Kaspar Waser

Kaspar Waser (born September 1, 1565 ; † September 9, 1625 ) was a Reformed theologian and orientalist in Zurich. His parents were the surgeon Hans Waser and his wife Margaretha Wirz .

He studied languages, natural sciences and mathematics as well as theology at various universities, from 1584 to 1585 at the University of Altdorf, 1585 to 1586 at the Academy in Geneva, 1586 to 1587 at the University of Basel, 1590 in Siena and 1591 at the University of Leyden. With a scholarship from the Zurich High School and as court master of the Augsburg patrician Johann Peter Hainzel, he completed extensive educational trips between 1585 and 1593, which he a. a. to the Netherlands, England, Ireland and Scotland as well as Italy. Kaspar Waser passed his exams in 1593 and became pastor in Witikon , in 1596 a deacon at the Grossmünster and professor of Hebrew. Around 1607 he became canon and professor of Greek and in 1611 finally professor of theology at the Collegium Carolinum , Zurich's theological university .

After the Veltlin murder he was entrusted with the accounting of the refugees arriving in Zurich. Politically, he advocated a connection between Zurich and the German Protestant Union and the Republic of Venice and advocated joining the alliance between the Confederation and France. He supported Zurich's participation in the Synod of Dordrecht and maintained extensive correspondence with scholars and contacts who were informed about church politics.

He was married to Dorothea Simler, the daughter of Josias Simler , and the father of the future mayor Johann Heinrich Waser and the Antistes Hans Caspar Waser (1612–1677).

Works

He wrote grammars of Hebrew, Chaldean and Syriac as well as monographs on Semitic coins and mass. In addition to various theological writings, Waser continued Johannes Stumpf's chronicle from 1586 to 1606 and translated mathematical writings by Leonhard Zubler (1563–1611) into Latin. His main theological work, the Lexicon biblicum , remained unfinished.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Norbert Domeisen. Caspar Waser ( Memento from August 4, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) (September 1, 1565 - September 9, 1625)
2. ↑ Barbara Schmid: A new denominational elite ?, esp. Pp. 111–112.
3. ^ Fabrica et Usus Instrumenti Chorographici and Novum Instrumentum Geometricum.

literature

• Barbara Schmid: A new denominational elite? How Johann Heinrich Waser (1600–1669) became the political hope of the Zurich Orthodoxy, in: In the eye of the hurricane. Federal power elites and the Thirty Years War. Edited by André Holenstein, Georg von Erlach, Sarah Rindlisbacher. Baden: Hier und Jetzt Verlag für Kultur und Geschichte, 2015 (= special edition of the Berner Zeitschrift für Geschichte in cooperation with the Spiez Castle Foundation and the Historical Institute of the University of Bern), ISBN 978-3-03919-366-0 , p. 106 -120.
• Ingrid Bigler-Marschall: Waser, Caspar. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Emil Egli :  Kaspar Waser . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 41, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1896, p. 227 f.