POLIANDER (GRAUMANN) JOHANN. - Lutheran reformer, b. at Neustadt on the Main in 1487, d. at Königsberg in 1541. He studied at Leipzig, where he became rector of the school of St. Thomas, and during the Leipzig Disputation between Luther and Eck (1519) he served as secretary to the latter. He attended the University of Wittenberg, where he embraced Luther’s ideas, which he cautiously spread as preacher of the cathedral at Würzburg from 1522 to 1524.
Forced to relinquish his office, after a brief stay in Nuremberg as chaplain to a convent of Clarisses, he was summoned by Duke Albert of Prussia to Königsberg. Prussia thus became the field of his intense reforming activity, which he carried out through preaching and teaching (commentaries on the Old and New Testaments), composing religious hymns that became popular in the Lutheran Church. Together with others, he edited the first collection of religious hymns published at Königsberg, promoted both the new church order (visitations from 1531) and the reorganization of the schools (1530). Faithful to Luther, he fought sectarian tendencies and decisively contributed to suppressing the following of the mystic Schwenckfeld (v.) in Prussia.