Hermann Conring (November 9, 1606 – December 12, 1681) was a North German intellectual. He made significant contributions to the study of medicine, politics and law. November 9 is the 313th day of the year (314th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 52 days remaining. ... Events January 27 - The trial of Guy Fawkes and other conspirators begins ending in their execution on January 31 May 17 - Supporters of Vasili Shusky invade the Kremlin and kill Premier Dmitri December 26 - Shakespeares King Lear performed in court Storm buries a village of St Ismails near... December 12 is the 346th day (347th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with 19 days remaining. ... Events March 4 - Charles II of England grants a land charter to William Penn for the area that will later become Pennsylvania. ...

Descended from Lutheran clergy on both sides of his family, second-youngest of ten children, Conring showed early promise as a student. During his life as a professor in North Germany, Conring addressed himself first to medicine, producing significant studies on blood circulation, and later in his career addressed himself to politics. The Lutheran movement is a group of denominations of Protestant Christianity by the original definition. ...

Early life

Conring was born in Norden, a coastal town in East Frisia, a territory ruled at that time by the counts of Cirksena. Like many areas of what would later become Germany, Conring's homeland exhibited considerable religious variety and strife. Lutheran in the countryside (and in the piety of its counts), East Frisia nonetheless sheltered a bastion of Calvinism in its chief city, Emden. Conring and his family were no strangers to confessional altercations. Many of Conring's forebears were ministers, and his father and paternal grandfather, in particular, were apparently compelled to change their circumstances on several occasions in response to Protestant religious conflict. Norden is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, on the North Sea shore. ... The landscape to the north of Greetsiel, in East Frisia. ... List of Counts of Ostfriesland (East Frisia) from the Cirksena family. ... Emden is a city and seaport in the northwest of Germany, on river Ems. ...

Conring was one of ten siblings, two of whom died in infancy, six more of whom died of the plague in 1611. Bubonic plague is the best-known variant of the deadly infectious disease plague, which is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis. ... Events June 23 - Henry Hudsons crew maroons him, his son and 7 others in a boat November 1 - At Whitehall Palace in London, William Shakespeares romantic comedy The Tempest is presented for the first time. ...

Schooling

Conring began his schooling early, as befit a descendant of literate clerical forebears, entering school in Norden at the age of six, and beginning his studies in Latin a year later. About ninety years earlier, Luther had bestowed a powerful legitimacy upon the German language with his translation of the Bible into German, but, as in other European countries, Latin remained the official language of learning for centuries. By the age of 14, Conring had developed into a skilled Latinist, broadly familiar with ancient classical writings and with the leading Latin writers of his own day and region. Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in Latium, the region immediately surrounding Rome. ... Martin Luther (November 10, 1483 – February 18, 1546) was a German monk,[1] priest, professor, theologian, and church reformer. ... German (called Deutsch in German; in German the term germanisch is equivalent to English Germanic), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and is one of the worlds major languages. ...

In 1620, at the age of 14, Conring began to take courses in the philosophy curriculum at the university of Helmstedt, one of the leading northern European universities of its day, where he would study for the next five years. University of Helmstedt in the 17th century The University of Helmstedt, official Latin name: Academia Julia (Julius University), was a university in Helmstedt, Brunswick-Lüneburg, Holy Roman Empire, that existed from 1576 until 1810. ... Representation of a university class, 1350s. ...

Teaching

Lindenfeld^[1] calls Conring a Neo-Aristotelian. The term philosophy meant something rather different in his time. It referred to a branch of inquiry that sought chiefly to explicate law, religion and politics in terms laid down by ancient thinkers, particularly Aristotle, who in Conring's circles would often have been known simply as "the philosopher". Lindenfeld^[2] says that in 1660 Conring was the first to lecture on Statistik, the forerunner of modern government statistics; but the topic was political science. Aristotle (Greek: Aristotélēs) (384 BC – March 7, 322 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ...

Reference

• Alberto Jori (2006), Hermann Conring (1606-1681): Der Begründer der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte. Mit Anhang "In Aristotelis laudem oratio prima" (Originalfassung) und "De Origine Juris Germanici" (Auszüge).

• David F. Lindenfeld (1997), The Practical Imagination: The German Sciences of State in the Nineteenth Century

Notes

1. ^ p.18
2. ^ p.20