Baldemar von Petterweil
Baldemar von Petterweil , often also Baldemar von Peterweil or Baldemar Fabri (* around 1320 perhaps in Offenbach-Bürgel , but probably Frankfurt am Main ; † January 14, 1382 or 1383 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a canon of St. Bartholomäusstift in Frankfurt am Main . He is considered to be the city's first historian and topographer and left records that allow an almost complete reconstruction of the urban topography during his lifetime.
Life
The year and place of birth of Petterweiler are not known, he was first documented in 1336 near Offenbach-Bürgel , from 1341 to 1381 he was also verifiably a canon at St. Bartholomew's monastery in Frankfurt am Main . Based on this professional position, it can be assumed that he was born in Frankfurt am Main around 1320. The office of the already traditional and important monastery that he held and his surname suggest that his ancestors had immigrated from the nearby town of Petterweil , now a district of Karben , and acquired citizenship. Petterweil had a brother named Hertwig and a sister named Gela .
Already the earliest and also preserved civic register of the city - a book in which entries and exits from the citizenry were recorded - mentions an immigrant named Wilhelmus de Petirwil in 1311 . It remains the only mention of a citizen from this place for several decades. It is therefore possible that Wilhelmus, also taking into account the age differences, was the first offspring of the Petterweil family in Frankfurt and the father of Baldemar von Petterweil. However, this is not documented, especially since there were civil roles as early as the 13th century that were no longer preserved in the early modern period .
There are numerous documented mentions, especially in the first half of the 14th century, which indicate a connection between other family members and the St. Bartholomew Monastery. According to Johann Georg Battonn , who did not quote literally from monastery sources, Petterweil's brother was even canon of the monastery.
With his siblings lived Petterweil on the on the Schnurgasse , opposite the Ziegelgasse located Schmidt-Hof , who was then the still independent northern part of the later united with him great Nuremberg court was formed. Allegedly, a Germanized form of the alternative surname of Petterweil - Fabri = Latin for smith - gave the former his name.
Almost nothing is known of Petterweil's life apart from his documented foundation work. Together with his siblings, with an interest from the aforementioned court, in 1379 he founded the Vicarie of the Holy Trinity, to which his brother added two houses adjacent to their dwelling after his death either on January 14, 1382 or 1383.
Based on the aforementioned sources, Battonn further stated that in 1364 Petterweil also acquired the house at Zum Roten Hahn on the corner of Klostergasse and Predigerstraße (both of which were repealed or overbuilt after the Second World War ). From 1379 it served the vicar of the foundation he established as a residence and did not change hands again until the 16th century when the foundation ceased as a result of the Reformation .
The street of the same name in Bornheim is reminiscent of Petterweil, where after its incorporation in 1877 Elisabethenstraße was rededicated accordingly.
plant
Petterweil made a large amount of historical records, which suggest an interest in the city's history that went beyond his actual activity . He wrote down important information about the cathedral fire of 1349 and the reception of the Roman-German emperor in the cathedral in the Liber Baldemari named after him . The important source work was probably lost in the early 19th century, as, for example, Johann Georg Battonn was still able to draw on it for his main work Local Description of the City of Frankfurt am Main , but it was already described as a loss in 1884.
For a long time he was also assigned a four-meter-long conducting role with role texts and instructions for the performers for the Frankfurt Passion Play from 1350. Since comparable texts of the time have only survived in fragments, it is the earliest completely preserved document of this type in Germany. Despite the undoubted Frankfurt provenance, Petterweiler's authorship is considered unlikely, according to recent paleographic studies.
Of great historical importance is Petterweil's Liber censuum, which was written in the same year . In principle, this is only a list of the income of the cathedral monastery, which he summarized in great detail and is divided into four parts. The first describes the income according to monthly data, the second according to the place from which it originates, the third according to vicarages and the fourth according to the offices of the clergy concerned. The four parts are preceded by an introduction with an explanation of the purpose of the book and a detailed street register. He divided these into main roads (Principales), connecting roads (Transistus) and dead ends (Inpertransibiles).
Based on the text, the extent, topography and partly also the social structure of Frankfurt's old town in the middle of the 14th century can be understood, which at that time essentially consisted of the Hohenstaufen city complex within the Grabenstrasse. This makes it the oldest known Frankfurt text of this kind. Petterweil's system of order reflects on the one hand his character as a scholastic , on the other hand his medieval view of the world, but is nevertheless more than extraordinary for the time, as it is an accurate description without symbolic character, which is also free of elements of the "city labor" usual at the time.
Despite its importance, the book has not been fully transcribed, let alone translated and published to this day. In the 19th century, Ludwig Heinrich Euler and, most recently, Heinrich von Nathusius-Neinstedt only dealt with the introduction and the street directory contained therein, but not with the sometimes very rich topographical information of the four main parts of the book that follow, which are often specific places or houses in Frankfurt for the first time ever.
Battonn (see above) has at least larger excerpts printed in Latin. As Friedrich Siegmund Feyerlein explained, Petterweil was the model and probably also the trigger for Battonn's topographical activity, especially since an annotated transcript of the street directory was found in his estate. According to this, the directory was to be preprinted in advance of Batton's work on Frankfurt topography, which was originally incomplete and was only published in the 1860s, but this did not happen.
literature
- Anton Dörrer: Baldemar von Peterweil. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 549 ( digitized version ).
- Ludwig Heinrich Euler: Baldemars von Peterweil description of Frankfurt . In: Messages to the members of the Association for History and Archeology in Frankfurt aM Association for History and Archeology in Frankfurt a. M. (self-published), Frankfurt am Main 1858
- Johannes Janota: Frankfurt conducting role, Frankfurt Passion Play. With the parallel texts of the "Frankfurter Dirigierrolle", the "Alsfelder Passionspiel", the "Heidelberger Passionspiel", the "Frankfurter Osterspielfragments" and the "Fritzlarer Passionspielfragments" . Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1997, ISBN 3-484-19081-7
- Wolfgang Klötzer (Hrsg.): Frankfurter Biographie . Personal history lexicon . Second volume. M – Z (= publications of the Frankfurt Historical Commission . Volume XIX , no. 2 ). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-7829-0459-1 . P. 181 and 182
- Heinrich von Nathusius-Neinstedt: Baldemars von Peterweil description of Frankfurt . In: Archive for Frankfurt's History and Art. Third episode. Fifth volume . K. Th. Völcker's Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1896
Web links
- Baldemar von Peterweil in the repertory "Historical Sources of the German Middle Ages"
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Baldemar von Petterweil |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Baldemarus de Peterweil; Baldemar von Peterweil |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German Catholic priest, historian and topographer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1320 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | uncertain: Offenbach-Bürgel or Frankfurt am Main |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 14, 1382 or January 14, 1383 |
| Place of death | Frankfurt am Main |