Bernd Beseke

Bernd Beseke (* around 1500 in Braunschweig ; † August 16, 1536 in Hamburg ) was a German cloth merchant and Vogt on the island of Neuwerk .

Live and act

Beseke was the son of a Braunschweig needle maker and spent his childhood with an uncle and important cloth merchant, Hein (Heinrich) Schröder, who lived in Hamburg. Around 1525 he married Elsebe Witzendorp, a wealthy stepdaughter of his uncle, and began to trade in scarves, having previously acquired Hamburg citizenship . With great financial commitment, he tried unsuccessfully for a seat on the Hamburg Council . He applied for the office of Ritzebüttler bailiff who, after Dietrich Lange's death in 1530, held his son on an interim basis. Since the council was a prerequisite, he was not even proposed and Jürgen Plate was appointed, which Beseke took after him. His ambitions also failed in Bergedorf and Trittau. He continued to try to impress the Hamburg council and in 1534 he was offered the post of bailiff on the island of Neuwerk. As Vogt he had to defend and maintain the Neuwerker Tower and tried to help and protect the shipping industry. He took office in the spring of 1535 and was thus under Jürgen Plate.

In the summer of 1535 there was a conflict on the island that has not yet been clarified. Beseke allowed a man from Hadeln to graze his previously stolen oxen on Neuwerk. After Beseke had refused to hand over the animals to the rightful owner, he asked a troop under the Landsknechtsführer Eberhard Ovelacker for help. After negotiations failed, the men stormed the island and confiscated the oxen and Beseke's property. Beseke then complained to the Hamburg council. He saw himself as the victim of an intrigue by the Ritzebüttler bailiff Jürgen Plate, who had commissioned the attack in order to harm Beseke. After an investigation and two unsuccessful subpoenas by Beseke, the council of the Hanseatic City of Plate found Plate innocent; Beseke, however, lost its reputation.

The subsequent processes are only incompletely documented and are based on Plate's descriptions. As a result, Beseke left the island with his servants in 1536, robbed the ship of a merchant from Stade , stole his goods and murdered the merchant. He then returned to the island, where he was arrested and taken to a Hamburg prison after the merchant's surviving daughter had reported to Plate with the help of one of the servants. Beseke is said to have confessed to the crime during the first interrogation. The motive for the crime is said to have been constant lack of money, which increased after the attack on his property on Neuwerk.

During the subsequent imprisonment, Beseke denied having committed the act and saw himself as a victim of the conflict between him and the Hamburg council and Plate. After his employees confessed and incriminated Beseke, he pleaded guilty and accepted the condemnation to death by the wheel . The sentence was mitigated at the request of his relatives and respected it then on 16 August 1536 on the Grasbrook by the executioner of Buxtehude beheaded . His servants were also executed three days later. All those killed received a church burial, which should be seen as an alleviation of the sentence.

literature

• Ariane Knuth: Beseke, Bernd . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 3 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0081-4 , p. 40-41 .
• Arthur Obst : The island of Neuwerk. Historical representation. Rauschenplat, Cuxhaven 1888, pp. 24–29 ( online , Hamburg State and University Library).