Lübeck Citizens Committee 1530

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The Lübeck Citizens 'Committee 1530 , also known as the 64th Committee in Lübeck because of the number of its members , was a citizens' committee of the early modern period in Lübeck , which had significant internal and external political consequences for Lübeck as a Free Imperial City and as a Hanseatic City from 1530 to 1535 .

prehistory

In Lübeck, as in other cities with Lübeck law , important decisions such as the collection of taxes could not be passed without the approval of the citizens . For this purpose, the councilors usually consulted with the so-called “best citizens”, mostly merchants and chairmen of the offices , but above all with the council (relatives). Only when the citizens did not agree with this approach did the "common" vote, i. H. the assembly of all citizens, a committee which mostly consisted equally of merchants, who were allowed to become council members, and craftsmen, to whom the council was closed. These “ordained citizens” negotiated with the council about the amount of taxes and consideration of the council. If the negotiations were successful, the committee usually dissolved again.

1528 - Committee of 48

When tax increases were necessary in the mid-1520s because of the costs of the war against Christian II and the Turkish tax demanded by Emperor Charles V , the citizens demanded insight into the city's income in return. For the war aid against his predecessor, the Danish King Friedrich I. Lübeck had granted the income of the island of Gotland for five years and then the island of Bornholm . Citizens suspected that the council withheld this revenue. In addition, numerous citizens who adhered to Lutheranism demanded taxation of the cathedral chapter and good preachers. After the negotiations of the "best citizens" at the end of 1527 did not go to the satisfaction of the citizens and especially the Evangelicals, the residents gathered on the market square in spring 1528 and elected 32 citizens from among their number, who were sent to the council in the town hall . The leading personalities of this and the following committees were the merchants Harmen Israhel and Johann Sengestake , whose stepson Jürgen Benedicti had studied with Martin Luther in 1518 , as well as the blacksmith Borchard Wrede and the brewer Jochim Sandow. A few months later a new 48-member committee was formed to negotiate with the council on the same issues. An agreement was reached. 24 citizens were elected who, as "box-seaters", were to personally monitor that everyone paid their taxes. In addition, the committee ensured that the clergy and the canons also appear personally at the "box" to meet their tax obligations.

1529 - Committee of 56

However, the approved income was not enough. The canons refused to pay taxes and several evangelical preachers, including Andreas Wilms and Johann Walhoff , were expelled at the turn of the year 1528/29. Instead, a Catholic canon from Cologne was hired as cathedral preacher. The council believed that the demand for good preachers had been fulfilled, but the committee, which was supplemented by eight more members, now explicitly called for Protestant preachers. In December 1529, the return of Wilms and Walhoff was successfully enforced.

64 committee

Introduction of the Reformation

At the beginning of 1530 the designated preachers returned and began to preach openly Lutheran. A little later Heinrich Brömse , the brother of the first mayor Nikolaus Brömse and like him a staunch opponent of the Reformation, left the city and went to the emperor. His departure caused unrest. The Lutherans feared persecution. Jürgen Wullenwever appears for the first time as a citizen representative among the sixteen MPs who sent the concerned citizens to negotiate with the council . However, the council did not want to guarantee the evangelical citizens security, nor to prove that they could inspect the account books. Therefore, there were repeated town meetings in the following weeks. On April 7th, a new committee with 64 members was elected. The elected citizens should initially only supervise the tax payment as "box-seaters". However, at the request of Harmen Israhel, the community approved that the committee should be empowered to work with the council to innovate for the benefit of citizenship. Thus, the 64 committee as a representative of the citizenry became a regular counterpart of the council, which had to record its legality in the city ​​register on June 10, 1530 .

Together with the Protestant preachers, the committee succeeded in forcing a change in religious policy. On June 30, 1530, the council and committee decided to introduce the Reformation . Johannes Bugenhagen was invited to work with a committee that included councilors such as Hinrich Castorp and Anton von Stiten as well as citizens' committee members such as Johann Sengestake, Jürgen Benedicti and Borchard Wrede, to work out church regulations.

Imperial mandates obtained from Heinrich Brömse caused renewed alarm in October 1530. The council and the citizens promised each other support in the event of an indictment by the emperor. This agreement gave the Citizens Committee the status of an official additional government body. In order to reduce the burden on committee citizens, one hundred more citizens were elected to the 64 "ordained citizens". On January 17, 1531, the committees elected four speakers, the merchants Jürgen Wullenwever and Harm Huntenbarch, and Borchard Wrede and Jochim Sandow from the craft offices, as opposite of the four Lübeck mayors .

On February 18, 1531, a delegation of the committee and the council confirmed the mutual introduction of the Reformation with a handshake. The mutual insults should be forgotten, for this the citizens vowed obedience. The restored harmony was celebrated with a Te Deum the following Sunday . The Keyserliken city of Lübeck Christlike Ordeninge came into force in May 1531. Through the newly created office of church leaders , the citizens took over the supervision of the administration of the churches and poor relief.

Council reshuffle

On February 27, 1531, the councilor Anton von Stiten, a close relative of several members of the 64 committee, signed on behalf of the council and citizens of Lübeck to join the Schmalkaldic League . The mayors Nikolaus Brömse and Hermann Plönnies , who remained Catholic , then left the city at Easter 1531. The remaining councilors were placed under house arrest. In the short term, consideration was given to replacing the Council with the Committee. Instead, with reference to a mandate allegedly from city founder Heinrich the Lion , it was decided to add members of the committee to the council. Since only merchants were considered to be able to advise in Lübeck, the craftsmen, who made up half of the committee citizens, lost influence with this decision.

The addition to the council did not take place, as is usually the case, by appointment by the other council members by way of self-supplementing elections, but Mattheus Packebusch , the oldest of the remaining mayors, had to draw seven of nine lots on April 27, 1531, on which the names of committee members were written. These new gentlemen were therefore called "note gentlemen". To the disappointment of many, Wullenwever was not among them. After a long discussion as to whether the escaped Brömse and Plönnies should still be regarded as mayors, Gotthard III was announced on September 9th . von Hoeveln and the newly elected Gottschalck Lunte were appointed new mayors.

With the death of Mayor Lunte and the resignation of several councilors, including the citizens' committee members Karsten Timmermann and Johann Bussmann , who came to the council in 1531 and who no longer wanted to support Wullenwever's policy, the council was reduced in size until the beginning of 1533. In February and March 1533, therefore, were again eligible committee members raised to the council. With this new election, Wullenwever himself entered the council and immediately became mayor. Because Jürgen Wullenwever wanted to counter the growing opposition to his increasingly aggressive foreign policy, he also got through on the alleged mandate of the city founder that the eight oldest councilors would have to retire for a year. Thus the absolute majority in the Lübeck council in 1533 consisted of committee citizens. The committee itself lost its importance, but officially remained in office.

resignation

Because of Lübeck's defeat in the count's feud , protests against Wullenwever's policy were loud in Lübeck. After the Peace of Stockelsdorf , the committee announced its resignation and did not meet again. But only after an imperial executive mandate, which arrived in Lübeck on July 7, 1535 and demanded the restoration of the old order and the reinstatement of Nikolaus Brömse within 45 days, some of the gentlemen who had come from the committee to the council resigned. However, since a large part of the citizens and also the councilors allowed themselves to be convinced by Wullenwever for a long time that this did not mean his resignation, the last people who had come from the committee and the citizens' committee did not appear until August 26, 1535, the last day before the expiry of the imperial ultimatum, under pressure from the Hanseatic League .

Members

The committees were always made up of businesspeople / pensioners and craftsmen on an equal footing. In Lübeck only merchants were considered advisable. Craftsmen could therefore not get into the council. Not all of the 164 members of the citizens' committees known by name from the entry in the city register can be identified due to different spelling. Few stood out more often.

Councilors from the committee

Other members

Hans Kemmer : Portrait of the Lübeck merchant Hans Sonnenschein , 1534
  • Harmen Israhel , merchant
  • Johann Wigerinck , businessman
  • Hans Sonnenschein († 1533), mountain driver , on the committee since 1530
  • Jürgen Benedicti, stepson of Johann Sengestake, brewer and as a student of Martin Luther an important multiplier of Lutheranism in Lübeck
  • Borchard Wrede , blacksmith, one of four speakers on the committee since January 17, 1531
  • Heinrich Möller, skipper, on whose ship Gustav Vasa returned to Sweden in 1520
  • Harm Huntenbarch, businessman, since January 17, 1531 one of four spokesmen for the committee
  • Jochim Sandow, brewer, since January 17, 1531 one of four spokesmen for the committee
  • Marcus Tode, father of Christoph Tode , brother-in-law of councilor Anton von Stiten and committee citizens Gottschalck Lunte, Heinrich von Calven and Klingenberg Kerckring

Further citizens' committees in Lübeck's history before 1848

literature

  • Emil Ferdinand Fehling : Lübeck Council Line , Lübeck 1925
  • Wilhelm Jannasch : Reformation history of Lübeck from St. Peter's indulgence to the Augsburg Reichstag 1515-1530. Publications on the history of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck. Vol. 16. Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1958
  • Georg Waitz : Lübeck under Jürgen Wullenwever and European politics. 3 volumes, Berlin 1855–56

Individual evidence

  1. ^ 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
  2. ^ Johann Rudolph Becker: Complicated history of the Kaiserl. and of salvation: Roman Empire freyen Stadt Lübeck , Volume 2, Lübeck 1784, p. 28
  3. ↑ Jan Friedrich Richter: Portrait of Hans Sonnenschein in: Jan Friedrich Richter (Ed.): Lübeck 1500 - Art Metropolis in the Baltic Sea Region , catalog, Imhoff, Petersberg 2015, pp. 360–361 (No. 68)