Augustus II of Brunswick

Augustus II, called the Younger, was a member of the House of Welf and Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, born on 10 April 1579 at Dannenberg Castle. As the seventh and youngest child he had little chance of ruling, so he studied at Rostock, Tübingen and Strasbourg, travelled through Italy, France, the Netherlands and England, and then lived for about three decades at a small court in Hitzacker. In the Welf estate division of 1635 he received the Principality of Wolfenbüttel, which he ruled until his death in 1666, and he founded the library now known as the Herzog August Library. Under the pseudonym Gustavus Selenus he wrote a book on chess in 1616 and, in 1624, Cryptomenytices et Cryptographiae libri IX, which became a standard reference on cryptography.