Background
Born in Eichstätt, Bavaria, the son of a lawyer, Doctor Johannes Pirckheimer, he was educated in Italy, studying law at Padua and Pavia for seven years.
Born in Eichstätt, Bavaria, the son of a lawyer, Doctor Johannes Pirckheimer, he was educated in Italy, studying law at Padua and Pavia for seven years.
He probably met Dürer in 1495. He also was consulted by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I on literary matters. He translated many classical texts into German (as well as Greek texts into Latin), and was a believer in translating "by the sense" rather than over-literally, a great question of the day.
Among other works, he edited and had published an edition of Ptolemy"s Geographia in 1525.
In 1499 Pirckheimer was chosen by the City Council to command their contingent of troops in the Imperial army during the Swabian War against the Swiss. On his return he was presented with a gold cup by the City.
This may be referred to in Dürer"s engraving Nemesis of about 1502. After the death in 1560 of the last of Dürer"s immediate family Pirckheimer"s grandson Willibald Imhoff bought the remaining Dürer collections and papers.
Most of Pirckheimer"s own library, famous in its day, was sold by another Imhoff descendent to the Earl of Arundel in 1636.
Much of this passed via the collection of Sir Hans Sloane to the British Library. He died in Nuremberg, aged 60. Like Dürer, he is buried in the cemetery of the Johannis-kirche in Nuremberg.
He was a member of a group of Nuremberg humanists including Conrad Celtis, Sebald Schreyer, and Hartmann Schedel (author of the Nuremberg Chronicle).