Paul Niavis

Paulus Niavis (emphasized: Níavis), Latinized from Paul Schneevogel (* around 1460 in Eger (Bohemia) ; † 1517 in Bautzen ), was a German humanist , educator , writer and civil servant .

Life

Born in the Bohemian town of Eger (today Cheb), he spent his school days (at least partially) in Plauen in the Vogtland . From 1475 he studied in Ingolstadt and from 1479 in Leipzig , where he obtained his master's degree in 1481.

He was then appointed as schoolmaster to Halle (Saale) and as rector to Chemnitz at the municipal Latin school. In 1490 he became town clerk in Zittau , and in 1497 he took on the same function in Bautzen. Between 1508 and 1514 he sat on the council there. A chronicle from 1518 shows that he probably died in Bautzen in 1517.

Act

As a pedagogue, Niavis reformed Latin lessons at the Chemnitz Latin School. With his textbook Dialogus parvulis scholaribus ad latinum idioma perutilissimus , which was first published around 1489 , he fought the stubborn memorization of grammatical rules and unrealistic texts that had been common up until then by preparing topics from everyday school life in dialogue form as the basis of his teaching.

Of particular importance is the Iudicium Iovis , published around 1495 , which is considered to be the first literary work on mining in the Ore Mountains .

In addition to his own writings, Niavis also published texts by Plato , Lukian , Cicero and other classics in Latin. The prints of very few of his works are dated, but are generally placed in the 1480s.

Works (selection)

• Dialogus parvulis scholaribus ad latinum idioma perutilissimus
• Elegantiae latinitatis
• Epistolae breves
• Epistolae mediocres
• Epistolae longiores
• Thesaurus eloquentiae
• Colores rhetoricae disciplinae
• Historia occisorum in Culm
• Iudicium Iovis in valle amoenitatis habitum

literature

• Paulus Niavis: Iudicium Iovis or The Judgment of the Gods on Mining: a literary document from the early days of German mining / trans. U. edit by Paul Krenkel. Berlin 1953. Freiberg research books, D 3
• A. Bömer: Paulus Niavis. A champion of German humanism . In: New archive for Saxon history and antiquity. 19/1898, pp. 51-94
• Joachim Knape, Ursula Kocher:  Niavis, Paul. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , pp. 195 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Rudolf Wolkan : Bohemia's share in the German literature of the XVI. Century. Prague 1894, part 3, p. 159.
• Paulus Niavis, Late Medieval Student Dialogues, ed. by A. Kramarczyk and O. Humberg, Chemnitz 2013.

Web links

• Literature by and about Paulus Niavis in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by Paulus Niavis in the complete catalog of the incidental prints
• Who does the earth belong to?
• Digitized edition of the Iudicium Iovis in valle amoenitatis habitum