Stephan Gerlach ( 1546-1612)

Tulips are well known to be introduced from the Ottoman lands. How about the horse chesnut you see in a leisurely walk in the park. This is a convoluted story of Calvinists, Constantinople and a female pen pal of a botanist...

Mavi Boncuk |

Stephan Gerlach (b. December 26, 1546 in Knittlingen; d. January 30, 1612 in Tübingen) was a German Protestant theologian and pastor.

Gerlach was Magister in Tübingen in 1567. From 1573-1578 he served as embassy preacher and chaplain(1573-78) of the imperial envoys  Baron David Ungnad von Sonnegk[1]in Constantinople (1576-1582). 
His travelogue, a major source of the former Orient, was published more than 60 years after Gerlach's death, only in 1674,  in Frankfurt am Main. In his other publications he turned against Calvinists and Jesuits.

In 1578 Gerlach was außerordentlicher, in 1586 ordentlicher Professor der Theologie and in 1591 Dean(Dekan) of the collegiate church in Tübingen, in 1598 (or 1600) Vice Chancellor and Provost. 

SEE: 
Julius Hartmann: Gerlach, Stephan. In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Band 9, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, S. 23 .

Artikel Gerlach (Steph.). In: Christian Gottlieb Jöcher (Hrsg.): Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexicon, Bd. 2, Gleditsch, Leipzig 1750 (auch in anderen Ausgaben).

Artikel D.[oktor] Stephan Gerlach. In: Georg Serpilius: Georgii Serpilii Epitaphia. Oder Ehren-Gedächtnisse unterschiedlicher Theologorum, die in Schwaben gebohren worden. Seidel, Regensburg 1707.

[1] Baron David Ungnad sent horse chesnut[*] (to Vienna in 1576) and other seeds to Charles de l'Écluse  (Arras, February 19, 1526 – Leiden, April 4, 1609), L'Escluse, or Carolus Clusius, seigneur de Watènes, the Flemish doctor and pioneering botanist, perhaps the most influential of all 16th-century scientific horticulturists.

[*] Horse Chesnut: Aesculus hippocastanum is native to a small area in the Pindus Mountains mixed forests and Balkan mixed forests of South East Europe. The common name "horse-chestnut" (often unhyphenated) is reported as having originated from the erroneous belief that the tree was a kind of chestnut (though in fact only distantly related), together with the observation that eating the fruit cured horses of chest complaints despite this plant being poisonous to horses. Horse chestnut, was introduced to Philadelphia, USA in 1741.

SOURCE: The World of Carolus Clusius: Natural History in the Making, 1550-1610 By Florike Egmond