Conrad Celtis

Celtis, Conrad 

(also C. Celtes; real name Konrad Pickel). Born Feb. 1, 1459, in Wipfeld, Franconia; died Feb. 4, 1508, in Vienna. German humanist and writer. Wrote in Latin.

Celtis was educated in Cologne, Heidelberg, and Leipzig. In 1487 he was named Germany’s first poet laureate. He lived in Italy from 1487 to 1489 and in Kraków from 1489 to 1491. He became a professor in Ingolstadt in 1491 and in Vienna in 1497. During his residence in Vienna the city developed into an important center of humanism. Celtis’s first work was Ars versificandi et carminum (The Art of Versification and Poesy; 1486). His play Ludus Dianae (Diana’s Game; 1501), a musical allegory based on a mythological theme, and his amatory lyrics, including many odes, were imbued with the joyous spirit of the Renaissance.

Celtis founded several literary societies in Germany and Austria. He attempted to bring together various humanists to produce a scholarly historicogeographic description of Germany; only Celtis’s description of Nuremberg (published 1922) was completed. A collector and publisher of old texts, Celtis published in 1501 a manuscript, found by him, by Hroswitha of Gandersheim. Celtis supported the unification of Germany and condemned the strife among the German princes.

WORKS

Oratio in gymnasio in Ingelstadio. Edited by J. Rupprich. Leipzig, 1932.
In Russian translation:
“K Apollonu,” “O drevnosti” (poems). Inostrannaia literatura, 1973, no. 8.

REFERENCES

Istoriia nemetskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow, 1962. Pages 207–09.
Purishev, B. Ocherki nemetskoi literatury XV–XVII v. Moscow, 1955. Pages 30–34.