Rejecting Erasmus's plea for circumspection and moderation, Hutten soon became a leading propagandist for the evangelical cause. These events suggest that Hutten's significance as a German literary figure can be judged primarily in terms of his contributions to humanism and to the Reformation, to poetics and to religious polemic, during the early sixteenth century.
Hutten was born on 21 April 1488 in the castle of Steckelberg, near Fulda on the border of Franconia and Hesse. He was the descendant of a large clan of Franconian knights. His father, also named Ulrich, and his mother, Ottilie, née von Eberstein, were members of the minor nobility, a class that was experiencing serious economic and political decline by the late fifteenth century. His pious parents intended their son for the religious life, sending him at the age of eleven to the monastic school in Fulda. Hutten, however, left the school in 1505, explaining in later years that he believed that he could better serve God and the world through another calling. Thus, at the age of seventeen, without the blessing of his family and nearly destitute, Hutten began his wanderings from university to university.
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