Michael Maestlin place of birth Göppingen
Early life and family
Maestlin was born on September 30, 1550 in Göppingen, a small town in Southern Germany, about 50 kilometers east of Tübingen. The son of Jakob Maestlin and Dorothea Simon, Michael Maestlin was born into a Protestant family. Maestlin had an older sister named Elisabeth and a younger brother named Matthäus. The original family name of the Maestlin was Leckher or Legecker and they lived in the village of Boll, just a few kilometers south of Göppingen (Decker 103). In his autobiography, Maestlin recounts how the family name of Legecker became Mästlin. He claims that one of his ancestors was given this as a nickname when an old blind woman touched him and exclaimed "Wie bist du doch so mast und feist! Du bist ein rechter Mästlin!" This roughly translates to "How are you so large and plump? You rightly are a fatso!"Maestlin married Margarete Grüniger on 9 April 1577. There is little information on his children from this marriage. However, it is known that he had at least three sons, Ludwig, Michael and Johann Georg, and at least three daughters, Margareta, Dorothea Ursula and Anna Maria. In 1588, Margarete died at the age of 37, potentially due to complications from child birth. This untimely death left several children under Maestlin's care and could have influenced his decision to remarry the following year. In 1589, Maestlin married Margarete Burkhardt. Maestlin and Burkhardt had eight children together. In a 1589 letter to Johannes Kepler, Maestlin recounts how the death of his month-old son, August, deeply troubled him.
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