Thomas Platter

Thomas Platter the Elder ( born February 10, 1499 Bern / Wallis, † January 26, 1582 in Basel ) was a humanist scholar and left an autobiography in which he and his exemplary career of the shepherd child and moving students to the followers of the Reformation, Book Printer teacher of ancient languages ​​in Basel describes.

Life

Thomas Platter was born according to its own statements, on February 10, 1499 Bern in Valais. His early late father Anthoni Platter coincided each fall with wool, which he bought in the area of ​​Berne, a. He had several brothers and sisters from his mother Ammili Summermatter later marriages half-siblings.

In his autobiography he describes his rough childhood in the Pennine hills, which he spent as an orphan, goat and cow-puncher with relatives. An encounter with a vulture, of which the child half feared, half hoping to be carried away over the mountains, and a miracle, it is maintained at the God in a deep canyon before night fall, were part of that time. Although relatives early recognized his talent and were of the opinion that it would something special from the lad be, it fell out of poverty initially hard to get to education. As a traveling student and servant of an older Bach musicians he received partly in precarious conditions with singing and begging, he wandered for eight years up to Meissen, Silesia, Poland and Hungary. It was not until 1523 he was in Zurich as a student and foster son of Oswald Myconius at the Dame Cathedral School a regular instruction. Deeply impressed by the preaching of Ulrich Zwingli, he worked as a private teacher soon for Greek and Hebrew, and learned next to the basics of the craft Seiler. To 1529 he married Anni Dietschin Dübendorf, which he had learned as a maid at Oswald Myconius. After living in the Valais and in Pruntrut he settled after he had become in 1531 an eyewitness to the Battle of Kappel, settled in Basel. Here he took over the printing of Andreas Cratander and worked as a teacher of Greek and finally as Head of School. His ascent was that he now gained several houses in the city as well as an estate. After the death of his first wife, he married again in 1572, with Hester Gross, the daughter of Nicolaus Mega Santander, who worked as a secular priest in Lutzelfluh. He died in 1582, after ten years before his eldest son Felix, as a budding and later widely known physician, he accompanied his career closely, had dedicated his life description. His son Thomas Platter the Younger, who was partially raised by his brother Felix looked as professor of medicine and rector of the University of Basel. The grave Thomas Platters can still be seen in the cloister of Basel Cathedral today.

Expenditure

• Thomas Platter and Felix Platter: 2 car biographies. A contribution to the social history of the XVI. Century Edited by D. A. Fechter. Basel 1840 ( digitized )
• Thomas Platter: biography. Published by Alfred Hartmann, 3rd edition, Basel 2006, ISBN 978-3-7965-1372-5