Valentin Friedland

The boy taught himself to read and write while herding cattle; he made paper from birch bark and ink from soot.

[3] Friedland became a distinguished student at the University of Leipzig, learned Ciceronian Latin from Peter Mosellanus and Greek from Richard Croke, and after graduation was appointed assistant master in the school at Görlitz in 1515.

Every week each pupil had to write two exercitia styli, one in prose and the other in verse, and Trotzendorff took pains to see that the subject of each exercise was something interesting.

The fame of the Goldberg School extended over all Protestant Germany, and a large number of the more famous men of the following generation were taught by Trotzendorf.

[3] After Friedland's school, his library, his assets, and the greater part of Goldberg were destroyed by a fire in 1554, he moved again to Liegnitz at the invitation of the duke there.