In 1502 Heinrich Aldegrever was born as the son of a bourgeois shoemaker in Paderborn. His actual name in his home Low German language was Hinrik Trippenmeker, called Aldegrever. He worked in the Westphalian town of Soest, which played an important role at that time, where he also died between 1555 and 1561. Around 1526/1527 Aldegrever became a member of the painters guild and a citizen of Soest. He created around 290 copper engravings between 1527-1555, mainly in smaller formats. The two sequences of "Hochzeitstänzer" from 1538 and 1551 have a particularly high value in terms of cultural history. Aldegrever makes additional portrait engravings of Martin Luther, Phillip Melanchthon and his feudal lord Duke William III. Of Cleve, Julich and Berg. Aldegrever was a member of the Lutheran church. The Bishop of Münster, Franz von Waldeck, commissioned Heinrich Aldegrever to make portrait engravings of the anabaptists Jan Bockhold and Bernt Knipperdolling.