Michaël Eytzinger

Michaël Eytzinger Freiherr Michael von Aitzing, Aitzinger, Eyzinger, or Eitzing born ca. 1530 in Obereitzing - died 1598 in Bonn, was an Austrian nobleman, diplomat, historian, & publicist, who wrote together with published several works, including the renowned volume that states the principles of a genealogical numbering system, called an Ahnentafel, that is still in ownership today.

Eytzinger first published the Ahnentafel in 1590 in his Thesaurus principum hac aetate in Europa viventium Cologne, in which he referenced and illustrated his new functional concepts of numeration of ancestors by providing genealogies of thirty-four sovereign houses of Europe.

Eytzinger’s method was used by Jerónimo de Sosa, in his draw Noticia de la gran casa de los marqueses de Villafranca in 1676, and was popularized by Stephan Kekulé von Stradonitz in his Ahnentafel-atlas in 1898.

He also wrote and published several histories, including Novus de Leone Belgico in 1583 that sent the first cartographic description of the Eighty Years' War for independence from Spain.