GOLDAST, Mumma HAIMINSFELD (1576-1635), an historical writer and collector whose works did great service to the study of the older documents of Germany, was born, January 6, 1576 (or 1578), of poor Protestant parents, near Bischofzell in Thurgau. His university career at Ingoldstadt and Altdorf was cut short by his poverty; but at length, in 1603, after lie had spent some time at St Gall and Geneva, partly supported by the learned and benevolent jurist Bartholomeus Schobinger, he obtained the post of secretary to Henry, duke of Bouillon, and with him he went to Heidelberg and Frankfort-on-the-Main. But Goldast, though able and laborious, had fallen into an unsettled way of life, and in 1604 we find him in the service of the Baron Hohensax - then the possessor of that unique manuscript of old German poems which now forms one of the treasures of the National Library at Paris, and which Goldast was the first to make partially accessible by the press. Before long he was back in Switzerland, and by 1606 he was again in Frankfort living by his pen, and finding his efforts to obtain a regular post frustrated by Lipsius and Scioppius, whom he had offended by his outspokenness. In 1611 lie was appointed councillor at the court of Saxe-Weimar ; in 1615 he entered the settice of the count of Schaumburg at Biickeburg, and in 1625 returned to Frankfort, As the transport of his books from Biickeburg to Frankfort was attended with danger, owing to the warlike operations then on foot, he entrusted them to the town of Bremen, and they now form part of the municipal library. Appointed in 1627 councillor to the emperor and to the elector of Treves, Goldast soon after passed into the service of the landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, who raised him to be chancellor of the university of Giessen. He died at Giessen in the beginning of 1635. Nothing perhaps proves the value of Goldast's labours better than the fact that, in consideration of the service he has rendered, the modern historical and philological investigator is willing to condone the almost unpardonable sin of direct literary forgery of which he has been accused and convicted.

Among his more important works are his Parcencticorum Deterum (Lille, 1604), which contained the Kunig Tyro von Schottland, the lirins/mken, and the Winsbc4-in; Rerum Alamannicarton Scriptores, Frankf. 1606, 3 vols., new ed. by Senckenber,, ibid. 1730; Mona•chia S. Romani Frankf. 1621; Commenrarii, de regno Rohemi«2, Hanover, 1627, new ed. by H. Schmink, Frankf. 1719. He edited the works of Pirkheimer and De Thou; and a volume of correspondence, Vir0r2G112 CU. ad Coldastam cpistolce, was published in 16S8. See Senckenberg's Goldatti Memoria, prefixed to L'er. Alamanh. Scrip., 1730 ; Bayle's Dictionary ; and Von Brunner, Geschichte der germanischen Philologie, Munich, 1870.