Francesco Petrarch, born 700 years ago (1304), creator of the "Book of Songs" (Canzoniere) and the first poetry of Humanism in the Italian language ("Triumphs"), was groundbreaking for European intellectual history. He stands at the beginning of the development that led to modernity. Petrarch's life was filled with great restlessness. Departing from his estate in Vaucluse near Avignon, he traveled through European cities and landscapes, was crowned poet in Rome, lived for eight years in Milan, and then in Prague and Venice. Yet, we owe him immortal texts on asceticism, meditative solitude, "the solitary life." Two of these texts, written in Latin, are now available for the first time in German: "De vita solitaria" for the very first time and "De secreto conflictu curarum mearum" for the first time in a year.