Hutten Ulrichvon

Hutten, Ulrich von (1488-1523), son of a Franconian knight, born near F'ulda, where he was educated in a Benedictine monastery. From 1504-1514 he lived a wandering, unsettled life as a humanist student and poet. He then secured the patronage of Archbishop Albert of Brandenburg, Elector of Mainz. The following year he devoted himself to satirising his cousin's murderer, Ulrich von Wurtemberg, and was made laureate of the Empire 1517. From 1519 he tried to recommend Luther's tenets to the Emperor Charles V., the aristocracy, and the hierarchy, and also inspired and joined in the efforts of Von Sickingen to gain ascendency for the Ritterstand (the knightly order) by overthrowing the princes and nobles of the empire. His devotion to these two causes proved his ruin. On Von Sickingen's defeat and death (1523), Von Hutten fled to Basle and appealed to Erasmus for help. Erasmus refused to see him. Thence ensued a bitter and contemptible controversy, which lasted until, while under the protection of Zwinglius, Von Hutten died on an islet in the Lake of Zurich. He was immoral, vain, and restless, but withal chivalrous and patriotic. He wrote much in Latin and German, both prose and verse. He was no doubt a substantial contributor to the famous satire on the ignorance of the monks and friars, Epistolce Obscurorum Viroruin (1515-1517), provoked by the attack of the Cologne theologians on Reuchlin and his Augenspiegel. The writings issued under his own name, with all their faults, promoted enlightenment and the development of literary taste in Germany.