Cultural Inspirations of Students from Silesia (16th – 17th Centuries)

In the 16th and 17th centuries, European universities attracted students with their outstanding professors and modern educational methods. The steadily expanding University of Padua was also attractive to students from Silesia. Most of these students enrolled at the university and joined the German Nation of artists or jurists. The matriculation books of the these nations include the names of notable figures such as the physician and librarian Johann Dornau, the physician Tobias Pontanus, the botanist Achilles Cromer, the lawyer and philosopher Hans Heinrich I von Hochberg, and the physician Johann Crato von Krafftheim. Their résumés attest to the influence of educational travel on career development.