[3] He also put together a plan to create a "German Arts School", which would promote practical awareness with hands-on craftsmanship activities.
[3] It is evident from these and from his subsequent writings and activities that he was fully engaged in the passionate sectarian disputes which were erupting across much of western Europe at the time.
His progressive approach to schooling continued in Magdeburg where initial teaching took place in the students' mother tongue, and instruction in other languages following one by one, extending only later to the classics.
Historians sometimes contend that the Thirty Years' War was the most destructive event in Europe prior to the twentieth century:[1] the massacre in Magdeburg that followed the surrender of the city may have involved the death of perhaps 20,000 inhabitants.
[3] Evenius had been much affected by the destruction of Magdeburg and his writings, which from now on were published in German rather than Latin, disclose the (then widely held) belief that his former home-city's fate had been some sort of a judgement, reflecting God's anger over he conduct of citizens.
[3] Duke Ernest I would gain a reputation as a practical champion for Lutheranism and an educational pioneer: Sigismund Evenius took part in setting up and expanding a new style of school system, and he also produced the widely distributed (German language) "Ernestine Bible".