Tobias Adami

Tobias Emmanuel Adami (born August 30, 1581 in Werda , Vogtland, † November 29, 1643 in Weimar ) was a philosopher and member of the Fruitful Society .

Life

Adami was the son of the Prussian civil servant Matthäus Adami and his wife Eva Walter. From his parents' correspondence it can be seen that Adami injured the joints of the left chin when he fell as a child . This fact hindered his speech throughout his life.

Adami completed his school days in Werda and Zwickau . At the age of 16 he enrolled at the University of Leipzig , where he took, among other things, the cursus philosophicus with H. Pursius. He also began studying medicine with Balthasar Giller, but moved to Tübingen a short time later to study law there. In the winter of 1599/1600 Adami finished his studies and returned home.

In 1604 Daniel von Watzdorf appointed him Preceptor , but he and his pupil returned to Leipzig University in the same year. After Adami had defended his theses in Ius civile with Wilhelm Schmuckius (1575–1634) , he was able to set up a private college in Leipzig and maintain it until 1616, supported by a grant. At the same time, from 1607 to 1616 he accepted a position as private tutor in Rudolf von Bünau's house . Through his employer he met Konrad Rittershausen and Scipio Gentilis at the University of Altdorf in 1607 .

Two years later, Adami accompanied Rudolf von Bünau on his trip to Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Syria, Palestine and back via Malta and Italy. He spent almost a year in Naples when he became friends with Tommaso Campanella, who was imprisoned here . Adami later published his works. A selection of poems was published in 1622 in the printing works of Prince Ludwig I of Anhalt-Köthen . On the return trip Adami and Bünau met Federico Cesi in Rome and Galileo Galilei in Florence . Adami enrolled at the University of Siena on May 12, 1613. A year later the two set off on a trip to Spain; they stayed in Madrid alone for nine months. From there they traveled to London via Paris and Amsterdam. On his way home in 1616, Adami turned down a professorship for history and rhetoric at the University of Wittenberg . In 1617 he entered service in Saxony-Weimar . There he was promoted to court councilor in 1626 .

Between 1619 and 1621, together with Hans Bernd von Botzheim , he accompanied the dukes Albrecht von Sachsen-Eisenach and Johann Friedrich von Sachsen-Weimar on their grand tour through Switzerland and France. From Paris, where the tour group was in 1621, he dedicated Campanella's poems to his college friend from Tübingen, Johann Valentin Andreae , also a member of the Fruit-Bringing Society. With this he also founded the Societas Christiana .

In 1628 Tobias Adami married Sabina Catherina Neunobel, the daughter of the Saxon-Lauenburg chancellor Johann Wilhelm Neunobel. The marriage was short-lived as Sabina Catherina died on August 29, 1629.

In the same year he was accepted into the Fruit Bringing Society . Adami is listed under number 181 in the Koethen company register. Here you can also find his company name of hardness and the motto he was given when he gets along . Corals were given to him as an emblem. Adami responds to his recording with the following rhyme law:

"Hardened willingly
I have called myself: our Creator loves
us when we are hardened in need,
waiting for his help: Then we cannot be sad
because it serves us best, only
through a lot of sadness we enter the kingdom of heaven."

Three years later, in 1632, Adami married Martha Brand, the daughter of the councilor of Erfurt Heinrich Brand. 11 years later Tobias Adami died on November 29, 1643 at the age of 62 in Weimar.

literature

• Adami, Tobias Emmanuel. In: Herbert Jaumann : Handbook of scholarly culture in the early modern period. Vol. 1, De Gruyter, Berlin 2004, p. 8 f. ( online ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Tobias Adami in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by and about Tobias Adami in VD 17 .