Arnold Gijsels van Lier

Arnold Gijsels van Lier (* 1593 in the province of Utrecht , Netherlands; † December 8, 1676 in Lenzen (Elbe) ), also spelled Aernoult , Gysels and van Lyr , was a Dutch admiral and governor who served as bailiff made a contribution to the economic development of the city of Lenzen and the construction of dykes in the Elbe valley .

Live and act

At the age of 16 he joined the East India Company . At the age of 25 he was chief merchant and commander in Ambon on the Moluccas . In 1641 he commanded a Dutch fleet that had been sent to support the Portuguese, and on November 5, 1641, he asserted himself in a naval battle at Cape St. Vincent against a superior force of the Spanish Armada. For this success he was raised to the nobility.

After returning to his home country, Gijsels van Lier was denied a further career in the navy. The reasons for this are obscure. Instead, Prince Friedrich Heinrich of Orange sent him to his son-in-law, the "Great Elector" Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg , who wanted to hire him as an advisor on colonial issues. The plans to build up an imperial fleet for colonization were not implemented, so Friedrich Wilhelm looked for an alternative job for Gijsels van Lier.

In 1651 Gijsels van Lier was awarded the office of Lenzen an der Elbe in hereditary lease as a Privy Councilor , which he should exempt from the consequences of the Thirty Years' War . The now widowed admiral and his daughter moved into Lenzen Castle. On October 22nd, 1653, Gijsels van Lier presented the Elector with a 16-point program in a letter with which he wanted to restore “discipline and order”. In fact, it was a plan that gave important impetus to economic development, urban planning and development, health care, educational support and, above all, dyke construction.

Many of Gijsels van Lier's proposals were implemented, which contributed to the economic boom in the city of Lenzen. Successes of his term of office that can still be seen today are the creation of the relatively wide and straight Hamburger Strasse and Neustadtstrasse as well as today's dyke system with the Elbe dike, the Achter dike and the Pragger dike.

Gijsels van Lier did not want to be buried in Lenzen, but in nearby Mödlich , where the language of the farmers reminded him of his Dutch homeland. At the church there he had a “morgue” built during his lifetime, in which he and later his daughter were buried. The two bodies, although not embalmed, remained in the family crypt as mummies for a long time . When the Elbe floods in March 1888, triggered by snowmelt, the coffins swam for a long time in the water and the condition of the mummies deteriorated. In a service in the Mödlicher Church on December 12, 1912, Gijsels van Lier was buried again 236 years after his death.

The "16-point plan"

Among other things, Gijsels van Lier suggested in his letter to the Great Elector that all the houses destroyed by fire be rebuilt by an organizing hand, instead of the residents setting up makeshift sheds from the charred beams and boards where there was space:

"The City Council has ohn Beschwerd someone deputize , which leadeth overseeing the building of houses and want to sign in which anyone who wants to build in such a way so that the houses did not happen so shameful as to etzlichen places this Städtleins be henceforth builded . The best ornament of a town is when the houses are finely uniform and more proportional. "

He also wanted to improve the hygienic conditions of that time:

“To the mockery of strangers and to their own disadvantage, the dung is high up in the streets, so high that no one can come to another. The street manure, as far as every logement extends, is either to be shuffled up by the citizens or, because it is very useful for agriculture, to be driven into the fields, and I cannot be surprised enough because the field of this place of manure is so needy. "

He denounced the excessive consumption of alcohol in the population:

"After even Sunday, as it should be celebrated and sanctified, for unnecessary drinking and indulging, especially during (before) the sermon, is desecrated by many and often great inconvenience and brawl arises, like a citizen recently on Sunday after you left two wounds in the head, suffered damage; So I wanted to have inquired whether it is not advisable that those who serve beer or brandy should be ordered by an attached mandate that they should not administer or give anything to anyone unless the sermon has ended. "

Gijsels van Lier didn’t leave any good hair on the existing staff:

“It is found that none of the subjects in office, whether he is a Schulze or a judge, can neither read nor write. And although it is the case in all the offices of this place that everything is done according to the imagination, I would humbly ask you to be able to choose a few qualified persons in addition to the clerk who will be present as witnesses to all the Actibus that has occurred, so that no one will blame me or say bad things that I judge people according to my own imagination. I would therefore like to justify my conscience that everything that is traded is noted in writing so that I can answer for it against your electoral highness and everyone. "

Gijsels van Lier did not object to the school system in the city of Lenzen itself, but he did object to the educational opportunities in the surrounding villages:

"Because I would like to see and promote that school should be held in each and especially the large official villages and that a child will be sent from every house, especially in winter, when they are not needed so big, I request an express order from your electoral highness so that people do that all the more willingly, especially since simple-minded people imagine that I wanted to make an innovation with it. "

Dyke construction was particularly important to Gijsels van Lier. The current dyke system began as early as the 11th century, but the existing flood protection was completely destroyed during the Thirty Years' War. Gijsels van Lier brought settlers from Holland to the Lenzer Wische to rebuild the dikes .

In order to promote urban economic life, Gijsels van Lier recommended the introduction of hand-weaving and brought a sheet dyer from Holland to train the population. But because the city did not clear the moat and thus lacked the necessary running water, these plans literally came to nothing.

Appreciation

Figure group "Lenzen Fools Freedom"

The primary school in Lenzen is called the Gijsels van Lier primary school.

In front of Lenzen Castle in 2009, as a final urban redevelopment project, the group of figures “Lenzener Narren Freiheit” by artist Bernd Streiter was created, who created sculptures based on the demands of Gijsels van Lier's letter to the Great Elector. In the castle itself, the work of the Dutchman is honored in the exhibition on the city history of Lenzen.

swell

• Georg Grüneberg: 1075 years of Lenzen, Part 5: Hostility and resistance were great . In: Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung . June 19, 2004.
• Hans-Joachim Schreckenbach: Bibliography on the history of the Mark Brandenburg, part 2 . Böhlau, Weimar 1971, p. 274 .
• Christoph Voigt: Admiral Aernoult Gijsels van Lier . In: Brandenburg year books . No. 11 , 1936, pp. 85-94 .
• Christoph Voigt: Admiral Gijsels van Lier, a deserved helper of the Great Elector . In: Brandenburgia . tape 24 , 1916, pp. 28-35 .
• Elisabeth von Falkenhausen : Mödlich and the Admiral Gysel van Lier, in: Discovering the Prignitz: Nature and culture in a region . 4th edition. Bäßler, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-930388-27-1 , pp. 182-183 .