I did not know that Melanchthon was a relative of Johannes Reuchlin, ‘the first great exponent of Greek studies in Germany’ (Pfeiffer, vol. 2, p. 86). Pfeiffer to the rescue (again):
One of [Reuchlin’s] pupils, Georg Simler, the author of an elementary Greek grammar for German students, was also the first to instil the knowledge of Greek into Reuchlin’s great-nephew Philipp Schwarzerd, better known as Melanchthon (1497-1560); like his great-uncle, who took the keenest interest in his gifted young relative, Schwarzerd chose to turn his name into Greek. His gifts were not exactly those of a scholar, but as an educationalist he was a genius. At the age of twenty he produced his Institutiones linguae Graecae, printed in 1518, the Greek grammar which made Reuchlin’s ideas, especially those on the pronunciation of Greek, popular and was used in German schools for three centuries.
(History of Classical Scholarship, vol. 2, p. 88)