Johannes Kepler in Regensburg

Here, at Keplerstraße 5, Johannes Kepler died on 15 November 1630. The house was then the Gasthof zum goldenen Falken, the Golden Falcon inn. He had come briefly, for the Reichstag, the Imperial Diet. The city writes that in the last ten days of his life he had hoped to speak with Emperor Ferdinand II about unpaid salary. That meeting never took place. He fell ill and died, at the age of 58. Between 1959 and 1961 the listed house was turned into a museum. The interiors are reconstructed in 17th-century style, not the original rooms at his death. On display are books, instruments and models of Kepler's three laws, on how the planets move in ellipses around the sun. In 2024 the house was renovated and made accessible. It is open Tuesday to Sunday and on public holidays from 10 am to 4 pm, closed on Mondays. Admission is 5 euros, free on the first Sunday of the month. Public tours run on Saturday and Sunday at 11.30 am. Until the end of November 2026 the lift is out of service. For this walk, the view from outside is enough. If you have time, you can come back later.

Only a few steps further on, in the house at Keplerstraße 2, Kepler had lived at an earlier date. The official list of monuments records it as his home in the years 1626 to 1628. The street was then called Donaustraße, Danube Street. In those years Kepler lived mainly in Ulm, where the Rudolphine Tables were printed in 1627, and in 1628 he moved to Sagan to enter the service of Wallenstein. In Regensburg he housed his family from time to time. Regensburg was not a chance stop for him. In 1613 he was here as an expert on the calendar question at the Imperial Diet. In 1620 his family came here while he went to Württemberg to defend his mother, who had been accused of witchcraft. A daughter was born in Regensburg in 1621. His mother was acquitted. Kepler did not marry in this city, but in Graz in 1597 and in Eferding, near Linz, in 1613. His second wife, Susanna, also died in Regensburg, in 1636.

From here you can see the Steinerne Brücke, the Stone Bridge, and the Danube, close to the houses where Kepler lived and died. Today's Keplerstraße followed the river and was called Donaustraße, Danube Street, a lane of merchants and innkeepers. In 1630 Kepler came on horseback from Sagan. Whether he entered the city across this bridge is not recorded. What is certain is that this was the quarter where he found lodging. The bridge itself dates from the 12th century and is part of the UNESCO World Heritage site. Other walks tell its building history in more detail. For this tour, what matters is the place by the water: the Protestant trading and diet city in which Kepler sought safety and, at the end, a room. Stay a moment, then we go on to the town hall, the real object of his last journey.

The Reichstage, the Imperial Diets, met in the Altes Rathaus, the Old Town Hall. That is why Kepler came to Regensburg in 1630. He had been in Sagan in the service of Wallenstein and wanted to pursue his unpaid imperial salary in person at the Diet. The city puts it this way: he had hoped to speak with Emperor Ferdinand II about his pay. No settlement was reached. Kepler had already been here on related business in 1613, as an expert when the Diet discussed the calendar dispute. The Protestant estates did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1700. Two journeys, the same place: once as an adviser, the last time as a creditor of the court. Other tours describe the town hall and the Imperial Hall in more detail. For Kepler, what matters is that the assembly of the Empire sat here, and that is why he set out once more in 1630.

The Neupfarrkirche, the New Parish Church, had been the first parish church of the Protestant imperial city since the Reformation of 1542. For Kepler, who was Lutheran, that mattered. The city describes Regensburg as a safe refuge for him in the years of the Counter-Reformation. He had acquaintances here, and he housed his family here. Kepler remained in his faith even after he was excluded from communion in 1612, because he would not sign the Formula of Concord, a Lutheran statement of doctrine. That did not happen in Regensburg, but it helps explain why a Protestant imperial city mattered to him. At his deathbed was the Protestant clergyman Christoph Sigmund Donauer. A few lanes away, on Gesandtenstraße, the Dreieinigkeitskirche, Holy Trinity Church, was then under construction, from 1627 to December 1631, the first church in southern Germany built specifically as a Protestant church. It was not yet finished when Kepler died. He was not buried at this church, but outside the walls, in the Petersfriedhof, St Peter's Cemetery.

This round temple on Fürst-Anselm-Allee commemorates Kepler, not far from the former Petersfriedhof, St Peter's Cemetery. Kepler was buried there on 17 November 1630. The grave is lost. The cemetery was damaged in the Thirty Years' War; it is no longer possible to say exactly when the burial place was destroyed. The Kepler-Gesellschaft, the Kepler Society, names the year 1632. The monument was built in 1808 and unveiled on 27 December, Kepler's 237th birthday, at first near the supposed site of the grave. In 1859 it was moved, when the axis to the new main railway station was laid out. Emanuel d'Herigoyen designed the round temple. A bust of Kepler stands on a pedestal of red marble; it is a copy. A relief by Johann Heinrich von Dannecker shows Kepler as a genius lifting the veil of Urania. The walk ends not at a surviving grave, but at a place of memory. Where Kepler lies in Regensburg, we do not know.