An extremely important figure in the second half of the 16th century.
He was tasked with a special mission in Constantinople, namely to establish an alliance between Orthodoxy and Lutheranism against Catholicism. It fails in its mission. Nevertheless, he signs the Brest Union.
From 1573 to 1578 he was in Constantinople as the first assistant and clergyman of the ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire - Baron David Ungnad von Sonnegg. Writes a diary, one of the most cited sources in the historical literature about the situation in Constantinople in recent years of the "Kingdom of the Slavs", ie. after the death of Selim II and just before the outbreak of the Long Turkish War.
Upon his return, he became professor of theology (1586) and head of the Protestant district in Tübingen and wrote against Calvinists and Jesuits. He died in Tübingen in 1612.
Stefan Gerlach's diary was published in full in German only in 1674, thanks to his grandson Samuel Gerlach, who collected, arranged and translated into German his "Turkish diary" of his grandfather, inserting a number of primary documents translated, i. letters and more.
Today, the diary is a bibliographical rarity that has not been republished in German and has never been translated into English. Parts of the diary have been published in other languages.
Schweigger was born in Sulz am Neckar. His father was Henry Schweigger, notarius (court and town clerk) and praefectus pupillorum (superior of the orphanage children in Sulz). Salomon first attended the convent school in Bad Herrenalb-Alpirsbach, and from 1572, studied theology and classical philology at the University of Tübingen.
In 1576, having completed his studies and being in search of employment, he was hired as embassy chaplain by Joachim von Sintzendorff, Habsburg ambassador to Istanbul (1578–81). He traveled as a Habsburgian envoy to Constantinople[4] with an Austrian delegation from Vienna on a diplomatic mission of Emperor Rudolf II to Sultan Murad III. He spent several years attached the Habsburg embassy, in the role of Hofprediger (court preacher) successor to Stephan Gerlach. In this travel diary, he vividly describes his personal experiences and also provides an interesting insight into life in the former Ottoman Empire. He deduced that "Serbians, Bulgarians, Rascians, have their origins in the ancient German tribes of Daci",[9] and also wrote about Bulgarian jewelry, curious at the nose rings he saw worn by the women and the "exoticism" he witnessed.[ He also commented on jugglers, fires, the "clumsy" music of the Turks, their food, customs, and buildings.
He left Constantinople in 1581 and traveled to Egypt and Jerusalem, where he quoted Adam Reusner. Visiting Ramla, he commented on the Jewish populations in the city. In Egypt, he traveled with Gerlach and David Chytraeus. He also visited Damascus before returning to Germany via Crete and Venice. On returning to Germany, Schweigger served as pastor in the town of Grötzingen from 1581–1589. In 1589, Heinrich Hermann Baron Schutzbar von Milchling, appointed Schweigger to be patron of the parish of Wilhermsdorf in Middle Franconia. The City of Nuremberg called him in 1605 to serve at the Frauenkirche where he worked for 17 years.
His account of his years spent in the Balkans, Turkey and the Middle East would later gain fame in his "Ein newe Reiss Beschreibung a Deutschland Nach Constantinopel und Jerusalem", published in 1608. Several of his sketches appeared centuries later in Kiril Petkov's 1997 book Infidels, Turks, and Women: The South Slavs in the German Mind, ca. 1400-1600. In 1616, he published "The Turkish Alcoran, religion, and superstition". Solomon is also the author of the first German version of the Qur'an.[16] In the Ottoman Empire, Schweigger found an Italian translation of the Qur'an, which was known among Christians living there to a certain extent. Schweigger translated from the Italian but published it only after his return to Nuremberg (1616, 2nd edition 1623, further editions without naming 1659; 1664). He translated from a first Italian version of 1547 by Andrea Arrivabene, itself based on translation from Latin by Robert of Ketton in the 12th century. It is surprising that Schweigger did not resort to the Latin text. Schweigger's German translation of the Italian translation of the Latin translation of the Arabic Koran was in turn translated into Dutch in 1641 and printed in Hamburg.
He was born the illegitimate son of the Seigneur de Busbecq, Georges Ghiselin, and his mistress Catherine Hespiel, although he was later legitimized. He grew up at Busbecq Castle (in present-day Bousbecque, Nord, France), studying in Wervik and Comines - at the time, all part of Spanish West Flanders, a province of the Holy Roman Empire.