Climbing the Social Ladder

Abstract

Abstract Johannes Faulhaber (1580–1635) is one of the most prominent German Rechenmeister. Youngest son of a weaver in Ulm, after an apprenticeship he opened his own German writing and reckoning school in 1600 in Ulm. Ambitious to improve his social standing beyond that of an ordinary Rechenmeister, he followed two strategies: to be acknowledged as a prophet sent in order to communicate God’s will to the world, and, more down to earth, to become known to those in power and eventually to become their counsellor. Even if he never gave up his claim to be a prophet, the negative reaction of Protestant church officials to his ostensibly successful prediction of a comet in 1618 convinced him eventually to give up this way of improving his status. Faulhaber followed the second strategy by constantly expanding his expertise in order to sell his skill and knowledge in an appropriate form on the market for scientific goods. By way of advertising what he had to offer, he took advantage of a predominant contemporary attitude in Germany according to which different-sounding expressions for the same thing could be used to suggest higher value. This is shown, for example, with his first publication of a collection of 160 cubic problems, which led to a conflict with Peter Roth. And on the back of the first years of the Thirty Years’ War he eventually became an expert on fortification, which secured him a corresponding high social position in Ulm.