Axel Oxenstierna
Graf (Greve) Axel Gustafsson Oxenstierna af Södermöre (also Oxenstjerna , Swedish pronunciation: ʊksɛnˌɧæːɳa) (* June 16, 1583 at Fånö estate near Bålsta ; † August 28, 1654 in Stockholm ) was Swedish Chancellor before, during and after the Thirty Years' War , from 1612 until his death in 1654.
After King Gustav Adolf fell in 1632, Oxenstierna took over government affairs as guardian for his underage daughter Christina . He reformed the Swedish administration. The long duration of the war, in addition to the intransigence of Emperors Ferdinand II and Ferdinand III. in matters of religion, especially a consequence of his decisions. Ultimately, he was able to enforce territorial gains in Germany and also against Denmark and secure Sweden's position as a great power in the Baltic Sea region.
Life
Axel Oxenstierna was the son of Baron Gustaf Gabrielsson Oxenstierna (1551–1597) and his wife Barbro Axelsdotter Bielke (1556–1624). He came from the old Swedish nobility -Gender Oxenstiern from Småland .
At the age of 16, Oxenstierna enrolled at the University of Rostock with his brothers in 1599 . In the following year he moved to Wittenberg and in 1601 to Jena . He studied there until 1603.
After completing his studies, he was appointed chamberlain to King Charles IX in 1603 . appointed by Sweden and sent to Mecklenburg on a diplomatic mission in 1606 ; it was the first of many to follow.
On June 5, 1608 he married Anna Åkesdotter (Bååt). With her he had the sons Erik Axelsson Oxenstierna and Johan Axelsson Oxenstierna .
In 1609 Oxenstierna was appointed to the Imperial Council and in 1611 King Gustav Adolf appointed him a member of the Regency Council . In 1610 he went to Copenhagen to prevent war with Denmark , but was unsuccessful.
Chancellorship
On January 6, 1612 he was appointed Chancellor and his organization and control had a positive effect on every part of the administration.
At the Peace of Knäred (between Denmark and Sweden) from January 20, 1613 Oxenstierna was instrumental. Oxenstierna administered the crown lands of Livonia and Finland in 1614 and 1616 as vice-regent for his king. As early as 1584, Estonia had submitted to Swedish rule as the Principality of Ehsten , with the Treaty of Altmark of 1629 Poland-Lithuania lost Livonia to Sweden. He also created the peace treaty of Stolbowo , which ended the war between Sweden and Russia on March 9, 1617, with flying colors.
In 1620 Oxenstierna led the delegation to Berlin , which worked out the marriage contract between Gustav Adolf and Maria Eleonora von Brandenburg .
Diplomat and strategist in the Thirty Years War
In 1622 Oxenstierna became governor of Riga , which Gustav Adolf had conquered the previous year. For his services, which had meanwhile become indispensable to the king, he received a.o. the diocese of Wenden . In 1623 Oxenstierna prevented a break with Denmark. A joint occupation of Stralsund made it possible to protect the city from the imperial troops.
In October 1626 he was appointed governor of the conquered territories in Prussia. As such, he negotiated the Altmark armistice in 1629 - with the mediation of France . In the Treaty of Bärwalde , Sweden concluded an alliance with France in January 1631. After the Battle of Breitenfeld on September 7, 1631, Oxenstierna was appointed Swedish Plenipotentiary on the Rhine, with very far-reaching powers. His certificate of appointment reached him in early 1632.
On November 16, 1632, King Gustav Adolf fell in the Battle of Lützen , and was succeeded by his five-year-old daughter Christina I. From now on Oxenstierna took over the political leadership. The military command was shared by Duke Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar and Gustav Graf Horn , Oxenstierna's son-in-law. The Swedes decided to continue the war without the king.
The consequences of the battle near Nördlingen
On April 23, 1633 Oxenstierna concluded the Heilbronn Bund between Sweden and the Franconian, Swabian and Rhenish estates .
From autumn 1633 Oxenstierna urged Prince Ludwig I of Anhalt-Köthen to resign from the office of Swedish governor of the Halberstadt and Magdeburg monasteries . Nevertheless, the prince accepted him into the Fruit-Bringing Society in February 1634 . The admission took place at the Halberstadt convent of the Lower Saxony district together with other convention participants.
In the battle of Nördlingen on September 6, 1634, the Protestants under Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar and Gustaf Horn suffered a heavy defeat. The Protestant electorate of Saxony , whose elector Johann Georg I had remained neutral for a long time and only sided with Gustav Adolf in 1631 after the destruction of Magdeburg and an incursion by imperial troops under General Tilly in Saxony, took the opportunity to leave the alliance again . He and subsequently many other Protestant powers concluded the Prague Peace of 1635 with Emperor Ferdinand II and the Catholic League ; the Heilbronner Bund dissolved again. Only Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar and Wilhelm V von Hessen-Kassel stayed on Sweden's side.
A general peace in Germany was not the result, however, because Oxenstierna did not want to retreat to Sweden, but decided to continue the war with the support of France in order to prevent Habsburg hegemony in Europe and even in the Baltic Sea region, which was ruled by Sweden. In 1636, Sweden reaffirmed its alliance with France in Wismar, but had to give the French an equal right of decision; Oxenstierna mistrusted Cardinal Richelieu , but remained dependent on him as the most powerful ally. Oxenstierna explained the continuation of the war as follows: “If his late majesty had not gone to Germany with his army, the emperor would have a fleet on these seas today ... the entire coast would have fallen to him and we here in Sweden would not have one delighted with security for a single minute. "
Politics in Sweden
Returning to Sweden in 1636, Oxenstierna took over the guardianship of Queen Christina and banished her irresponsible mother, Maria Eleonora, to Gripsholm Castle until she fled to Denmark in 1640. The negative image of a hysterical, depressive and lavish queen widow was, however, guided to a large extent by interest, since neither Oxenstierna nor the Imperial Council - as would have been customary - wanted her to participate in the government. Christina grew up in the house of her aunt Katharina von Sweden and her husband Johann Kasimir von Pfalz-Zweibrücken , together with their children. Oxenstierna henceforth headed the entire domestic and foreign policy. It strengthened his position that the Swedish field marshal Banér won the battle of Wittstock in the autumn of 1636 against an overwhelming force of imperial and Saxons . In 1638, Sweden committed itself to France in Hamburg to continue the war in return for an annual payment of one million thalers. The following battles on German soil, known as the "French-Swedish War", continued for 13 years without a decisive battle and a military victor.
In May 1643, under the influence of Oxenstierna , the Imperial Council decided to start the Torstensson War against Denmark. Swedish troops under the command of Torstensson and Horn advanced into Jutland and Skåne; the following year the Swedes won the war with the sea battle in the Fehmarnbelt . With the Peace of Brömsebro , Oxenstierna ended it in 1645 and added a number of islands.
In the same year he was appointed Chancellor of Uppsala University. Oxenstierna was always open to scientific questions and innovations. He founded five grammar schools and was very interested in the reforms of Wolfgang Ratke . He appointed Hugo Grotius as the Swedish envoy in Paris and he was connected to this scientist by a lengthy correspondence.
In 1644 Queen Christina took over the government at the age of eighteen and Oxenstierna's reign as guardian ended; However, he remained in office as Reich Chancellor. The young queen, under the influence of her foster father Johann Kasimir von Pfalz-Zweibrücken, made her own decisions, against Oxenstierna's advice. In 1647 she appointed her cousin Karl Gustav von Pfalz-Zweibrücken as generalissimo of the Swedish troops in Germany and at the same time signaled her intention to marry him, which she later refrained from.
From 1643 the warring parties - the Reich, France and Sweden - negotiated a possible peace agreement in Münster and Osnabrück. Oxenstierna sent his son Johan Axelsson Oxenstierna and the legate Johan Adler Salvius to the peace congress, which finally negotiated the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 . The treaties secured Sweden's position as a great power in the Baltic Sea region and brought Sweden control over Swedish Western Pomerania including the islands of Rügen , Usedom and Wollin , the city of Wismar with the offices of Poel and Neukloster from the Duchy of Mecklenburg , the Hamburg Cathedral Chapter, the Archbishopric of Bremen and the Monastery of Verden . These areas remained German imperial fiefs and gave Sweden seats and votes in the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire. In addition, Sweden received war compensation of 5 million thalers . To do this, it withdrew its troops from the rest of the empire and from the East Prussian coast. It kept Estonia and Livonia.
Oxenstiernas administrative reforms
Oxenstierna took part in Gustav Adolf's campaign in Germany for a time, but did not fight any battles. This was done by the king himself as a military expert, and later by his generals, to whom Oxenstierna largely left a free hand as long as they adhered to his great strategic guidelines. He was just as successful as an administrative expert: He created a new court order (1614) and a new Reichstag order (1616). Against all odds, he began to reform the Swedish army in 1617, and in 1618 he successfully introduced a new chamber administration. In 1622 new rules for the knight's house were issued, which strengthened the rights of the chamber of nobility (in return, Gustav Adolf raised many of his loyal officials to the nobility), and in the same year new rules for the chancellery.
Oxenstierna also made great contributions to the development of the postal system in Sweden. As early as 1620 he organized a regular postal service between Stockholm and the Swedish post office in Hamburg, the route of which led via the Swedish border post Markaryd through Denmark. The only courier change took place initially in Markaryd and from 1658, after the acquisition of Skåne , at the Elsinore border post . Private mail was not permitted for carriage on this route. The postal service served the purely state interests of Sweden and was of great importance in the Thirty Years' War, as the Swedish military had a relatively good communication link back home. In 1636, the state-organized public postal system in Sweden was founded under Oxenstierna. Farmers whose farms were on the postal routes and who received tax breaks in return were hired as messengers.
Queen Christina's abdication
When Queen Christina in 1651, shortly after her official coronation, announced her intention to renounce the throne, Oxenstierna persuaded her to refrain from it because he mistrusted her cousin and heir to the throne, Karl Gustav . His father, Johann Kasimir von Pfalz-Zweibrücken, was one of Oxenstierna's rivals and rallied his opponents. The Chancellor also considered the young prince an immature adventurer. A few years later, however, he changed his mind about the prince, his father had died in the meantime and Oxenstierna's relationship with Christina cooled off considerably. She withdrew more and more into private life after interfering - in Oxenstierna's view unfavorably - in the negotiations for the Peace of Westphalia, from which he would have liked to get even more out for Sweden. When, in February 1654, she again announced her intention to abdicate to the Imperial Council and the State Council , he replied that she would regret it within a few months, but no longer resisted her. Rather, he negotiated the terms of their future supply and enabled the change of throne at the Reichstag on June 16, 1654 in Uppsala Castle .
A few months later, Count Axel Gustafsson Oxenstierna af Södermöre died on September 7, 1654 at the age of 71 in Stockholm.
family
He married Anna Åkesdotter (Bååt) on June 5, 1608 († June 23, 1649). The couple had several children:
- Johan (June 24, 1611 - December 5, 1657)
- ⚭ 1636 Anna Sture (1614–1646)
- ⚭ 1648 Margaretha Brahe (1603–1669)
- Catharina (* 1612; † June 25, 1661) ⚭ 1640 Johan Kruse (1615–1645) Lord of Harviala
- Christine (* 1612; † August 8, 1631) ⚭ 1628 Gustaf Horn von Björneborg (1592–1657), Count of Pori
- Erik (February 13, 1624 - October 23, 1656) ⚭ 1648 Elisabeth Brahe (1632–1689)
literature
- Jörg P. Findeisen: Axel Oxenstierna, architect of the Swedish great power era and winner of the Thirty Years' War . Katz, Gernsbach 2007, ISBN 978-3-938047-24-8 .
- Sigmund W. Goetze: The policy of the Swedish chancellor Axel Oxenstierna towards the emperor and the empire . Mühlau, Kiel 1971 (also dissertation, University of Kiel 1971).
- Alexander Zirr: Axel Oxenstierna - Sweden's Chancellor during the Thirty Years War . Meine Verlag, Leipzig 2008, ISBN 978-3-9811859-7-3 .
- Axel Oxenstierna . In: Herman Hofberg, Frithiof Heurlin, Viktor Millqvist, Olof Rubenson (eds.): Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon . 2nd Edition. tape 2 : L – Z, including supplement . Albert Bonniers Verlag, Stockholm 1906, p. 252 (Swedish, runeberg.org ).
Web links
- Publications by and about Axel Oxenstierna in VD 17 .
- Literature about Axel Oxenstierna in the Landesbibliographie MV
- Entry in the adelsvapen wiki
- The Uncrowned King: Axel Oxenstierna and Sweden's Rise to Power During the Thirty Years War by Forest R. Johnson III, University of Iowa, 2016 (eng.)
- The Swede who devastated Germany
Individual evidence
- ↑ Registration of Axel Oxenstierna in the Rostock matriculation portal
- ↑ Quoted from Georges Pagès, The Thirty Years War: 1618–1648 , translated into English. v. David Maland and John Hooper, New York, 1939, 131.
- ^ Moa Matthis: Maria Eleonora: drottningen som sa nej (The Queen who said no). Bonniers 2010, ISBN 978-91-0-011354-4 .
- ↑ Gunnar Wetterberg, "Den mäktige Oxenstierna" , Popular Historia, 2005.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Oxenstierna, Axel |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Oxenstierna af Södermöre, Axel Gustafsson |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swedish Chancellor |
| BIRTH DATE | June 16, 1583 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | on Fånö near Uppsala |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 28, 1654 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Stockholm |