Lucas David

Lucas (or Lukas) David (1503 – April 1583) was a German historian, who from ca. 1550 on compiled extensive volumes on Prussian history.

David was born in Olsztyn (Allenstein) in Poland). He studied at the University of Leipzig, where he also received a Magister degree. Despite having converted to Protestantism, he became the chancellor of Bishop Tiedemann Giese between 1540 and 1549. After Giese received the Diocese of Warmia, David joined the ducal court of Albert, Duke of Prussia, in Königsberg (Królewiec) in 1549, taking his oath on March 26, 1550.

Albert commissioned a work on the history of Prussia, mainly to counter the - in his view - biased Polish and Catholic works. However, he was only able to produce a recent history of Prussia before he died. His son, Albert Frederick, however, continued the efforts, and instructed David to compile a history of Prussia. This was also supported by various social classes, which believed that the Polish histories belittled Prussian achievements. Hence David researched documents of Prussian history, and started to write his Prussian Chronicles ("Preußische Chronik") from ca. 1575. While David utilized large parts of the work of Simon Grunau, he also frequently corrected errors by Grunau.

David married a wealthy widow in Leipzig. He instituted scholarships at the University of Leipzig, mainly for poor students from his hometown.

Before David was able to complete his chronicles, he died at Königsberg in 1583 at the age of 80. The chronicle ends with the events preceding the Battle of Grunwald (or Tannenberg) in 1410; other sources state that his works extend till 1475. His works were largely unknown to his contemporaries, and were re-discovered only around 1720, with another 100 years before its first publication in the years between 1812-17 in eight volumes. Since then he has become well known past the borders of his homeland for these Prussian Chronicles. He is ranked as a 'modern' historian, as he based his studies on historic sources.

The Prussica-Sammlung Trunz started by another Allenstein native, Dr. August Trunz (1875-1963), contains works by David. It is housed in the library of the University of Münster.

Works

Literature

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