Hans Boner

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Hans Boner on a 1944 postage stamp

Hans Boner (also Johann Boner or Johannes Boner , Polish Jan Boner ; * around 1450 in Landau in the Palatinate ; † December 15, 1523 in Cracow ) was a German merchant and banker in Cracow. In 1498 he was a member of the city council , in 1515 burgrave , in 1520 raised to the Polish nobility and in 1522 " Magnus Procurator " (governor) of Krakow. He was also Starost of Rabsztyn and Ojców in Lesser Poland .

In his time, Hans Boner was considered one of the richest men in Europe ( Fugger Poland ).

Life

Boner was the offspring of a wealthy family of cloth merchants with trade connections to Frankfurt am Main , Nuremberg , Deutsch-Wagram and the cloth-making city of Ghent . He opened his own trading business in Wroclaw early on, as there were already close trade ties between Ghent and Wroclaw at that time. In 1483 he founded a new company in Kraków, while his brother Jakob Andreas Boner (1454–1517) continued the company in Wrocław.

In Krakow, the then capital of Poland , Boner traded in spices , metals, timber and cattle. He opened branches of his company in many cities in Poland, Germany , Russia and Hungary . In 1498 he was granted Polish citizenship in Cracow and in the same year he married Szczęsna Morsztyn . In 1514 he was granted Polish citizenship by King Sigismund I of Poland and in 1520 he was raised to the Polish nobility. In 1522 he became the royal governor of Krakow.

As the king's banker and chief supplier to the court, Boner became one of the richest men in Europe. Among other things, he saved the royal family from financial bankruptcy . He had supported it with around 200,000 red zlotys , which was an unusually high amount in the 16th century. The credit he received as a pawn lands of the royal domain, including the whole area of the Zips (Polish Spisz ) for 12,000 Red złoty from Jordan of Zakliczyn, the city Oswiecim and the salt mines of Ruthenia (14,000 Red złoty Stanisław Kościelski) and other royal cities such as Sieradz , Gostynin , Radom , Sochaczew , Piotrków , Drohobycz , Rabsztyn, Głuchów, Tuchola , Nowy Sącz , Inowrocław , of which he was appointed Starost.

In 1515, Boner explicitly assured the Breslau ambassador at the Polish court that he would help, "because he had initially bought his food there" . In the same year Boner manager was salt mine of Wieliczka , one of the most profitable companies, of which a large part of the income derived by the Kingdom of Poland. He also received the castles of Ojców and Rabsztyn as private property.

One of his most notable achievements was the division of the Treasury into a state and a royal finance ministry, which lasted until the partitions of Poland .

Boner also made a name for himself as a patron of German and Italian scholars and artists, from whom he had some of his castles "modernized" in the Renaissance style , and he also corresponded with the bishop and poet Johannes Dantiscus .

Heir and descendants

Hans Boner had no biological offspring. His nephew Severin was declared the universal heir of the property and the estate .

literature

Web links

Notes and sources

  1. ↑ So the NDB and most other articles. In a Polish chronicle by Rabenstein it is said that he died on a business trip in Breslau.
  2. ↑ Brother Jakob in Breslau must also have been a wealthy businessman, because he owned the house at Ring 7 next to the “Seven Electors” and ran his trading company there. King Vladislav II of Bohemia and Hungary , the successor to Matthias Corvinus , stayed in his house from January 26th to April 15th, 1511 to receive the homage of the people of Wroclaw. ( Oskar Pusch : The Wroclaw City Councils in the Period from 1241 to 1741 , Volume 1, Page 174, Publications by the Research Center for East Central Europe at the University of Dortmund, Series B-No. 33, Dortmund 1986, ISBN 3-923293-16- X )
  3. ↑ Erwin Fuhrmann: The importance of the Upper Silesian element in the Breslau population of the 15th and 16th centuries , dissertation, Breslau 1913
personal data
SURNAME Boner, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Boner, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Polish merchant and banker, governor of Krakow
DATE OF BIRTH around 1450
PLACE OF BIRTH Landau , Electoral Palatinate
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 1523
Place of death Krakow , Poland