Evil Carnival
As evil Fasnacht is turmoil in Basel at the time of the February 26, 1376 Fasnacht referred. For the killing of some of Duke Leopold III's followers . The city received severe sanctions and was under Habsburg hegemony for around a decade .
prehistory
The prehistory and background of the uprising were on the one hand the conflict between the Bishop of Basel and the House of Habsburg over the ownership of the then legally separate cities of Greater and Small Basel, which began in the 13th century ; this split the knightly ruling class of the city into the "Sterner" (for Habsburg) and "Psitticher" (for the bishop), but over time it affected the entire population (→ Psitticher and Sterner ). On the other hand, from the beginning of the 14th century, a movement made up of parts of the nobility and the bourgeoisie, which rejected both Habsburg and episcopal sovereignty and sought imperial immediacy , formed as the third party .
Although the territorial ambitions of the Habsburgs shifted to the Austro-Tyrolean area at the end of the 14th century, an interest in Basel remained with a view to the consolidation of the Alsatian-southern German holdings. So Duke Leopold III bought. 1375 Kleinbasel as pledge from the Basel bishop, who offered it to him out of financial difficulties. In January 1376 Leopold also received the imperial bailiwick ( blood jurisdiction) over Basel from the emperor and thus obtained important rulership rights in the city, but also got on a course of confrontation with the citizens. This had already taken concrete steps towards independence when the Bishop in 1372/73 pledged the market and customs rights as well as the coin shelf of Grossbasel.
Operations
On February 26, 1376, Leopold held a tournament with a large number of people at Grossbasler Münster when no suitable place for this traditional carnival event could be found in Kleinbasel. But the tournament also appeared as a challenge and a show of power, and when guns and horses got into the rows of spectators, there was tumult. An incited crowd attacked the Habsburg society on Münsterplatz and in the aristocratic rooms and killed some nobles and servants. The duke had to flee to Kleinbasel in a boat, half a hundred counts, canons , noblemen and servants came under the control of the rebels for a short time.
The exact processes cannot be reconstructed. The thesis that there was a dispute between the guilds and the nobility is, however, doubtful, since many guild trades lived from the knightly culture and achieved their greatest sales at tournaments. The everyday culture of Basel, like other larger cities of the late Middle Ages, was characterized by a latent propensity for violence, which broke out again and again at Carnival. A fickle lower class that had little to lose was easily incited to riot at any time. Already during the pogrom of 1349 against the Basel Jews - also during the carnival period - gangs from this social group were incited, while the people behind it remained in the dark. It is assumed that the masterminds of the violent appearances of 1376 came from the environment of the bishop or the urban autonomists.
consequences
The city council declared "strange people and bad boys" responsible and had twelve alleged ringleaders beheaded. The Duke, however, seized the opportunity to hold the citizens accountable and to make them obedient . At his insistence, the imposed kingdom for the breach of the peace , the night over Basel, which has been cut off from the outside world. The agreement of July 9, 1376 in Hall in Tirol between the city and the duke settled the dispute, but turned out to be extremely unfavorable for Basel. From then on, Leopold had to do the same job as other Habsburg cities and pay damages of 8,000 guilders . With Leopold's power behind it, the Habsburg party dominated the city.
The bourgeois striving for independence had initially been halted. However, the Habsburgs subsequently sought a good understanding with the bishop and the citizenry so that they could rebuild their positions. Basel aristocrats such as the Münch and Bärenfels families, meanwhile, wove a close network of relationships with the Roman-German rulers from the House of Luxembourg . The emancipation from the Habsburg domination began in 1384 with the accession to the Swabian Association of Cities . The defeat in the Battle of Sempach on July 9, 1386 was a disaster for the Habsburgs in Basel. Many of her supporters from knighthood and citizenship were killed, including Leopold III. died. The city seized the opportunity. Three weeks later she acquired the imperial bailiwick that had become vacant after the Duke's death . Then in 1392 she bought the episcopal pledge of Kleinbasel from the children of Leopold, who were now in need of money, and united the two cities. An openly formulated alliance agreement achieved a settlement with the Habsburgs in 1393. The factual independence of the city (the legal replacement of the pledges only succeeded in the late 15th century) allowed it to pursue its own territorial policy, which began in 1400.
literature
- René Teuteberg : Basel history. Christoph Merian Verlag, Basel 1986, pp. 133-135.
- Georg Kreis , Beat von Wartburg (ed.): Basel. History of an Urban Society. Christoph Merian Verlag, Basel 2000, pp. 51 and 61–62.
- Tobias Keller, Achatz von Müller , Susanna Burghartz : The Böse Fasnacht 1376. Conflict situations in Basel at the end of the 14th century. 2011