Andreas Osiander

Andreas Osiander (1498–1552) was a theologian and reformer. He was born in 1498 in Gunzenhausen (Middle Franconia) and studied theology for example with Johannes Eck (1586–1543) in Ingolstadt from 1515 onwards. In 1520, he was ordained a priest and entered the Nuremberg Augustinian monastery as a teacher of Hebrew.

From 1522, he held the position of preacher at the Nuremberg church of Saint Lawrence. From this position, he had a decisive influence on the Reformation in Nuremberg and in the territories of the Hohenzollern. Until the 1530s, he was able to achieve by means of expert opinions and advice to the council of the imperial city that Nuremberg abided by the Lutheran Reformation. After a dispute with the council scribe Lazarus Spengler (1479–1534), his influence in Nuremberg diminished noticeably.

On several occasions, Osiander received commissions to write new ecclesiastical regulations, for example from the duchy of the Palatinate-Neuburg, from the Franconian margravies and from the imperial city of Nuremberg.

In 1548, the imperial city of Nuremberg accepted the Augsburg Interim which against Osiander’s advice was supposed to regulate the provisional treatment of the confessions until a planned complete reunification. Osiander left Nuremberg and went to Königsberg, where Duke Albrecht (1490–1568, 1525–1568 duke of Prussia) created a professorship in theology for him in 1549. After his death in 1552 his theology, which differed greatly from the Wittenberg doctrine, was rejected.