George Wernher

* Paczków, around 1497 – † Prešov, 1567 / humanist, poet, teacher ; ; He began his studies in Boroszló, then continued at the University of Kraków, where he obtained a baccalaureate degree in 1519. He then taught in Košice and Prešov. From 1527 he participated in the Hungarian wars on the side of Ferdinand I. As a royal councilor, he was on several diplomatic missions in Poland and Bohemia between 1535 and 1540. From 1540 he was the captain of the castle of Sáros and the administrator of the Spiš Chamber, when he settled in Prešov. In his work Pannoniae Luctus, published in Kraków in 1544, he writes about the bitter fate of Hungary caused by the Turkish conquest. He is the author of the oldest description of the Tatra Mountains. This work on the mineral waters of Hungary – including those of Spišské and Liptov – was published in the work De admirandis Hungariae aquis hypomnemation (Basel 1549, Vienna, 1551). This is a short description containing generally known things, but it is the only one known until the work of Dávid Frölich (Késmárk) published in 1639. In the work, the name of the mountain range appears in print for the first time in the form of Tatri. The work on the “wonderful” mineral waters of Hungary aroused great interest, was often quoted, and was published several times. István M. Csiba – with not very extensive additions of his own – adopted it in its entirety in his work Dissertatio historico-physica de admirandis Hungariae aquis published in Nagyszombat in 1713. György Wernher published a work on the mineral waters of Spišské; also under the title Hypomnemation de aquis in Scepusio admirandis (1549).