Andrea, Johann Valentin

ANDREÄ, JOHANN VALENTIN: Theologian and satirist, grandson of Jakob Andreä; b. at Herrenberg, near Tübingen, Württemberg, Aug. 17, 1586; d. at Stuttgart June 27, 1654. In 1601 he entered the University of Tübingen, where his reading covered a vast range on the mathematical sciences, language, philosophy, theology, music, and art. After living for a number of years as tutor in noble families and traveling extensively in France, Switzerland, Austria, and Italy, he became deacon at Vaihingen, Württemberg, in 1614. His duties gave him leisure for prolific authorship, and forty of his writings (numbering about 100 in all) were produced during his six years’ sojourn in Vaihingen. In 1612 he published De christiani cosmoxeni genitura, a eulogy of early Christianity, and Die Christenburg, an epic allegory dealing with the struggles and ultimate triumph of the Christian soul. These were followed by Turbo (1616), a comedy in which pedantry was wittily satirized, and Menippus (1618), of which worldly folly was the subject. In 1619 he published Reipublicæ christianopolitanæ descriptio, an account of an ideal Christian state after the manner of More’s Utopia and Campanella’s City of the Sun. In all of these Andreä appears as a foe of sectarianism and intolerance, and with wit and energy pleads for a union of denominations on the basis of the fundamental Christian teachings. In 1614 there appeared anonymously Fama fraternitatis Roseæ Crucis, followed the next year by Confessio fraternitatis Roseæ Crucis, satires on the astrological and mystic agitations of the time. Andreä, whose authorship of the two pamphlets is more than probable, though not established beyond doubt, later declared that the Order of the Rosicrucians was a myth and a product of his own brain; nevertheless he has been spoken of as the founder or restorer of that fraternity.

From 1620 to 1639 Andreä was superintendent at Calw, displaying in the unhappy days of the Thirty Years’ war heroic devotion to duty. In 1634 Calw was sacked, and of its 4,000 inhabitants only 1,500 escaped the sword, while the plague carried off nearly one-half of the remainder. Andreä worked unceasingly among the dying, uniting in himself the duties of physician, minister, and grave-digger, and when the progress of the infection had been checked he set to work resolutely to restore law and order in the devastated city. In 1639 he was called to Stuttgart as court preacher with a seat in the Consistorium. Upon him fell the task of reorganizing the church system and the schools which had shared in the ruin that the war had brought. An admirer of the Genevan system of government, he attempted to introduce its principal features into the country, but failed because of the opposition of his fellow members in the Consistorium. He was partially successful, however, in establishing general and local conventions composed of government officials and members of the clergy for the enforcement of the church laws. The public regulation of private morals was a cardinal principle with him through life, and found expression in his Theophilus, written in 1622 and published in 1649. This work contains 171 also a dissertation on the education of the young that entitles Andreä to serious consideration as a predecessor of Pestalozzi. In 1650 Andreä became general superintendent in Württemberg, but was compelled by failing health to resign his office.

(H. Hölscher).

Bibliography: His autobiography was published in Germ. by D. C. Seyboldt in 1799, and in the original Latin by F. H. Rheinwald, Berlin, 1849. Consult also W. Hossbach, J. V. Andreä und rein Zeitalter, Berlin, 1819; K. Hüllemann, V. Andreae als Pädagog, 2 vols., Leipsic, 1884-93; J. P. Glöckler, J. V. Andreä, Stuttgart, 1886; A. Landenberger, J. V. Andreae, Barmen, 1886; P. Wurm, J. V. Andreä, Calw, 1887.