Caspar Schütz

Caspar contactor ( * ca 1540 in Eisleben, † September 16, 1594 in Danzig) was a Prussian historian.

As a professor of poetry at the University of Königsberg ( 1562-1565 ) he developed an interest in the history of Prussia. He was town clerk of Gdansk and collected old magazines. His main work was published in 1592 in Zerbst, the Historia Rerum Prussicarum or "truthful description of the land Prussia in 10 books from the beginning to the year 1525 ". Duke Albrecht of Brandenburg Lucas David had commissioned the drafting of a Prussian country chronicle, but he was dissatisfied with its sluggish functioning. He sought, therefore, to win Caspar contactor for this task. He should write a kind of ultimate Prussian Chronicle; the Duke efforts to the procurement of source texts for the ducal castle library in Königsberg ran out especially on this large-scale project. In December 1562 Schütz was appointed professor of poetry at the University of Konigsberg. Even in this position, in 1563, Schütz published a first book on the history of Prussia: Prussiae liber primus sermone Ligato - a Latin verse text. 1564, he left Königsberg and took over in Gdansk, the Office of the lowest city clerk. His work on the Prussian Chronicle, he continued, even if it the Königsberg government now refused access to the manuscript of David Lucas.

After the initial pressure of the Historia Rerum Prussicarum book in Latin, was printed in 1599 in German language by David Chytraeus the extended Historia Rerum Prussicarum of Caspar contactor.

Even more historians continued his work, such as in the 1720s Gottfried Lengnich.