Baltringer pile

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Seal of the Baltringer heap: A ploughshare with the initials DWGBIE = The word of God remains in eternity (Isaiah 40,8b)

The Baltringer Haufen was an association of farmers and craftsmen in the Peasants' War of 1524/25 and a sub-group of the Christian Association . In the early modern era, a poorly organized military force was referred to as a pile or pile . Baltringen is located around 20 kilometers south of Ulm in the Biberach district in Upper Swabia .

Creation of the Baltringer Heap

According to a contemporary witness, on Christmas Eve of the year 1524 farmers sat together for the first time in a tavern in Baltringen and discussed “how to approach everything well”.
From then on there were regular meetings. While in other regions the farmers gathered and discussed at annual fairs , in Baltringen it was Carnival that was useful for conspiratorial meetings: according to one source, the farmers moved from one village to the other and ate in good company and drank. Every Thursday the farmers met in the Baltringer Ried, according to a source up to 30,000 people. They chose Ulrich Schmied , a blacksmith from Sulmingen by trade, as their spokesperson . A contemporary describes him as “a pious, kind-hearted, talkative, wise man”.

The demands of the peasants

Memorial to Ulrich Schmid in Sulmingen, Maselheim municipality

The meetings of the farmers quickly got around to the authorities , and representatives of the Swabian Federation made contact with the Baltringer Haufen. The religious and secular princes, aristocrats and imperial cities were united in the Swabian League. While the representatives of the imperial cities stood up for negotiations and tried to mediate, the princes pleaded for a strategy of violence. The Baltringer Haufen's negotiating partner was the Mayor of Ulm, Neidhardt. He asked the farmers gathered in the Baltringer Ried to write down their complaints. In mid-February 1525, the farmers handed over more than 300 letters of appeal, each representing a village.
In their complaint, the Baltringers complained in the first place about serfdom . This was followed by a request for a reduction in interest and validity , then for the abolition of taxes when the farm was handed over. Furthermore, they hoped that in the future they would no longer be burdened with compulsory labor, as well as being able to use the wood from the forests for their purposes. The peasants refused the small tithe , but they agreed to give the large tithe to support the pastor. After all, they wanted more legal certainty in everyday life.
In order to justify the demands, the peasants invoked divine law . With divine law , a completely new legal norm presented itself : The political order must be measured against the divine will, which is revealed in the Holy Scriptures . This calls into question the old law. Ulrich Schmid consistently refused to take legal action via the Reich Chamber of Commerce to clarify the issues at stake.

Negotiations with the Swabian Federation

The spokesman for the Baltringer suggested that learned men should decide from their knowledge of the Bible what divine right was. "The representatives of the gentlemen admitted that willingly," says the source text about the reaction of the Swabian Federation , they wanted to pray to God themselves so that the election of these learned men would succeed. In this matter, Ulrich Schmid hoped, he would be helped in Memmingen , and he went to the town 40 kilometers from Baltringen. At the side of Ulrich Schmid came another person who took over the role of the clerk of the Baltringer Haufen: the furrier journeyman Sebastian Lotzer .

Formation of the Christian Association

On the initiative of Lotzer and Schmid, representatives of the Allgäu and the (bottom) sea ​​pile that had formed in the meantime came to Memmingen. The union of the Upper Swabian farmers called itself a Christian Association . The establishment was communicated to the Swabian Federation in a polite letter, in which those in the United Alliance assured that they did not want to use violence and asked the Federation not to use violence either.
Presumably with the help of the Memmingen preacher Christoph Schappeler , they worked out the most famous peasant war pamphlet, the Twelve Articles, from the Baltringen complaints . In them the divine law was interwoven with the demands. The Federal Order (March 7), the draft constitution of the Christian Association, also originated from the pen of the writer of the Baltringer Haufen. Attached to federal law is a list of the names of men who should decide what is divine right. The most famous reformers such as Luther , Melanchthon and Zwingli were included in this list, but rejected by the Swabian Federation. The dispute over this list of judges seems to have been the only subject of negotiation between the representatives of the farmers and the Swabian Federation. After the third list of judges had been rejected, the mayors of the free imperial cities of Ravensburg and Kempten made a mediation proposal: the authorities and subjects of each heap should each name two arbitrators and a joint chairman, and this committee should issue a binding judgment. This must be seen as an attempt to dissuade the farmers from their previous position of orientation towards divine law. The base rejected this proposal as unacceptable.

The Swabian Federation marches

At the end of March 1525, the Swabian Federation ended its campaign against Duke Ulrich von Württemberg . Then the first riders arrived in Upper Swabia . Three days after the soldiers appeared, the Baltringers complained in a letter (March 25) that there had been attacks by troops of the Swabian Federation on villages. They emphasized again that they wanted nothing other than Divine Law .
On March 26, the farmers stormed the palace of the Salem abbot in nearby Schemmerberg . In the following days, Laupheim Castle was looted and the monasteries of Ochsenhausen , Marchtal , Wiblingen , Heggbach and Gutenzell were forced to join. At the same time, the Upper Swabian imperial cities, especially Memmingen, started hectic diplomatic efforts to avoid the military confrontation. Several meetings of the city representatives took place in Memmingen. In urgent letters, they appealed to both the Swabian Federation and the Baltringer Haufen to refrain from assault. The response of the Swabian Federation: He had already started the fight after the farmers broke the armistice. The militarily and numerically inferior farmers from the Leipheim area were massacred without any actual fighting. Even before the troops arrived in Baltringen, the local farmers sent a letter of surrender to the federal government.

The end of the Baltringer heap

With the beginning of the fighting of the troops of the Swabian Federation under the command of Georg III. Truchsess von Waldburg-Zeil , the Baltringer heap split up and finally dissolved. The Truchsess did not dare to fight the Seehaufen, and the Weingarten contract was concluded with the Allgäu and Seehaufen . The Swabian Confederation rejected a subsequent takeover of the Weingarten contract for the Baltringer Haufen.
After the military defeat, the peasants had to swear allegiance again and a wave of claims for damages came upon them. The Baltringen farmers were punished particularly hard. The village was not burned down as ordered by the Swabian Federation. But they had to pay double the fine. Ulrich Schmid, Sebastian Lotzer and Christoph Schappeler were able to save their lives by fleeing to Switzerland.
The peasant uprising left its mark despite the military defeat. The authorities were afraid of a new uprising. It has been proven that the legal and economic situation of the farmers improved as a result of the Weingarten Treaty. Above all, the conditions of serfdom improved and it was gradually dismantled.

rating

The Baltringer Haufen had a major impact on the Peasants' War in Upper Swabia and beyond. He was able to assert himself against the allied crowd with his demand for nonviolence and orientation to divine law . The Baltringer suggested the merger with the Allgäu and Lake Constance clusters to form a Christian union . The Twelve Articles and the Federal Order show the Baltringer's handwriting. The twelve articles appeared in 25 editions, they became the most important program publication of the peasant war in Germany . Both texts express the will for a revolutionary transformation and the end of the feudal system, as is the case in the national order .
The peasants demanded freedom, referring to God's word, drafted their own constitution in the federal system and democratically elected their representatives: first steps towards human rights and a republican state. The Swiss Confederation probably served as a model .
The revolution failed because of the military defeat. The support alliance of the Baltringer, Allgäuer and Bodenseehaufens did not work at the moment the troops of the Swabian Federation appeared. The Baltringer Haufen insisted on non-violence until the troops arrived; they were not prepared for a military conflict.

Culture of remembrance

The Peasant War Museum in Baltringen, municipality of Mietingen , opened in 1984 , deals with the Baltringer Haufen as the “earliest democratic-republican movement in Germany” and has been known as the Baltringer Haufen Memorial since 2000 - Peasants' War in Upper Swabia .

In Sulmingen, municipality of Maselheim , Ulrich Schmid was erected a memorial.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Peter Blickle, The Revolution of 1525 (3rd edition, Munich 1993), 24.