Agnes von der Vierbecke

Agnes von der Vierbecke , also Agneta , (* around 1341 in Hengsen (today Holzwickede ), † October 4, 1378 in Dortmund ) is a person in the history of Holzwickeder and Dortmund.

Agnes (also called Nyse) was born at the Hengser Adelshof Haus Vierbecke and grew up there. She married - probably around 1360 - the Dortmund patrician Sudermann and had a son with him, Arnold (or Arnt) Sudermann.

She became the person of the story through a feud between Dortmund and Count Dietrich von Dinslaken, a brother of Count von der Mark. The widowed Agnes was friends with Dietrich. On October 4, 1378, the Sunday after Michaelmas , it was supposed to give the Count's gunmen access to the heavily fortified city. For this purpose, a troop of Brandenburg soldiers hid in one of their hay wagons, which Agnes - together with a load of wood - drove to the Wißstrasse gate in Dortmund. In total she came with two cars. She drove one team, the other probably her son. Count Conrad von Dortmund and the rest of his men waited in front of the gate, hidden in the bushes. Agnes told the gate guards that the hay and wood were for herself in order to smuggle the gunmen into the city. She placed the first car in the outer gate in such a way that it could no longer be closed. She distracted the gatekeeper Hermann Rübenkamp, ​​who knew the beautiful widow personally and did not suspect anything bad, by asking him to fetch a pot of pepper pot from the meat banks for her. Rübekamp left his post in breach of duty and went to the meat banks. Since Agnes assumed that the inner gate was already open, she climbed the Wißstrasse gate tower and gave the agreed signal with a white handkerchief. All the enemy troops stormed off with loud shouts, but the inner gate was still closed, contrary to expectations. Due to the noise of the attackers, this ruse, branded by the Dortmunders as treason, was discovered. All the attacking soldiers were slain by the guards and the vigilante group. Agnes and two of her helpers, her son Arnold and the young Count Conrad von Dortmund, were arrested on the Wißstrasse gate tower. On the same day they were charged, convicted and executed in Dortmund on the Alter Markt . The too helpful gate guard Hermann Rübenkamp met the same fate. Arnold, Conrad and Rübenkamp were beheaded, and Agnes allegedly burned on the wooden wagon used for the ruse.

Count Dietrich and his allies in the feud swore Agnes' innocence. Her brother Johann von Wickede and the Count of Dortmund accused the council of the imperial city of an act of injustice and spread this to other city councils. In any case, this conclusion allows a letter from Dortmund to the Council of Danzig , in which the legality of the conviction is once again presented. Ten years later, Count Engelbert III. von der Mark declared the unjustified execution as the cause of the great Dortmund feud . Agnes' family and the Dortmund council only reconciled in 1392 with the conclusion of the Great Feud.

The memory of the victory over the cunning Count Dietrich von Dinslaken and the "betrayal" of Agnes von der Vierbecke is still alive today in Dortmund. Every year at the end of September and beginning of October, the commemoration comes back to life at the Pfefferpotthastfest on the Old Market.

literature

• Hanne Hieber: Agnes von der Vierbecke. Traitor to Dortmund or innocently burned in the city's market? , in: Heimat Dortmund 2/2003, pp. 12-14, ISSN  0932-9757
• August Meininghaus: The betrayal of Agnetens von der Vierbecke in chronicle and history , in: Contributions to the history of Dortmund and the county Mark 22, 1913, p. 311-318
• Johann Dietrich von Steinen : Westphälische Geschichte, Part I , Lemgo: Meyer, 1755, p. 469f.

Web links

• Contribution to Agnes von der Vierbecke from the Dortmund women's history group Spinnennetz