Bartholomäus Sastrow

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Manuscript from Sastrow's chronicle in the Kulturhistorisches Museum Stralsund

Bartholomäus Sastrow (born August 21, 1520 in Greifswald , † February 7, 1603 in Stralsund ) was mayor of Stralsund and left behind a historically significant autobiography .

Life

Memorial plaque on the house at Lange Strasse 54 in Greifswald

Bartholomäus Sastrow was the son of the Greifswald merchant Nicolaus Sastrow (* 1488; † after 1548) and his wife Anna Schmiterlow, a niece of Nikolaus Smiterlow , a mayor of Stralsund. His grandfather Hans Sastrow was still Krüger in Ranzin under the manor of Owstin in Quilow before he settled in Greifswald as a citizen in 1487 ; In 1494 he was murdered. Sastrow had seven siblings; he himself was the third child of his parents. His oldest brother was Johannes Sastrow . His four younger sisters and the mother died of "pestilence" in 1549/50. Only the oldest sister Anna (1516–1594), who was married to Greifswald's mayor Peter Frubose, and their brother Karsten or Christian (1530–1580) reached a higher age.

Around 1523 Nicolaus Sastrow had to flee Greifswald because he had killed a respected citizen in a dispute and settled in Stralsund. There he became a senior man of the clothing tailor's office in 1533 . His family initially stayed in Greifswald. Also around 1523, Nikolaus Smiterlow went into exile in Greifswald to protest against the politics of his hometown Stralsund and lived there in his niece's house. Smiterlow's evangelical belief and aversion to rebellion and subversion served as a model for Sastrow throughout his life. In 1527 Smiterlow moved back to Stralsund and Sastrow's mother also moved with her children to their father. Since the Reformation had already been introduced in Stralsund in 1525 , while Greifswald only became Protestant in 1531, the family converted to the Protestant faith at the latest when they moved. Bartholomäus initially stayed with grandfather in Greifswald and did not follow the family until 1529. In Stralsund he received lessons from Johannes Knipstro .

In 1538 Sastrow studied for about a year at the University of Rostock . In 1541 he resumed his studies at the newly opened University of Greifswald , where he was shaped in the spirit of humanism . However, he had to drop out of his studies without a degree because his father had been placed under house arrest together with Smiterlow in the course of recent unrest in Stralsund , caused by Lübeck's mayor Jürgen Wullenwever , and had suffered financial damage that no longer allowed his sons to finance a degree. In 1542 Sastrow went on a journey with his brother Johannes that took him to Speyer via Wittenberg , Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main . You should try to speed up the father's trial because of the manslaughter at the Reich Chamber of Commerce 20 years ago . They found the court unoccupied and settled in for a long wait in Speyer. John Sastrow was there provost and traveled soon after by Italy . Bartholomäus Sastrow received a scribe post on the recommendation of Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon . In 1544 he was awarded a diploma as an imperial notary even without having completed his studies and entered the service of the Commander of the Order of St. John in Nieder-Weisel , Christoph von Löwenstein , in 1545, although he was Evangelical Lutheran .

In 1546 he went on a trip to Italy to settle the estate of his brother, who had died there and who had served a cardinal as a Protestant theologian . In Rome , where Pope Paul III. Soldiers for the war against the Schmalkaldic League was digging, he felt threatened as a Protestant, although officially no one knows about his faith. So he soon left Italy, even though he had also been offered a good job. Disguised as a Catholic soldier, Sastrow and a companion from Lübeck made their way to Tyrol , from where they were able to continue traveling as Protestant Germans.

Back home Pomerania , he joined Wolgast to the office of the Dukes Philip I of Pomerania-Wolgast and Barnim IX. from Pomerania-Stettin . In the following years he accompanied the princely councils of Pomerania as a notary , who were supposed to mediate a reconciliation with Emperor Charles V , and took part in legations to Bohemia , Saxony and the Netherlands and in the armored Reichstag of 1547/48. In 1548 he was appointed Pomeranian chargé d'affaires at the Imperial Court of Justice in Speyer. Only now, when the court was finally filled again after years, was he able to successfully continue his father's trial. From Speyer he made numerous trips and also visited the famous cosmographer Sebastian Münster in Basel .

In 1551 he was registered as a notary at the Reich Chamber of Commerce, resigned from the ducal service and settled in Greifswald. In 1555 he moved to Stralsund because he had been offered the office of First City Secretary there with a higher salary than in Greifswald. There he supported the mayor Nikolaus Gentzkow in drafting new school and church regulations as well as the city constitution. In 1562 he was elected to the city council of Stralsund; In 1578 he became their mayor and held this office until his death. During this time, a number of urban political and church quarrels occurred. Sastrow made quite a few enemies with his unyielding manner.

Sastrow married twice. His three children Katharina, Amnestia and Johannes († 1593) emerged from his marriage with his sister-in-law Catharina Frubose in 1551. One month after his wife's death, in February 1598, he married her nurse, the maid Anna Haseneier.

Autobiography

Sastrow wrote an autobiography in 1595 at the age of 75. He used a great deal of material, in addition to his own ( diary ) notes and letters, as well as copies of official documents to which he had access as a notary, and chronicles such as the Stralsund Chronicle of Johann Berckmann and the biography of his predecessor Franz Wessel . The model for his handling of the sources was Johannes Sleidanus ' historical work, published between 1545 and 1556. It is possible that Sastrow had drafted parts of his autobiography earlier and inserted them unchanged. He had the final result written down by a scribe. The most important handwriting is therefore not an autograph either , although comparisons of the handwriting show that Sastrow made notes and improvements in the finished version.

Sastrow had divided the autobiography into four parts, of which the last part, which was supposed to deal with his time in Stralsund, has not survived. It is questionable whether it ever existed or whether it was destroyed because of Sastrow's portrayal of “des Teuffels Battstube”, as he described his time in Stralsund in the headline. The latter assumption is supported by the fact that the work was not intended as a purely private writing, as can be seen from the fact that it contains hardly any reports from the family - Sastrow hardly mentions more about his wife than that he married her, and not even her Birth dates of his children - and that the sons-in-law Hinrich Godtschalk and Jakob Klerike, both councilors, are named as the first addressees.

The work is written in High German chancellery language, not in Latin, as is usual with contemporary humanists, although numerous Latin documents have been included, and also not in Pomeranian Low German , for which Johannes Bugenhagen had created his own translation of the Bible 50 years earlier.

The main manuscript is in the possession of the Stralsund City Archives . A later copy is exhibited in the Kulturhistorisches Museum Stralsund . This autobiography is considered an important work of autobiographical prose from the 16th century. Due to the numerous documents reproduced in copies, Sastrow's work is an important source of imperial history, especially for the Armored Diet of 1547/48 and the Augsburg Interim of 1548. However, his view of contemporary history is sketchy, since Sastrow - unlike Sleidanus - only represents what he himself witnessed. The edition, published in three volumes by Gottlieb Mohnike, published in 1823/24 and no longer satisfying today's scientific requirements, is the only (almost) complete edition.

expenditure

  • Bartholomäi Sastrowen Origin, birth and course of his whole life. 1st to 3rd volume. Edited by Gottlieb Christian Friedrich Mohnike. Greifswald: University bookstore.
  • A German citizen of the sixteenth century: Bartholomäus Sastrow's description of himself. Edited by Horst Kohl. Leipzig: Voigtländer 1912 (Voigtländer's source books; vol. 38) (excerpt) ( digitized version ).
  • Course of my life: a German citizen in the 16th century. Ed. U. edit by Christfried Coler. Berlin: Rütten & Loening 1956 (mirror of the German past)
  • Memorable stories from my life. Edited by Horst Langer. Thomas Helms Verlag Schwerin 2011, ISBN 978-3-940207-63-0 (excerpt)

literature

  • Ursula Brosthaus: Bourgeois Life in the 16th Century. The autobiography of the Stralsund mayor Bartholomaus Sastrow as a source of cultural history. Bohlau, Cologne 1972.
  • Ralph Frenken: Childhood and autobiography from the 14th to 17th centuries: Psychohistorical reconstructions. 2 volumes. (= Psychohistorical research. Volume 1/1 and 1/2). Oetker-Voges, Kiel 1999.
  • Alexander Heine (ed.): German bourgeoisie and German nobility in the 16th century. Life memories of the mayor Bartholomäus Sastrow and the knight Hans von Schweinichen, new edition after the German first editions. Magnus Verlag, Essen 1984.
  • Stephan Pastenaci: Narrative form and personality representation in German-language autobiographies of the 16th century: a contribution to historical psychology. WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier 1993.
  • Theodor Pyl :  Sastrow, Bartholomäus . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 30, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1890, pp. 398-408.
  • Karl-Reinhart Trauner: Identity in the early modern age: the autobiography of Bartholomäus Sastrow. Münster: Aschendorff 2004 (History in the Epoch of Charles V .; Vol. 3) Part. zugl .: Wien, Univ., Diss., 2002 ISBN 3-402-06572-X .

Web links

Wikisource: Bartholomäus Sastrow  - Sources and full texts

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Trauner: Identity in the early modern age: the autobiography of Bartholomäus Sastrow ; P. 50, 375f
  2. ↑ Registration of Bartholomäus Sastrow in the Rostock matriculation portal
  3. ^ Mohnike in: Sastrow. (1823), S. LXXXV u. Sastrow III (1824), p. 156.
  4. ↑ Trauner: Identity in the early modern age: the autobiography of Bartholomäus Sastrow ; P. 75.
  5. ↑ Sastrow (1823), p. 4.
  6. ↑ Trauner: Identity in the early modern age: the autobiography of Bartholomäus Sastrow ; Pp. 149-150.
  7. ↑ Trauner: Identity in the early modern age: the autobiography of Bartholomäus Sastrow ; P. 83, 87f.
  8. ↑ Trauner: Identity in the early modern age: the autobiography of Bartholomäus Sastrow ; P. 91. 95
  9. ↑ Trauner: Identity in the early modern age: the autobiography of Bartholomäus Sastrow ; Pp. 117-119
  10. ^ Mohnike in: Sastrow (1823), S. XXVIII.
personal data
SURNAME Sastrow, Bartholomew
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1520
PLACE OF BIRTH Greifswald
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 1603
Place of death Stralsund