lives of the Caesars
Among all the Renaissance humanists and Reformation clerics who followed the fashion of translating their family names into Latin or Greek, some were luckier than others. I think the too blatantly obvious cases like Mercator or Piscator fell out of fashion pretty swiftly. Then there are the too difficult Greek names like Arthopoeus. I guess Caesar is a good middle way as it is memorable and not too trivial. There's also a justification in that the German word and name Kaiser is derived from Caesar, so rather than translating to a posh language, you could say they just reverted their name to its original version.
Anyhow, among the multiple clergymen that have popped up in the ancestry of Anna Katharina Andrae, there are also a few called Caesar, and I just can't resist the temptation to write their biographies under the title you see above.
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**Valentin Konstantin Caesar** (No. 70 in Anna Katharina Andrae's family tree)
Born in Suhl, County Henneberg (today Thuringia)
1585 vicar of Sien (Kr. Birkenfeld)
1593-98 vicar of Enkirch (Monatshefte 1914, 321-355)
In 1597 he was reported to be not strong enough for this tiring position, so he moved to become:
1598-1600 vicar of Dill
Married Sara, no further details of her are known. Their only known child was Catharina Caesar, who married Heinrich Orth (* ca. 1561 at Kirn, + … 1612/15, Braunsberg, see V-30 in the Orth genealogy). He was Amtmann in Merxheim and the son of the second Lutheran vicar of Kirn, Johann Balthasar Orth (IV-43).
**Martin Caesar** the vicar of Traben (1585-98), may have been Konstantin's brother or a close relative, as both were born in Suhl, according to the Enkirch article.
From 1586-1595, he was the vicar of Traben (the third since the Reformation). In his account of the parish of Traben 1560-1620 (Monatshefte 1917, 3-32), Friedrich Back doesn't say much about his tenure, but has several pages about how his successor Wenzeslaus Fend, vicar from 1595-1598, quarrelled both with him and with schoolmaster Musculus. Part of the problem was that Fend alleged that Martin Caesar was intimate with his maid. It is not clear at all why Caesar was still present at Traben during that period (in a different text, Back claimed he was moved to a place called Franken in the Eifel in 1595). The quarrels became so bad that the intervention of a single church inspector wasn't sufficient to call the vicar to order. In addition to Inspector Jacoby from Trarbach, the Duke also sent Inspector Johann Conon (his CV is coming up next week as it happens) to Traben to sort things out. Eventually, Fend was moved to Allenbach (Hunsrück).
In 1599 Martin Caesar was vicar of Irmenach.
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**Sixtus Caesar** (140.)
According to Penningroth, Sixtus Caesar, vicar of Demmingen and Salzungen, is "probably" father to Konstantin Caesar and possibly also to Martin who were both born in Thuringia. I found a Caesar family history where this Sixtus appears as many times great grand uncle, so I'll just adopt him as No. 140. and translate their biography:
He was born ca. 1522
In 1537 he enrolled as student at Wittenberg.
In 1542 he graduated as a magister, then became parson at Wersternach. After the death of his father in 1543 he looks after his mother and younger siblings.
Further positions:
1543 parson at Finningen
1545/46 Planverweser (sounds like a planning admin role) in Löpsingen
Diakon in Nördlingen (that is the town that was famously built into the crater a meteorite left 15 million years ago, which kind of provided a degree of natural fortification)
1548 After the Augsburg Interim he moves to Thuringia
1549-1552 vicar at Salzungen
Also enrolles at the University of Jena since 1549.
1553/54 Lauffen (Neckar)
1554/55 Kürnbach then Finningen
1558 good report from a visitation at Finningen.
1561 Demmingen
1566 appointed to a positin at the palace of Count Wolfgang of Zweibrücken/Pfalz, possibly in parallel to the position at Demmingen.
1578 celebrates 18 years as vicar of Demmingen, aged 56
1584 presumed to have died as the position is filled anew.
Merian view of Nördlingen.
Source: Wikipedia Von Martin Zeiller - Scan eines Original Buchs, Gemeinfrei,
**Johannes Keyser** (280.)
(listed as father of Sixtus and earliest ancestor in this Caesar family tree). Also listed on Gedbas.
born around 1480 in Nördlingen.
He served first as a Catholic then as a Protestant priest in Harburg / Ries. Married Barbara NN. They have at least ten children.
1518-25 Frühmesser in Harburg (this is a very Catholic thing, with a foundation set up to fund a priest reading the mass before everybody else goes to work)
9.8.1524 Son David Caesar born at Harburg. For the other 9 children there are only estimated birth years (interestingly, one site claims that eight of them were born in 1524).
1525-43 vicar in Harburg and Großsorheim, court preacher for the count Carl Wolfgang of Oettingen at Harburg.
1535 also listed as an assistant preacher in the town of in Nördlingen.
From 1538 Kapellan in the Frühmesshaus Großsorsheim.
Died 1543.
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> Long story short: A whole dynasty of clergymen.
Unfortunately, not very much is known about the wives of those Caesars! However, in other parts of this network of clergymen I am currentlly unravelling the connections are very much matrilinear, will blog about those separately.
What I find absolutely mindboggling is the fact that this is the third lineage that leads us to a protestant priest of the first hour, taking office with the Reformation. Johannes Keyser joins Peter Siegel, the first vicar of Kirn, and Johannes Andreae of Schönbach (the elder). (Oh, and coming up, one Diakon who made himself very unpopular by triggering the removal of a first-hour Lutheran vicar for Calvinist tendencies.)
Overall, including the Andreae lineage and the Caesars as possible/plausible ancestors, I now have 14 clergymen in the family tree. Of those, 13 are (possible) ancestors of the five Kauer sisters. One (Peter Siegel) is from their mother's side, the remaining dozen connects via the people mentioned in the Weiß Chronicles, so they are all ancestors of the teacher Christoph Gottlieb Weiß, the father of their paternal grandmother. There may be a couple more hiding in the bushes. Plus quite a few more among the many-times-great uncles (such as David and Martin Caesar, above).
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Confused about who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.
Leben der #Caesaren (nicht im Roemischen Reich sondern im Jahrhundert nach der #Reformation) proseandpassion.blogspot.com/2026/04/lives-of-caesars... #familiengeschichte #kirchengeschichte #pfarrer #sponheim #genealogie
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