Harmen Israhel

Harmen Israhel (also Hermen Iserhel or Hermann Israel ; * around 1488 in Münster ; † 1558 in Lübeck ) was a German merchant from Lübeck with contacts particularly to Sweden , who played an important role in the Reformation and Wullenwever times .

Life

Harmen Israhel, like many other Lübeck-based merchants of his time, came from Münster. He first appeared in 1507 as a merchant apprentice at Holm their shops between Lübeck and Tallinn . Around 1515 he settled in Lübeck and became a member of the Leonhard Brotherhood in 1517 and the Holy Spirit Brotherhood in the following year. Also in 1518 he married Elsabe Tegeler († 1550), daughter of the skipper Hans Tegeler, who died around 1513, as he was a Sweden merchant. At the same time he must have acquired the citizenship of the city of Lübeck.

Trade in Sweden and Gustav Vasa's struggle for freedom

Since the beginning of his time as a self-employed businessman Israhel belonged to a circle of Danish anti Sweden merchants like Kort King and Markus Helmstede, factor of Sten Sture . From 1518 to 1525 he was hovetman of a trading company that led a triangular trade between Lübeck, Sweden and Reval. Thanks to the contacts in the Leonhard Brotherhood, whose members were mainly connected to Upper Germany , he was able to expand his business far.

When Gustav Erikson was able to escape from Danish captivity in 1519, he contacted the spar merchants. Israhel and his wife took him into their house and put him in contact with the mayor Nikolaus Brömse . For Lübeck and especially for the people of Holmevar , the Swedish trade was an important economic factor . The ban on trade with Sweden enforced by the Danish King Christian II resulted in heavy burdens. The Lübeck merchants tried to break this blockade, but Israhel lost a ship in the process, which the Danish fleet leader Sören Norby brought up. The Holmevarer now outfitted in turn privateers from.

Reconstruction of the carrack Lybska Svan , since 1522 flagship of the Swedish Navy, founded by Gustav Vasa. Purchase price in Lübeck: 7600 Lübische Marks

In May 1520 Gustav Vasa returned to Sweden on a ship from Lübeck. In 1522 he concluded, again mediated by the Holmevarer Harmen Israhel and Kort König (Cort Coning), a contract with Lübeck, according to which the city supported his struggle financially and with ships and mercenaries. Harmen Israhel personally gave large loans, recruited mercenaries and outfitted ten privateers within a few weeks. For this he owed himself a large sum and also took on guarantees for the loans he had raised. Besides him, the mayors Hermann Falke and Thomas von Wickede , but also Dithmarschen, were among the most important financiers of the Swedish war of liberation. Gustav Vasa succeeded in conquering Stockholm in the summer of 1523 with the Lübeck fleet under Hermann Plönnies and Berend Bomhover .

Negotiations over the Swedish debt

When Gustav Vasa became king, he committed himself in 1523 in the privilege of Strängnäs to guarantee Lübeck duty-free in return for financing the liberation struggle and to deny the Dutch access to the Swedish market.

Israhel maintained a close personal relationship with the king, as evidenced by the confidential tone of the 15 letters in the Swedish Imperial Archives, which he wrote to Gustav Vasa from 1523 to 1528. Elsabe had delicacies such as Nuremberg gingerbread sent to the young king and his sister Margaret . But Israhel also urged repayment in the same letters, because his creditors pressed him. Gustav Vasa then granted Israhel and his wife on May 1, 1524 the privilege of being able to trade in cities throughout Sweden, completely tax-free and without the usual restrictions, and not just like other Hanseatic merchants . This gave him the opportunity to buy pig iron directly from the producer, for example, without the middlemen of the local merchants. He also received gifts, including a. Shares in a copper mine. Israhel could have built up a monopoly in Swedish foreign trade, but he lacked the necessary capital because his friend Gustav Vasa was very reluctant to repay his debts.

Between 1523 and 1526, Israhel traveled several times with the city secretary Lambert Becker on behalf of the Lübeck Council and as spokesman for the merchants to Gustav Vasa's court to demand the settlement of the Lübeck debts - a total of 120,000 Lübsche Marks . There are two accounts in which the Lübeckers and especially their own expenses are listed in detail. He also campaigned for support for the fight against Sören Norby, who had settled on Gotland after Christian II was deposed . In this context, he informed Gustav Vasa in 1525 that Sten Sture's widow Christina Gyllenstierna had allied with Sören Norby. Gotland was actually awarded to Sweden in the Treaty of Malmö (1524), with which Sweden left the Kalmar Union , but after defeating Norby in 1526, Lübeck received pledge of the island for five years as compensation for its war expenditures remained with Denmark. Gustav Vasa therefore refused to repay Lübeck between 1524 and 1526. He let it be spread that the ships delivered were not good and that the demand was therefore too high and that a payment of 8000 Mk already made in 1522 was not taken into account. In addition, he made Israhel responsible for the loss of Gotland because the mayor Thomas von Wickede, as Lübeck's representative in Malmö, had not provided the Lübeck help promised by Israhel to conquer Gotland. During this time, Israhel wrote several letters to Gustav Vasa, in which he vividly described his disastrous financial situation and appealed to Gustav's conscience to settle his debts. Even so, he was wealthy enough in those years to buy a brewery and land in Genin .

In the new negotiations between Lübeck and Sweden in 1528, the royal secretary Wulf Gyler and Gustav's brother-in-law Johann von Hoya stood up as advocates for Israhel. Count Hoya even personally guaranteed the repayment. The signing of the debt contract by Sweden in March 1529 in Israel's house improved Israel's financial situation, although Gustav Vasa owed more than half of the claims.

Israhel also worked diplomatically on Gustav's behalf. In autumn 1530 he traveled to Magnus I von Sachsen-Lauenburg to negotiate with him about the dowry for his daughter Katharina , Gustav Vasa's bride. After he had announced the successes in January 1531 on the men's day in Örebro , he made sure that the gifts were handed over to the bride's parents and that the bride's journey went smoothly. From this context comes the only surviving letter from Gustav Vasa to Israhel, in which he calls him a "good friend". But the same trip in January 1531 also led to final estrangement, because Israhel renewed the Lübeck demands on the Lord's Day. But the Swedish population, suffering from the constant demands of the Hanseatic League, rose up against new taxes, including a. the delivery of a bell from each church. Lübeck received a large down payment in autumn 1531, but on the Lord's Day in Stockholm in 1532 the church and the estates refused to make further payments to the king.

Israhel traveled to Sweden one last time in the spring of 1532 to negotiate the Lübeck privileges in view of the renewed threat from the deposed Danish King Christian II and to ask for support in the Lübeck fight against the Dutch. With reference to the unreliability of the Lübeck residents in Malmö in 1524, Gustav Vasa refused any help. In 1533 Gustav Vasa revoked the Lübeck privileges. With that, Harmen Israhel's trade with Sweden ended. His former friend Gustav Vasa accused him of embezzling around 8,000 Mk, which had allegedly been billed incorrectly in 1522. From then on, Israhel was considered an enemy in Sweden. Count Hoya and Gyler also fell from grace and left Sweden. Israhel helped Gyler to move to Lübeck in 1524. Hoya joined Christoph von Oldenburg and fell in the count feud .

Reformation and feud of counts

During the Reformation, Israhel was one of the evangelical speakers. As early as 1522, like Johann Sengestake, he was among the evangelically-minded citizens whom Johannes Steenhoff, who was threatened with trial because of his Lutheran confession, was freed from prison.

In 1528 and 1529 he was a member of two citizens' committees , which, in addition to accounting for income and expenses, also demanded taxation of the cathedral chapter and evangelical preachers from the council . Therefore, he negotiated several times as spokesman for the citizens with the council, from the beginning of 1530 together with Jürgen Wullenwever. As one of 24 box-seaters elected by the community , it was his job in 1528 to collect taxes. He ensured that the clergy and the canons also appear personally to meet their tax obligations. In December 1529, Harmen Israhel presented the council with the decision of the citizens to accept the tax articles if the evangelical preachers Andreas Wilms and Johann Walhoff, who were expelled at the beginning of the year , were called back. On April 7, 1530 he was elected to the committee of 64 , which also included several of Gustav Vasa's earlier supporters. The elected citizens should initially only oversee the tax payment as box-seaters . However, at the request of Harmen Israhel, the community granted the committee the authority to implement innovations for the benefit of citizenship together with the council. Thus, the 64 committee as a representative of the citizenship became a regular counterpart of the council, which had to record its legality in the city ​​register on June 10, 1530 . In the following years more and more Wullenwever and the blacksmith Borchard Wrede took over the leadership of the citizens. Israhel negotiated only one more time with the chapter in October 1530.

But although Israhel was said to have had a great influence on Wullenwever by the chroniclers Hermann Bonnus and Reimar Kock , he neither became a councilor, nor did he appear more prominent in the period that followed. For the whole of 1531 it does not appear in the Lübeck sources. Only when the Danish King Friedrich I asked Lübeck for help against the attempted reconquest of the deposed Christian II in 1532 , Israhel joined the Lübeck embassy around Wullenwever and Nikolaus Bardewik in Copenhagen in April . He applied that the Dutch ships should not be allowed to sail through the sound with ballast , but only with a full load .

After the introduction of the church ordinance drawn up by Johannes Bugenhagen in May 1531, he was head of the Heilig-Geist-Hospital .

In November 1534 the Peace of Stockelsdorf called for the resignation of the committees. Israhel was still one of the respected citizens who were invited to consultations with the council and, unlike Wullenwever, spoke out in favor of Nikolaus Brömse's return. In August 1535 the committees resigned. Wullenwever was captured in October 1535 and embarrassedly questioned in March 1536 . He gave Harmen Israhel and seven others as confidants of his plan to set up a regiment in Lübeck based on the model of the Münster Anabaptist Empire. Israhel was arrested and taken to the stables . However, as doubts about the credibility of Wullenwever's "confession" soon arose, he and the other arrested persons were released into house arrest in early April . After Wullenwever confessed before his execution that the slander of the eight citizens was unfounded, Israhel was acquitted in November 1536.

Commercial and homeowners

In order to be able to use its monopoly in Sweden, Israhel had its own production for export. In 1525 he opened his first brewery , in which he had the famous Hamburg wheat beer brewed as a model . In Lübeck , red beer was mostly brewed in the Middle Ages . From around 1500, lighter beers became more popular. By 1530 there were already so many wheat beer brewers in Lübeck that they formed their own office . His beer was also exported to Sweden as Ysrahelber until 1536. In the following years, contrary to the prohibition on operating more than one brewery, two more breweries were added. In 1531 he was able to lease the Tremser mill and operate an iron hammer there. But the end of trade with Sweden in 1533 led Israhel to an economic decline. He had to close the first brewery in the same year. His other breweries closed in 1541 and 1556. In 1546 he was sued for repayment of debts from 1522, but the suit was dismissed because of the statute of limitations .

In addition to his house at Mengstrasse 54 and a house in Königstrasse , which he had inherited from Tönnies Schacht, his wife's stepfather, he owned the property at Fleischhauerstrasse 33 and two breweries in Wahmstrasse .

He spent the last twenty years of his life as a respected, wealthy citizen in Lübeck. The children of his marriage to Elsabe died young. After the death of his first wife, he married the widow Anna van Resens, b. Langenberg.

Literary reception

In August Strindberg's 1899 drama Gustavus Vasa , Herman Israel appears together with his fictional son Jakob as Lübeck councilor.

literature

• Helga Rossi: The Natie der Holmevare zu Lübeck between 1520 and 1540 ; Dissertation Kiel 1959.
• Helga Rossi: Lübeck and Sweden in the first half of the century. The Lübeck Holmevarer College between 1520 and 1540 . Edited and introduced by Hans-Jürgen Vogtherr with an essay on the history of research. Publications on the history of the Hanseatic city Series B Volume 49; Lübeck 2011, especially pp. 18–33.
• Hans-Jürgen Vogtherr: The financiers Gustav Vasas 1522 and the Lübeck foreign policy . In: Journal of the Association for Lübeck History and Ancient History 82 (2002), pp. 59–110.
• Hans-Jürgen Vogtherr: The Swedish merchant Hermann Iserhel and Gustav Vasa . In: Journal of the Association for Lübeck History and Antiquity 94 (2014), pp. 137–169.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Vogtherr: The donors Gustav Vasas 1522 and the Lübeck foreign policy ; P. 91
2. ^ Vogtherr: The Swedish businessman Hermann Iserhel and Gustav Vasa , p. 138.
3. ^ Vogtherr: The Swedish merchant Hermann Iserhel and Gustav Vasa , p. 140.
4. ^ Vogtherr: The donors Gustav Vasas 1522 and the Lübeck foreign policy ; P. 84
5. ^ Vogtherr: The donors Gustav Vasas 1522 and the Lübeck foreign policy ; P. 59
6. ^ Vogtherr: The Swedish merchant Hermann Iserhel and Gustav Vasa , pp. 142–144.
7. ^ Rossi: Lübeck and Sweden in the first half of the century. The Lübeck Holmevarer College between 1520 and 1540 , p. 23
8. ↑ James L. Larson: Reforming the North: The Kingdoms and Churches of Scandinavia, 1520-1545 . Cambridge 2010, p. 178
9. ^ Vogtherr: The Swedish merchant Hermann Iserhel and Gustav Vasa , pp. 153–157.
10. ^ Vogtherr: The Swedish merchant Hermann Iserhel and Gustav Vasa , p. 162.
11. ^ Vogtherr: The Swedish businessman Hermann Iserhel and Gustav Vasa , p. 166.
12. ^ Günter Korell: Jürgen Wullenwever. His socio-political work in Lübeck and the struggle with the growing powers of Northern Europe. Treatises on trade and social history 19. Ed. the Hanseatic Working Group of the Historians' Society of the German Democratic Republic. Weimar 1980; P. 46
13. ^ Georg Waitz : Lübeck under Jürgen Wullenwever and European politics . Volume 1. 1855; P. 197
14. ^ Georg Waitz : Lübeck under Jürgen Wullenwever and European politics . Volume 1. 1855; P. 139
15. ↑ Archive Lübeck 07.1-2 / 06 - Holy Spirit Hospital (Sacra B 3) 151
16. ↑ Lübeck brewery history /
17. ^ Rossi: Lübeck and Sweden in the first half of the century. The Lübeck Holmevarer College between 1520 and 1540 , p. 27
18. ^ Wilhelm Ebel: Lübeck council judgments . Volume 3 1526-1550; No. 689
19. ↑ It may be Königstrasse 73, which was a brewery in the 16th century, because Georg Waitz ( Lübeck under Jürgen Wullenwever and European Politics . Volume 1. 1855; p. 424) states that Israhel is the house next door to Wullenwever's apartment Koenigstrasse 75 heard.
20. ↑ Fleischhauerstraße 30-39 (pdf, accessed December 10, 2014)
21. ^ Rossi: Lübeck and Sweden in the first half of the century. The Lübeck Holmevarer College between 1520 and 1540 , p. 31