The Life of Hermann Poetzlinger

Born in or near Bayreuth around 1420, Hermann Poetzlinger was a member of an Upper Franconian family that had risen in social status through the fourteenth century, partly through the patronage of the margraves of Brandenburg. He became a priest, a scholar and a schoolteacher. Having been ordained, he served at various times as priest of the parishes of Auerbach, Erbendorf, Neuhausen (near Landshut) and Gebenbach, and was a canon of the collegiate church of the Holy Spirit at Essing (in the Altmühltal). Between 1436 and 1439 he studied the liberal arts at the University of Vienna, where he obtained a BA degree, and by 1448 he had become master of the school run by the Benedictine monastery of St. Emmeram in Regensburg. He remained attached to the monastery and to the town of Regensburg for the rest of his life, apart from a short period (perhaps two years) of further study at the University of Leipzig, beginning in the winter of 1456/57. Towards the end of his life (he died on 20 March 1469) he exchanged most of his worldly goods for a precaria (prebend) at St. Emmeram, which enabled him to spend his last years living under their shelter in a house next to the school at which he had taught.