Hermann Conring was a German intellectual. He made significant contributions to the study of medicine, politics and law.

Descended from Lutheran clergy on both sides of his family, second-youngest of ten children, Conring showed early promise as a student. During his life as a professor in North Germany, Conring addressed himself first to medicine, producing significant studies on blood circulation, and later in his career addressed himself to politics.

Early life

Conring was born in Norden

Norden, Lower Saxony

Norden is a town in the district of Aurich, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the North Sea shore, in East Frisia.-External links:* *...

, a coastal town in East Frisia

East Frisia

East Frisia or Eastern Friesland is a coastal region in the northwest of the German federal state of Lower Saxony....

, a territory ruled at that time by the counts of Cirksena. Like many areas of what would later become Germany, Conring's homeland exhibited considerable religious variety and strife. Lutheran in the countryside (and in the piety of its counts), East Frisia nonetheless sheltered a bastion of Calvinism in its chief city, Emden

Emden

Emden is a city and seaport in the northwest of Germany, on the river Ems. It is the main city of the region of East Frisia; in 2006, the city had a total population of 51,692.-History:...

. Conring and his family were no strangers to confessional altercations. Many of Conring's forebears were ministers, and his father and paternal grandfather, in particular, were apparently compelled to change their circumstances on several occasions in response to Protestant religious conflict.

Conring was one of ten siblings, two of whom died in infancy, six more of whom died of the plague

Bubonic plague

Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...

 in 1611.

Schooling

Conring began his schooling early, as befit a descendant of literate clerical forebears, entering school in Norden at the age of six, and beginning his studies in Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 a year later. About ninety years earlier, Luther

Martin Luther

Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...

 had bestowed a powerful legitimacy upon the German language

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 with his translation of the Bible into German

Luther Bible

The Luther Bible is a German Bible translation by Martin Luther, first printed with both testaments in 1534. This translation became a force in shaping the Modern High German language. The project absorbed Luther's later years. The new translation was very widely disseminated thanks to the printing...

, but, as in other European countries, Latin remained the official language of learning for centuries. By the age of 14, Conring had developed into a skilled Latinist, broadly familiar with ancient classical writings and with the leading Latin writers of his own day and region.

In 1620, at the age of 14, Conring began to take courses in the philosophy curriculum at the university of Helmstedt

University of Helmstedt

The University of Helmstedt, official Latin name: Academia Julia , was a university in Helmstedt in the Duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel that existed from 1576 until 1810....

, one of the leading northern European universities

University

A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...

 of its day, where he would study for the next five years.

Teaching

Lindenfeld calls Conring a Neo-Aristotelian. The term philosophy meant something rather different in his time. It referred to a branch of inquiry that sought chiefly to explicate law, religion and politics in terms laid down by ancient thinkers, particularly Aristotle

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...

, who in Conring's circles would often have been known simply as "the philosopher". Lindenfeld says that in 1660 Conring was the first to lecture on Statistik, the forerunner of modern government statistics; but the topic was political science.

Further reading