Philip Melanchthon
He was born Philipp Schwartzerdt on 16 February 1497, at Bretten where his father Georg Schwarzerdt was armorer to Philip, Count Palatine of the Rhine. His birthplace, along with almost the whole city of Bretten, was burned in 1689 by French troops during the War of the Palatinate Succession. The town's Melanchthonhaus was built on its site in 1897.
List of Reformed denominations
The German Reformed Church, unusually, does not trace its origins back to Zwingli or Calvin, but rather to Philipp Melanchthon, Luther's best friend and closest ally. After Melanchthon's death in 1560, extremist Lutherans (from whom Luther had previously distanced himself) accused Melanchthon's successors in the "Philippist" cause of Crypto-Calvinism and mercilessly persecuted and sometimes killed them in several states, especially Saxony. Other states, such as Hesse(-Cassel), remained openly Philippist and Reformed. Only during the time of Calvin (1509–1564) himself did genuinely Calvinist influences enter the German Reformed faith; even today, it remains more Philippist than Calvinist.