Heinrich Steinhowel

Infobox Writer
name = Heinrich Steinhowel


imagesize =
caption =
pseudonym =
birthdate = 1412
birthplace = Weil
deathdate = 1482
deathplace = Ulm
occupation = translator
nationality = German
period = 15th century

"Heinrich Steinhowel" ("Steinhauel" or "Steinheil") was a Swabian author, humanist, and translator who was much inspired by the Italian Renaissance. His translations of medical treatises and fiction had a marked impact on Germans coming out of the Dark Ages. [ [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0038-7134(197904)54%3A2%3C384%3AHS%22SZT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G Heinrich Steinhowels "Griseldis": Studien zur Text] ]

Biography

Heinrich ("Henry") studied at the University of Vienna in 1429, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree on July 13, 1432, and eventually his Master's Degree in 1436. He moved to Padua in 1438 and studied canon law, but later devoted himself to medicine. He graduated in 1440. [ [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.lesekost.de/antik/HHL0607.htm&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=8&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DHeinrich%2BSteinhowel%2B%26start%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN Heinrich Steinhöwel] ] In 1442 he was an academic rector in Padua, and in 1444 he taught at the University of Heidelberg as "rector magnificus".

In 1449 Heinrich was a physician in Esslingen and a year later in Ulm. Sometime after 1460 he became the personal physician of Eberhard I, Duke of Württemberg. [ [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/germanica/Chronologie/15Jh/Steinhoewel/ste_intr.html&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=7&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DHeinrich%2BSteinhowel%2B%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG Bibliotheca Augustana] ]

Heinrich's fame comes, however, from translating a legendary biography description of the life of Aesop and Aesop's Fables which he put into a Latin-German encyclopedic version called "Ulmer Aesop" first published in Ulm in 1476. [ [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/desbillons/esop.html&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=4&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DHeinrich%2BSteinhowel%2B%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG Aesopus; Steinhöwel, Heinrich; Brant, Sebastian] ] In 1477-78 he published in Augsburg from Gunther Zainer a large edition of Aesop's Fables with many woodcuts. [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=ovNfLOAUMYEC&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=%22heinrich+steinhowel%22&source=web&ots=uiajhEBDEf&sig=Hc7RreLLVbfhfS3PQKCtcOSWles Fables of Power: Aesopian Writing and Political History By Annabel M. Patterson] ] In 1480 he published a German translation of Aesop's Fables based on fables of Avians, Babrius, Romulus, and Alfred [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=EQrxexF1k0QC&pg=PA279&lpg=PA279&dq=%22heinrich+steinhowel%22+%22aesop's+fables%22&source=web&ots=91eJM0OKZ5&sig=gwL45nLx_adSalMYdbDECp_NjOg Aesop's Fables By Aesop - Google books] ] which inspired other translations of later centuries in various languages worldwide. [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=nf_RkGxjERAC&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22heinrich+steinhowel%22&source=web&ots=DRekJXaa0Y&sig=9vhAlm0GeAtgkBHD-5mXI2W7dp8 Mastering Aesop: Medieval Education, Chaucer, and His Followers By Edward Wheatley] ]

Heinrich also translated many works of Petrarch and Boccaccio. In 1473 he published a translated version of Boccaccio's "De mulieribus claris" printed by Johann Zainer in Ulm. ["Gesamtkatalog der Wiegwendruche" (Leipzig, Hiersemann, 1925), ref. GW 4486 in [http://www.heliotropia.org/01-01/armstrong.pdf Armstrong paper] ] He also translated stories based on material of the works of Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini and Petrus Alphonsi. [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=EQrxexF1k0QC&pg=PA279&lpg=PA279&dq=%22heinrich+steinhowel%22+%22aesop's+fables%22&source=web&ots=91eJM0OKZ5&sig=gwL45nLx_adSalMYdbDECp_NjOg Aesop's Fables By Aesop - Google books] ] His material was popular not only in Germany but in England, France, and the Netherlands. Heinrich was the center of a circle of German humanists. [ [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.pohlw.de/literatur/sadl/renaiss/steinhoe.htm&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=9&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DHeinrich%2BSteinhowel%2B%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG Renaissance - Heinrich Steinhöwel] ]

Footnotes

References

Primary sources

* "Apollonius of Tire", 1471
* "German Chronicle", 1473
* "Mirror of human life" (Rodriguez Sanchez de Arevalo), 1472
* "Booklet from the pestilence", ("regimes Pestilentiae"), 1473
* "Guiscardo and Sigismunda" (translation of Boccaccio), 1473
* "Griseldis" (translation of the Latin of Boccaccio after Petrarch), 1473
* "History of the cruise Gottfried Duke" (translation of R. Monachus), 1461
* "Of the sinnrychen erluchten Wyben" (after Boccaccio's "De mulieribus claris"), 1473
* "Esopus" (fables of Aesop and Petrus Alfonsi and Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini), 1476-80

Secondary sources

* [http://www.bookrags.com/biography/heinrich-steinhowel-dlb Dictionary of Literary Biography on Heinrich Steinhowel]
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=lE2mDIMk5mAC&pg=PA299&lpg=PA299&dq=%22heinrich+steinhowel%22+%22aesop's+fables%22&source=web&ots=xyZ_H3MG-X&sig=6WaaAhljv-AdkR9_Ip-LUyOKzi8 Folktales of the Jews By Dov Noy, Ellen Frankel, Dan Ben-Amos]
*JewishEncyclopedia