Bernhard Oldenborch

Bernhard Oldenborch († June 3, 1367 in Lübeck ) was a Lübeck merchant, councilor and diplomat in the 14th century.

Life

Oldenborch was the son of a citizen of Lübeck and can be traced back to his property in Lübeck since 1324. He married Windelburg Pleskow , daughter of Mayor Hinrich Pleskow, who died in 1340, probably before 1345 . As a merchant he traded with Visby , Livonia and Russia . In 1352 he was elected to the city council. He represented the city as a councilor and envoy, including at the Hanseatic Days from 1361 to 1366.

As early as 1358 he was envoy in matters of the Hanseatic Office in Bruges in Flanders, because after the death of his brother-in-law, Mayor Hinrich Pleskow († 1358), he was given responsibility for the implementation of Lübeck's trade policy in Flanders. The second boycott of Flanders by the Hanseatic League aimed to compensate for the damage suffered by the merchants and lasted from 1358 to 1360. It led to the same result as the first boycott in 1280. The privileges were secured again and the Hansa for the compensated for lost profits. Diplomatically, in 1358, Duke Albrecht I of Bavaria, who was also Count of Holland , granted them new privileges for the Dordrecht staging area , and Oldenburch supervised the departure of all Hanseatic merchants from Bruges to Dordrecht. That was enough to be able to continue business in Bruges as usual in 1360 after the old privileges there (according to the judgment of the Hansesyndici ) had been legally confirmed by Count Ludwig II of Flanders. Bernhard Oldenborch negotiated the lifting of the trade ban in 1360 and in 1360 supervised the return from Dordrecht to Bruges on site in Flanders. Together with Johan Cordelitz , who is from Thorn , he accepted the damages paid by the city of Bruges.

Further foreign policy missions took him to Nyköping in 1363 for peace negotiations with King Waldemar and in 1365 he was part of the delegation that negotiated with the noble families of Buchwald and von Parkentin. In 1366, at the request of Pope Urban V , Oldenborch was in Danzig together with the councilor and later mayor Jakob Pleskow for settlement negotiations between the Archbishop of Riga Fromhold von Vifhusen and the Teutonic Order in a dispute over Russian trade.

Bernhard Oldenborch was stabbed to death by Nicolaus Bruskow († 1367) in front of the assembled council in the choir of Lübeck's Marienkirche because of what he felt was an insult by the council out of dissatisfaction. The killer was caught and executed.

literature

• Emil Ferdinand Fehling : Lübeck Council Line. Lübeck 1925, No. 374
• Georg Asmussen: Oldenborch, Bernhard. In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck. Volume 12, Neumünster 2006, ISBN 3-529-02560-7 , pp. 327-328

Web links

Wikisource: Klaus Bruskow (Sage)  - sources and full texts