Přibík Pulkava

Extract from the Bohemian Chronicle of Pulkava, 14th century

Emperor Karl IV., Wall painting from the Hansa Hall of Cologne City Hall, around 1360/1370

Fontane monument in Neuruppin , erected in 1907

Přibík Pulkava von Radenín , also Pulkawa von Tradenin , mostly just called Pulkava or Pulkawa , in Czech Přibík Pulkava z Radenína (* probably in Radenín near Tábor , Bohemia ; † probably 1380 ), was a Bohemian chronicler at the court of Charles IV.

Life

Pulkava is said to come from a lower aristocratic family who lived in Radenín near Tábor in South Bohemia . He had acquired a master's degree in the Seven Arts and was rector from 1373 to 1378 at the school of the " Collegiate Church of St. Aegid " ("Kostel sv. Jiljí") in Prague's old town .

For 1378 he is proven as pastor of Chudenitz (Chudenice) .

It is believed that he died in 1380 during the plague epidemic .

Bohemian Chronicle

After the death of the Bohemian court chronicler Benesch von Weitmühl in July 1375, the Bohemian King Charles IV , who was both Roman-German King and Emperor , appointed Pulkava as his successor. Because of his education and his knowledge of grammar and rhetoric, Pulkava is said to have been better suited for this task than his predecessors; however, it is believed that the emperor gave him precise instructions and that Pulkava only took care of the writing.

The chronicle, written in Latin , is based mainly on texts from older chronicles: the Dalimil Chronicle , the first chronicle of Dalimil written in Czech from the early 14th century, the Chronica Boemorum des Cosmas of Prague and its continuations by Francis of Prague and Benesch von Weitmühl , where Franz von Prague used the Königsaaler Chronik of the local abbot Peter von Zittau as a source . In addition, Pulkava used sources that are no longer known today and official documents that were probably selected by the emperor himself. Karl also ordered the translation of the chronicle into Czech and German.

Pulkava as a source for Theodor Fontane

In Germany, Pulkava is best known for the writer Theodor Fontane , who refers to the chronicler in his hikes through the Mark Brandenburg . When playing the founding legend around the monastery Lehnin by I. Otto , the second Marquis of Brandenburg , writes Fontane:

“The legend of the building of the monastery Lehnin [...] leads the foundation of the same back to a certain process. The Bohemian writer Pulkava relates this process (as he expressly adds, "based on a Brandenburg chronicle") as follows: [...]. "

Fontane then gives a detailed account of this legend (see Lehnin Monastery ) and closes the rendering with the words:

[...] "" Margrave Otto gave the monastery the name Lehnin, because Lanye means hind in Slavic. " So the Bohemian historian. "

It is not known which secondary sources Fontane's account is based on. The specified Brandenburg Chronicle has not survived, so that the records cannot be checked. However, today it has been proven that Pulkava, in the places where he reports on Pribislaw-Heinrich and Albrecht the bears and their collaboration in the creation of the Mark Brandenburg , resorted to the Tractatus de captione urbis Brandenburg by Heinrich von Antwerp , written around 1165 . In the Tractatus , which ends with its report in 1165, the foundation of the Lehnin monastery (1180) is not mentioned.

The Brandenburg historian Jacob Paul von Gundling (1673–1731) did not yet know Pulkava. In the controversy in 1823 between the Berlin high school professor Heinrich Valentin Schmidt (1756–1838) and the historian Johann Wilhelm Löbell (1786–1863), whether Albrecht the Bear won the Mark Brandenburg “by the sword” or as heir to the Slav prince Pribislaw-Heinrich would have received, the appreciation of the secondary source Pulkava played a major role (see Schildhornsage ), because at that time the source Heinrich von Antwerp was known only in fragments and without authorship.

In 1862, Adolph Friedrich Riedel published excerpts from the Brandenburg Chronicle from the Bohemian Chronicle, which could be a possible secondary source.

Remarks

↑ Valentin Heinrich Schmidt: Albrecht the bear, conqueror or heir of the Mark Brandenburg. A historical-critical illumination of the writing of Dr. Löbell on the origin of the Mark Brandenburg. Nauck'sche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1823
↑ Fragments of a Brandenburg Chronicle in Pulcawa's Bohemian Chronicle (= Adolph Friedrich Riedel [Hrsg.]: Codex diplomaticus Brandenburgensis : Collection of documents, chronicles and other source documents . Main part 4, volume 1 ). Berlin 1862, p. IX, 1-22 ( digitized version ).

literature

Jaroslav Polc: Agnes of Bohemia (1211–1282) . Pictures of life for the history of the Bohemian countries, ISBN 3-486-55541-3 , pp. 180–181
Theodor Fontane: Walks through the Mark Brandenburg . Part 3. Havelland. (1st edition 1873.) Quotations from the edition of Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, Munich 1971, Frankfurt / M., Berlin. ISBN 3-485-00293-3

personal data
SURNAME	Pulkava, Přibík
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Pulkava from Radenín, Přibík (full name); Pulkava z Radenína, Přibík (Czech)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Bohemian chronicler
DATE OF BIRTH	14th Century
DATE OF DEATH	around 1380

[1] Valentin Heinrich Schmidt: Albrecht the bear, conqueror or heir of the Mark Brandenburg. A historical-critical illumination of the writing of Dr. Löbell on the origin of the Mark Brandenburg. Nauck'sche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1823

[Riedel-4-1-2] Fragments of a Brandenburg Chronicle in Pulcawa's Bohemian Chronicle (= Adolph Friedrich Riedel [Hrsg.]: Codex diplomaticus Brandenburgensis : Collection of documents, chronicles and other source documents . Main part 4, volume 1 ). Berlin 1862, p. IX, 1-22 ( digitized version ).