Ulrich von Hutten

Ulrich von Hutten
Ulrich von Hutten (by Erhard Schön, ca. 1522)
Born	21 April 1488 Burg Steckelberg, near Schlüchtern, Hesse
Died	29 August 1523 (age 35) Ufenau on Lake Zurich
Occupation	Monk, Knight, Writer
Education	Theology
Alma mater	University of Greifswald
Period	Reformation
Literary movement	Reformation, Renaissance humanism, Italian Renaissance
Notable works	Epistolae obscurorum virorum De Morbo Gallico Ars versificandi Nemo

Ulrich von Hutten (21 April 1488 – 29 August 1523) was a German scholar, poet, satirist and reformer. He was an outspoken critic of the Roman Catholic Church and a bridge between the Renaissance humanists and the Lutheran Reformation. He was a leader of the Imperial Knights of the Holy Roman Empire.

His life may be divided into four parts: his youth and cloister life (1488–1504); his wanderings in pursuit of knowledge (1504–1515); his strife with Ulrich of Württemberg (1515–1519); and his connection with the Reformation (1510–1523).

Hutten was born in Steckelberg Castle, now in Schlüchtern, Hesse. He was the eldest son of a poor and not undistinguished knightly family. As he was small of stature and sickly his father destined him for the cloister, and, when he was ten years old, his father placed him at the nearby Benedictine monastery in Fulda to be educated as a monk. The monastic school there was highly regarded in Germany, and he received an excellent education. However, he disliked the mode of life, and in 1505 fled to Cologne. He thus obtained his freedom, but incurred the undying anger of his father.

In Cologne, Hutten met Hoogstraten, Johannes Rhagius (also known as Johannes Aesticampianus), and other scholars and poets. In 1506, he went to Erfurt, but soon after rejoined Rhagius at Frankfurt an der Oder where a new university was opening. There he took his master's degree and published his first poem. In 1507, he followed Rhagius to Leipzig. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica reported that, in 1508, a shipwrecked beggar on the Pomeranian coast, while the New International Encyclopedia described him as stricken down with the pestilence and recovering.