Rostock - Tycho Brahe

With more than 200.000 inhabitants Rostock is the largest city in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Small Slavic settlements existed already in the 8th century. A settlement named Roztok was founded in the 11th century by Polabian Slavs. This town was burnt down by troops of the Danish king Valdemar I in 1161. Afterwards the place was settled by German traders.

After 1226 Rostock became the seat of the Lordship of Rostock.

In the 1250s the city became a member of the Hanseatic League. In the 14th century it was a powerful seaport town with 12,000 inhabitants and the largest city in Mecklenburg. Ships for cruising the Baltic Sea were constructed in Rostock. Until the last Hansa Convention in 1669, Rostock took a leading role in the Baltic Sea behind Lübeck.

In 1419, the University of Rostock was founded, the oldest university in the Baltic Sea area.

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Tycho Brahe (1546 - 1601) was one of the most important astronomers of his time. His system correctly saw the Moon as orbiting Earth, and the planets as orbiting the Sun. He was the last of the major astronomers to work without the aid of telescopes for his observations.

He was enrolled at the University of Copenhagen at the age of twelve. In the following years, he continued his studies at the universities of Leipzig, Wittenberg, Rostock and Basel.

At the age of 20, Brahe lost a large part of his nose at the hands of his cousin in a duel in Rostock, the cause of which was a dispute over a mathematical formula. According to tradition, he wore a prosthetic nose made of a gold-silver alloy.