His university career, first at Ingolstadt (1595‑1596) and then at Altdorf bei Nürnberg (1597‑1598), was cut short by his poverty, from which he suffered all his life and which was the main cause of his wanderings.
In 1604 he entered the service of the Baron von Hohensax, the possessor of the Codex Manesse, the precious manuscript volume of old German Minnesänger of which Goldast published excerpts.
In 1611 he was appointed councillor at the court of Saxe-Weimar, and in 1615 he entered the service of Graf Ernst von Schaumburg at Buckeburg.
In 1624 he was forced by developments in the Thirty Years War to retire to Bremen; there in 1625 he deposited his library in that of the town,[a] he himself returning to Frankfurt.
[1] His immense industry is shown by the fact that his biographer, Heinrich Christian Senckenberg, gives a list of 65 works published or written by him, some extending to several substantial volumes.