Chapter 4 - A Crucial Year At Leiden University

Summary

ARRIVAL IN LEIDEN

In the summer of 1636, MARGGRAFE left Stettin and embarked on a ship to Holland with the intention to enter Leiden University. He must have had good reasons to come, for the year before the city of Leiden experienced one of the worst plague epidemics in its entire history, killing a quarter of its population. In 1635 and early 1636 many students had fled the town to escape the disease. Nevertheless, on 11 September GEORG MARGGRAFE matriculated at the University, officially as a student of medicine (fig. 18). In Leiden, MARGGRAFE first moved in with a certain Dirck Eduwaer, a boarding house owner at the Pieterskerkkoorsteeg (no. 1 on fig. 19 ). But rather soon MARGGRAFE appears to have moved to another, probably cheaper, accommodation. His Vitae states that a mathematician, SAMUEL CAROLUS KECHEL AB HOLLESTEYN, was his ‘chamber-fellow’. Other documents show that they rented a room at the house of Griettie Bailly on the Rapenburg, just across the observatory, which at the time was called Theatrum Astronomicum (nos. 2 and 3 on fig. 19). Kechel, who had entered Leiden University in 1632, was born in Prague in 1611, so he was almost the same age as MARGGRAFE and came likewise from central Europe. They shared an interest in astronomy, so it seems plausible that they quickly became friends.

At first sight it seems that MARGGRAFE intended to finish his medical studies in Leiden, by getting a formal degree as a Medical Doctor, just as his Wittenberg study friend FRIEDRICH GÖBEL had done in Frankfurt at the Oder, the year before. However, if we look more closely how MARGGRAFE’s career progressed until then, having worked as a computational astronomer for two years, it seems more likely that MARGGRAFE chose this Dutch university mainly for astronomical reasons.