calendar (the calendar of saints used in the Roman Catholic Church )
- other holidays and memorial days
- Astrological information , lunar calendars and horoscopes
- Farmer or weather rules, planting and sowing dates, pollen count
- Sayings , recipes , puzzles , illustrations , ornaments
- enlightening and entertaining texts up to the own literary genre of calendar history
The text portion became more and more important from the middle of the 16th century and contributed significantly to the market success of the product.
In addition, so-called perpetual calendars (also perpetual or universal calendars ) were published with which certain calendar information, especially the day of the week, could be determined algorithmically and / or with tables for a long period (many years).
Early calendar makers
The German calendar makers of the 16th and 17th centuries include:
- Joachim Heller (approx. 1518–1590)
- Caspar Thierfelder (probably 1525–1594)
- Johannes Krabbe (1553-1616)
- Hermann de Werve (1584–1656)
- Caspar Schwartz (around 1595–1647)
- Lorenz Eichstaedt (1596–1660)
- Nikolaus Schmidt-Küntzel (1606–1671)
- Johannes Mejer (1606–1674)
- Paul Halcke (1662–1731) and his brother Johann Halcke (around 1690–1735)
- Gottfried Kirch (1639–1710) and his son Christfried Kirch (1694–1740)
- Nicolaus Rohlfs (1695–1750)
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Calendar Makers in History , accessed June 17, 2016
Web links
- Klaus-Dieter Herbst: Biobibliographisches Handbuch der Kalendermacher from 1550 to 1750 , Institute for German Press Research at the University of Bremen
- Die Kalendermacher , company in Spillern (Austria)