Herwart served as chancellor to the Duke of Bavaria,[1] and was regarded by the Bavarian aristocracy as an effective intermediary during the turbulent transition from the reign of Duke Wilhelm V to that of his successor, Maximilian I.
[2] Herwart's fields as a scholar were astronomy[broken anchor], chronology, mathematics and philology.
"[4] His extant correspondence with Kepler covers a period from 1597 to 1611 and includes more than 90 letters.
A sample exchange, on an astronomical passage from the Neronian poet Lucan, is available online in English translation.
Herwart published a multiplication table in a folio volume of more than a thousand pages, Tabulae arithmeticae προσθαφαιρἐσεως universales, (Munich, 1610).