Martin Crusius

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Portrait of Martin Crusius on a copy after a painting by Anton Ramsler from 1590, in the Tübingen Professorengalerie

Martin Crusius (actually Martin Kraus or Krauss , born September 19, 1526 in Walkersbrunn (today a district of Graefenberg in Upper Franconia ); † February 25 July / March 7,  1607 greg. In Tübingen ) was a German classical philologist and historian who was active in and especially for Swabia . From 1559 to February 14, 1607 he was professor of the Greek and Latin languages ​​at the University of Tübingen .

Life

The house where Martin Crusius was born in Walkersbrunn

Kraus was born as the son of Martin Krauss senior (around 1494 to 1554), who came from Pottenstein and worked in Walkersbrunn from 1520 to 1527 as a clergyman (from 1525 first Protestant pastor) . His home village of Walkersbrunn in Franconian Switzerland , about 15 km from Erlangen , which is today part of the Evangelical-Lutheran parish of Ermreuth , belonged in 1526 to the parish of the Walkersbrunn church above the village, like Rangen , Kasberg and other places to the ( Three saints) graves , briefly on the parish of graves , which as a whole parish thus represented a larger unit than the communal unit of Walkersbrunn and in church relations to the Bamberg archdeaconate of Nuremberg-Eggolsheim until the Reformation (1525) . In research, however, a z. T. unidentified residential area graves near Bamberg indicated. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Walkersbrunn was owned by members of the Nuremberg patrician family Haller , who had also been the church patron since 1440; In 1540 the manor Walkersbrunn was bought by the imperial city of Nuremberg .

Kraus studied at the grammar school in Ulm and in the preacher monastery in Strasbourg . In 1551 he came to Tübingen as court master of two young people from the nobility and applied for a job, but without success. He then went back to Strasbourg and gave lessons at the grammar school there. In 1554 he was appointed to the rector's office of the Latin school in Memmingen , then went back to Tübingen in 1559 as the companion of a Studio Dietlmeyer and was employed there as a professor of the Greek and Latin languages. In 1564 he was given a teaching position for rhetoric there. He read about Sophocles , Thucydides , Homer , Aristotle and Galen and soon acquired such a reputation as a Graecist that a new lecture hall had to be built for him and many foreigners, especially native Greeks, came to Tübingen to hear him. He also took students into board and lodging himself.

Memorial plaque for Martin Crusius, Tübingen, Pflegehof 4

He maintained extensive connections with scholars from abroad (including Greek), such as a long-term correspondence and 25-year friendship with Theodosios Zygomalas , many of whom came to Tübingen to visit him.

Crusius was also friends with the lawyer, poet and Heilbronn counselor Sebastian Hornmolt .

A large number of manuscripts and especially his nine quarto-volume diary (diary), which covers the period from 1573 to May 15, 1605 , in which he recorded not only his experiences, but also his reading and excerpts from pamphlets, testify to his labor and literacy and collected manuscripts. Besides his studies, he also seems to have been a very sociable person. In his diary he repeatedly reports on banquets that he either organized himself or to which he was invited, and not only describes the guests at the table and the conversation, but also reports what people have eaten and drunk and how long they have been dining.

plant

Kraus ', Crusius' , literary achievements consist of various smaller and larger works on Greek and Latin grammar and rhetoric, occasional academic writings , editions and scholias of various Greek scripts (such as his scholias on Homer's epigrams) and a collection of news about the state of the Greeks under the Turkish rule with the title Turco-Graecia (cf. the Turcograecia by Theodosios Zygomalas ) and Germano-Graecia , which were printed in Basel in 1584 by Leonhard Osten and published by the printer-publisher ( typographus ) Sebastian Henricpetri .

The main work of the scholar who had become a Swabian by choice in Tübingen are the Annales Suevici , which appeared in three folio volumes and a supplementary volume in Frankfurt am Main in 1595/1596 (The Tübingen-based publisher Georg Gruppenbach , a relative of Crusius, did not print the extensive work and want to publish it, as did Sebastian Henricpetri in Basel, who also did not want to publish the annals in full). They offer a huge material fund on the history of Swabia and Württemberg and were translated into German by Johann Jacob Moser in 1733 , continued and supplemented with a biography of the author (printed in Frankfurt am Main). Then, also in Frankfurt in 1596, (Liber) Paraleipomenos rerum Suevicarum appeared as an appendix .

A peculiar testimony to the diligence with which Crusius used his time are the more than 6,500 sermons recorded in Greek during the service. The Greek summing-up notes are preserved in 20 handwritten volumes in the University Library of Tübingen. He published 615 of these transcripts in 1602 under the title Corona anni . The work was moved in 1602 by Samuel Selfisch .

Crusius is considered to be the first representative of philhellenism . From 1573 he and Jakob Andreae exchanged letters for several years with the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople Jeremias Tranos , who is considered to be one of the first ecumenical contacts between Lutherans and Orthodox.

Printing and publishing the Annales Suevici and Corona anni had already been extremely tedious. For a Homer Commentary, begun in 1595 and completed as a manuscript on March 4, 1598, which would have resulted in around 1660 printed pages, Crusius had not been able to get a printer or publisher during his lifetime. His commentary deals with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey as well as "Homeric" hymns and hexametric short poems (a collection of epigrams ) which were previously attributed to Homer and Batrachomyomachia (the " frog mouse war ", also formerly considered to be written by Homer ).

Fonts (selection)

  • Commentariolum in primam Demosthenis Olynthiacam Sturmianum eiusdem scholia in eandem, & Epitome ex Diodoro Siculo de statu illorum temporum in Graecia; his addita est conversio Ioan. Sturmii Commentariolum in primam Demosthenis Olynthiacam Sturmianum. Fabricius, Strasbourg 1554. ( digitized version )
  • D [octoris] Solomoni Schweigkero Sultzensi, qui Constantinopoli in Aula Legati Imp. Rome. aliquot annos Ecclesiasta fuit: & in Aegypto, Palestine, Syria, peregrinatus est: Gratulatio, scripta a Martino Crusio. Cum Descriptione illius peregrinationis & Graecorum Patriarcharum, aliorúḿq; ... Christianorum commendationibus, scriptisq. . . . Wyriot, Strasbourg 1582. ( digitized version )
  • Ad Jacobum Schopperum Biberacunsun doctoris honoribus ... 1582 ornatum Gratulatio. Gruppenbach, Tübingen 1582.
  • Turcograeciae Libri Octo. Quibus Graecorum Status Sub Imperio Turcico, in Politia & Ecclesia, Oeconomia & Scholis, iam inde ab amissa Constantinopoli, ad haec usq [ue] tempora, luculenter describitur Tvrcograeciae Libri octo. Henricpetrus, Basel 1584. ( digitized version )
  • Civitas Coelestis, seu catecheticae Conciones Item, trium summorum anniversariorum Festorum Conciones aliquot denique Orationes & Epistolae a Martino Crusio editae. Gruppenbach, Tübingen 1588. ( digitized version )
  • Oratio de Regina Rome. Augusta Irena, vel Maria Graeca. Gruppenbach, Tübingen 1597. ( digitized version )
  • Annales Suevici sive Chronica Rerum Gestarum Antiquissimae Et Inclytae Suevicae Gentis. 2. From Anno Christi DCCCI. usq [ue] ad MCCXII. annum deducta. 1595. ( digitized version )
  • Oratio de illustriss. principe Eberhardo Barbato, primo Wirtembergensi duce. Gruppenbach, Tübingen 1597. ( digitized version )
  • Grammaticae Graecae, cum Latina congruentis Pars .... 1. Basel 1608. ( digitized version )
  • Homeri Batrachomyomachia à Demetrio Zeno Zacynthio in vulgarem linguam Graecam rhythmicè conversa: Cum B. Martini Crusii ... Latina versione & Annotationibus. Kohles, Altdorf 1707.

literature

  • Richard Calis: Reconstructing the Ottoman Greek World. Early Modern Ethnography in the Household of Martin Crusius. In: Renaissance Quarterly. Volume 72, 2019, pp. 148-193.
  • Laura Carrara, Irmgard Männlein-Robert (arrangement): The Tübingen Theosophy. Anton Hiersemann, Stuttgart 2018 (= Library of Greek Literature, Dept. of Classical Philology. Volume 86). ISBN 978-3-7772-1818-2 .
  • Josef Forder: They shaped the face of your city. Tübingen 1955, pp. 165-185.
  • Wilhelm Göz: Martin Crusius and the book system of his time. In: Central Journal for Libraries. Volume 50, 1933, pp. 717-737.
  • Karl Klüpfel:  Crusius, Martin . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 633 f.
  • Walther Ludwig : Hellas in Germany - representations of Graecistics in German-speaking countries from the 16th and 17th centuries. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1998, ISBN 3-525-86295-4 . - (To Franciscus Irenicus , Martin Crusius and Johann Caspar Löscher )
  • Reinhold Stahlecker: The diary of Martin Crusius. In: Tübinger Blätter. Volume 33, 1942, pp. 25-31.
  • Reinhold Stahlecker: Martin Crusius and Nicodemus Frischlin . In: Journal of Württemberg State History. Volume 7, 1943, pp. 323-366.
  • Klaus-Henning Suchland: The Byzantium picture of the Tübingen philhellenic Martin Crusius (1526–1607). Dissertation Würzburg 2001
  • Panagiotis Toufexis : The alphabetum vulgaris linguae graecae of the German humanist Martin Crusius (1526-1607). A contribution to research into the spoken Greek language in the 16th century (dissertation Hamburg 2003). Romiosini, Cologne 2005 (= Neograeca Medii Aevi . Volume 8), ISBN 3-929889-71-4 . PDF online .
  • Hans Widmann :  Crusius, Martin. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , p. 433 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Hans Widmann: Authors trouble of a scholar in the 16th century. In: Börsenblatt for the German book trade - Frankfurt edition. No. 89, (November 5) 1968, pp. 2929-2940.
  • Thomas Wilhelmi (arrangement): The Greek manuscripts of the University Library of Tübingen. Special volume Martin Crusius, list of manuscripts and bibliography. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2002 (manuscript catalogs of the University Library Tübingen, Volume 2.2), ISBN 3-447-04518-3 .
  • Johannes Michael Wischnath: facts, mistakes and fictions. A footnote on the history of research on the origin and date of death of the Tübingen Graecist Martin Crusius (1526–1607) . In: Tubingensia. Impulses for the city and university history. Festschrift for Wilfried Setzler on his 65th birthday. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2008, ISBN 978-3-7995-5510-4 , pp. 225–246 ( Tübingen building blocks for regional history. Volume 10). - ( Wischnath here for the first time comprehensively clarifies the chaotic research-historical situation in which Crusius as the place of birth is partly attributed to the father's hometown, Pottenstein, or a later “lost village”, later a “wasteland” or “desert”, graves and as Day of his death is his last day of office (February 14, 1607). )
  • Gerhard Philipp Wolf: Martin Crusius (1526–1607). Philhellene and university professor. In: Erich Schneider (Ed.): Fränkische Lebensbilder. Volume 22. Society for Franconian History, Würzburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-86652-722-5 ( Publications of the Society for Franconian History, Series VII A. Volume 22), pp. 103–119.
  • Crusius, (Martinus). In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 6, Leipzig 1733, column 1767.

Web links

Commons : Martin Crusius  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Martin Crusius  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Widmann: Author trouble of a scholar in the 16th century. 1968, p. 2936.
  2. ^ Wilhelm Götz, Ernst Conrad (Ed.): Diarium Martini Crusii 1596–1597. Tübingen 1927; the same: Diarium Martini Crusii 1598–1599. Ibid 1931; Reinhold Stahlecker †, Eugen Staiger, with the assistance of Reinhold Rau and Hans Widmann (eds.): Diarium Martini Crusii 1600–1605. Ibid 1958; Eugen Staiger ( arrangement ): Diarium Martini Crusii. Total register. Ibid 1961.
  3. ↑ Hans Widmann: Author trouble of a scholar in the 16th century. 1968, pp. 2929 f., 2932 and 2935.
  4. ↑ Hans Widmann: Author trouble of a scholar in the 16th century. 1968, p. 2929 f.
  5. ^ Martin Crusius: Annales Suevici. 3 volumes (each with 12 books, the "Dodecades"). Nicolaus Basseus (also N. Bassaeus, Nicolaus Bassé, N. Bassée), Frankfurt am Main 1595 (Volume 1–2) to 1596 (Volume 3).
  6. ↑ Hans Widmann: Author trouble of a scholar in the 16th century. 1968, p. 2930 f. and 2935.
  7. ↑ Hans Widmann: Author trouble of a scholar in the 16th century. 1968, pp. 2934 and 2937.
  8. ↑ Reinhold Stahlecker: Martin Crusius, the first German author of a commentary on the entire Homer. In: Philological weekly. Vol. 59, 1939, Col. 1196-1207.
  9. ↑ Cf. Martin Crusius: Commentationes in I. lib. Iliad. Homeri [...]. Gotthard Voegelin, Heidelberg (September) 1612.
  10. ↑ Hans Widmann: Author trouble of a scholar in the 16th century. 1968, pp. 2934-2938.
  11. ↑ Albin Lesky : History of Greek Literature. Francke, Bern 1957; here: 2nd edition. Bern / Munich 1963, pp. 103-109.
  12. ^ Wilhelm Schmid (ed.): Wilhelm v. Christ's History of Greek Literature. 5 volumes. CH Beck, Munich 1929–1948, here: Part 1, Volume 1 (= Handbook of Classical Studies. Department 7, 1, 1), pp. 224–246.
personal data
SURNAME Crusius, Martin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Martin Kraus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German classical philologist and Swabian historian
DATE OF BIRTH September 19, 1526
PLACE OF BIRTH Graves near Bamberg (part of Walkersbrunn, today the city of Graefenberg )
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1607
Place of death Tübingen