Zacharias Orth

Coat of arms of Orth

Zacharias Orth , also Orthus (* around 1530 in Stralsund , † August 2, 1579 in Barth ) was a German classical philologist , university teacher and neo-Latin poet of German humanism .

Life

Orth visited the Katharineum in Lübeck around 1550 under Matthias Brassanus , who was previously in Stralsund, and began studying at the University of Greifswald in 1551 . In November 1555 he moved to the University of Rostock , where he received his PhD at the same time as a baccalaureate and a master's degree on May 18, 1557 , after having lectured on Homer and Ovid for a long time .

Johann Jakob Heraklides

In the previous year he had met Johann Jakob Heraklides (also Jakob Basilikus Heraklides, called Despot, 1511–1563), a Greek mercenary who was turned towards the Reformation and who had received the dignity of an imperial court palatinate count and was thus able to take Orth on the 9th. October 1556 to be crowned Poeta laureatus .

On September 1, 1557 he came to the University of Wittenberg , where he was sponsored by Philipp Melanchthon , who also wrote a foreword to Orth's 1558 speech on poetry . The recommendation to the Pomeranian Duke Johann Friedrich contained therein did not fail to have an effect, and Orth was appointed professor of poetry and history at the University of Greifswald in September 1559.

His teaching work included the works of Virgil , Ovid and Cicero ; for his own further education he read during this time, after handwritten entries in his library, the works of Herodotus and Thucydides , but also the work of the Bolognese historian Polydor Virgil († 1555). In 1561 he published a translation of the Greek story by Georgios Gemistos Plethon († 1451), which he dedicated to the Swedish King Erik XIV . He was then invited to Sweden in September 1561, where he stayed until the spring of 1562. He went to Stralsund, where he published an edition of his smaller Latin poems.

Inspired by an epic city praise from Lübeck's rector Petrus Vincentius in 1552, Orth wrote an epic poem in praise of the city of Stralsund in 588 Latin distiches , which made him most famous.

Under the title Inclytae urbis Strasundae origo et res gestae , based on the Wandalia by Albert Krantz and mixed with mythological characters and events, it describes the founding of Stralsund by Jaromar I (1209), then the destruction by Lübeck (1249), the victory at Hainholz with the capture of Duke Erich von Sachsen-Lauenburg and the building of the town hall with the ransom he received (1316), the fight with the pirates (1391/92), besides the sinking of the Danish fleet, under the leadership of Erichs XIII. Wife Philippa of England (1429), and ends with a culturally and historically significant description of the city, its ponds and gardens, and the neighboring island of Rügen .

He dedicated the poem, which at the end also highlights the merits of the four mayors Franz Wessel , Nikolaus Gentzkow , Georg Smiterlow and Joachim Klinkow , to the Stralsund council. For this Orth received an honorary gift of 30 thalers from Gentzkow on January 29, 1562 .

He then went back to Wittenberg, where he published a number of historical poems in Greek distiches in the course of 1563. The first epic, dedicated to Duke Albrecht of Prussia , deals with the Greek emperors in 45 elegies based on Johannes Cuspinian († 1529) , from Nicephorus (803) to the capture of Constantinople. This is followed by the story of the Turkish sultans according to Paolo Giovio († 1552), in 12 poems, with a dedication to the later emperor Maximilian II. The third epic, dedicated to Jacob Heraklides, glorifies the Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to in 65 elegies Constantine VI and Irene (782); the fourth, dedicated to Emperor Ferdinand I , the German Emperors from Charlemagne to Ferdinand I in 42 elegies. In 1577 he dedicated a book in Greek and Latin translation to Queen Elizabeth of England , which described the lives of Julius Caesar, Augustus and Tiberius and also contains the praise of famous queens.

Coat of arms according to Siebmacher's book of arms

Duke Albrecht of Prussia made it possible for Orth to travel extensively for several years: from Königsberg (Prussia) to Vienna , where he was again crowned a poet by Ferdinand I and his successor Maximilian II in 1564 and received a coat of arms, then to Tübingen , from where he addressed several letters to Duke Albrecht, and to France . From here he returned to Prussia and received a professorship at the Albertina in 1567 , but went back to Stralsund in 1570. From there he traveled to Italy in 1572 and to Cologne in 1573 . In 1579 he published a new edition of Farrago by the Lübeck superintendent Hermann Bonnus .

Orth died after a stay in Stettin on August 2, 1579 in Barth in the house of the city secretary Thomas Müller.

Library

Binding with monogram and year 1557 from Orth's library; Auctioned in 2012

The Stralsund City Council acquired Orth's library from his heirs in 1579. After the rector Andreas Helvigius founded a grammar school library at the Stralsund grammar school in 1627 , the council transferred this collection of 112 volumes of philological, historical, philosophical and theological content there in 1644. In his library Orth brought together his own works as well as those of well-known contemporaries such as Johannes Bugenhagens and his friend Melanchthon, who were well-known poets at the time. Many volumes have his own signature and the inscription ZOPL (Zacharias Orthus poeta laureatus) on the book cover . In addition to works from Greek and Latin classics, the collection also includes a Basel print of the New Testament in Greek from 1533. His own titles include two Carmina (Rostock 1556 and 1562), a funeral poem for the Pomeranian Duke Philip I (Greifswald 1560) and Trium Romanorum imperatorum… vita… (Wittenberg 1577). The grammar school library came to Stralsund's city archive in 1945 and was sold to an antiquarian by the city of Stralsund in 2012. It is unclear how many volumes from Orth's library belonged to the inventory sold. At least two volumes with his monogram ( ZOLP or ZOLPM ) and the date 1557 came under the hammer at Reiss & Sohn's autumn auction in 2012 and could be bought back by the Hanseatic city of Stralsund in 2013/14. The annotated compendium of Latin quotations, the Cornucopiae sive Linguae Latinae, known at the time, is a remarkable volume in his library. It contains parchment manuscripts from the 12th century as mirror stickers.

Orth's city praise was reissued by Ernst Heinrich Zober in 1831, based on his hand copy, which has also been handed down in the library .

Works

• Oratio de arte poetica. Wittenberg: Krafft 1558
• Inclytae Urbis Stralsundae Origo Et Res Gestae: Ex Veris Historiis Conscriptae, Ad Amplissimum Senatum Populumque Sundensem. Rostock: Myliander 1562 ( digital copy of the copy from the Bavarian State Library )

New edition: Ernst Heinrich Zober : Zacharias Orthus' praise poem for Stralsund with his life. Stralsund 1831

• Romanorum Imperatores Graece Atque Latine, Soluta Et Ligata oratione descripti. 1576 ( digitized copy from the Austrian National Library )
• Trium Romanorum Imperatorum, C. Iulii Caesaris, Octavii Augusti, Et Tyberii Vita Prosa Et Ligata Oratione Graece Et Latine Descripta. Wittenberg: Krafft 1577 ( digitized copy from the Bavarian State Library )

Letters

• Ernst Heinrich Zober (Ed.): Three letters to Duke Albrecht of Prussia with appendix. Stralsund: Löffler 1854

literature

• Ernst Heinrich Zober: About the Stralsundian poet Zacharias Orthus: life and writings. School program of the Stralsund high school in 1830

Digitized from Stanford University copy

Digitized copy of the copy from the Bavarian State Library

• Theodor Pyl :  Orth, Zacharias . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1887, pp. 443-445.
• Grete Grewolls: Who was who in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania. The dictionary of persons . Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 2011, ISBN 978-3-356-01301-6 , p. 7280 .
• Wilhelm Kühlmann: On the profile of post-Reformation humanism in Pomerania: Zacharias Orth (approx. 1535–1579) and his poem of praise for Stralsund - with comments on the genre function of the "laus urbis". In: Pomerania in the early modern period. 1994, pp. 101-123; also in Wilhelm Kühlmann: From Humanism to the Late Enlightenment. Aesthetic and cultural-historical dimensions of early modern poetry and verse journalism in Germany. Edited by Joachim Telle, Friedrich Vollhardt, Hermann Wiegand. Berlin: de Gruyter 2006 ISBN 978-3-11-091071-1 , pp. 287-307 books.google .

Web links

• Publications by and about Zacharias Orth in VD 16 .
• Literature about Zacharias Orth in the state bibliography MV

Individual evidence

1. ↑ So Grewolls (lit.), Greifswald and Neubrandenburg have already been accepted (ADB)
2. ↑ Entry in the Rostock matriculation portal
3. ↑ Entry on the Baccalaureate in the Rostock matriculation portal
4. ↑ Entry on the Magister in the Rostock matriculation portal
5. ↑ In 1561 he became Gospodar of the Principality of Moldova ; on him see Ioan Iacob Heraclid in the English language Wikipedia and Konrad Gündisch: Transylvanian contacts and interests of the family a Lasco . In: Christoph Strohm (Ed.): Johannes a Lasco (1499 - 1560). Polish baron, humanist and European reformer. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2000, ISBN 3-16-147430-9 , pp. 199-218, especially p. 211
6. ↑ See the description of the holdings of the Stralsund archive library in the handbook of historical book holdings
7. ↑ See Klaus Graf's request for information to the city of Stralsund
8. ↑ No. 986 ( Memento of February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ): Biblia graeca. - Της καινής Διαθήκης άπαντα. - Novum Iesu Christi Testamentum, Graece. Basel, N. Brylinger, 1553. (17.5: 11.5 cm). 719 p. Blind checked Pig dr. d. Currently over wooden cover with two clasps, front cover with monogram "ZOLP M" and Dating 1557 , title page ; No. 1033 ( Memento from February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ): Δαβίδου προφήτου καὶ βασιλέως μέλος. - Psalterium Prophetae et regis Davidis, versibus Elegiacis redditum a Paulo Dolscio . Basel, J. Oporinus, 1555. (17:11 cm). 8 ll., 341 pp., 3 ll. Blind checked Pig dr. d. Currently with monogram "ZOL P" and Dating 1557.
9. ↑ Burkhard Kunkel: Niccolò Perotti: Cornucopiae sive Lingua Latinae (Basel 1521), in: Stralsunder Bücherschätze, Wiesbaden 2017, pp. 124–125.