Christoph Gerdes

Portrait of the Mayor Christoph Gerdes (1657)

Christoph Gerdes (born January 18, 1590 in Güstrow ; † June 19, 1661 in Lübeck ) was a lawyer and mayor of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck during the Thirty Years' War .

Life

Christoph Gerdes was the son of Güstrow councilor Martin Gerdes. He studied law at the universities of Rostock, Leipzig, Wittenberg, Jena, Heidelberg and Strasbourg. After graduating as Dr. both rights through the University of Jena , he settled in Lübeck as a lawyer. He was first councilor of the Duke of Sachsen-Lauenburg and syndic of the Lübeck cathedral chapter. In 1625 he was elected to the city ​​council of Lübeck , where he was appointed mayor in 1627. 1629-30 he held the office of combing lord on the council. During his term of office, the last phases of the Thirty Years' War threatened Lübeck, which were caused by the invasion of the Swedes under Lennart Torstensson in Holstein in 1643 . An imperial army under Matthias Gallas came to the aid of the Danes in Schleswig-Holstein . The separate peace of Brömsebro in 1645 removed the immediate danger for the city. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 set Lübeck's share of the compensation to be paid to Sweden from five million thalers to 42,720 thalers. The settlement between Sweden and Poland was also negotiated without result in 1651/52. In 1655 the war between Sweden and Poland broke out again, which was only ended in 1660 by the Peace of Oliva . War broke out again between Denmark and Sweden in 1657 and Charles V invaded Holstein again. This dispute was briefly settled in 1658 by the peace of Roskilde enforced by Charles V , but soon began again and only ended with the death of Charles V in 1660. The Lübeckers had supplied Copenhagen with their ships in 1659, some ships were from Sweden taken as a pinch and confiscated. In 1658, the Danes again received imperial and Brandenburg support. The Brandenburg Elector Friedrich Wilhelm also marched into the Lübeck outer area and set up his headquarters in Nusse in 1659 , so that Lübeck was affected by his relentless requisitions. From 1660 the situation calmed down and Lübeck's trade picked up again, although the Hanseatic League as an organization had not survived the war. During Gerde's time as mayor, there was an unsuccessful attempt in 1651 to call for another Hanseatic convention.

Gerdes was first married to a daughter of the Lübeck citizen Johann Wedemhof . In his second marriage he married a daughter of the Holstein chancellor Nikolaus Jungius . The council gave him the Strecknitz estate to use. Gerdes was the head of the Marienkirche in Lübeck , where he was buried. Its epitaph in this church was destroyed in the air raid on Lübeck's old town in 1942. The rector of the Katharineum Sebastian Meier wrote a memorial for him in Latin.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See also the matriculation of Christoph Gerdes in the Rostock matriculation portal

literature

• Sebastian Meier: Oratio Funebris ... Dn. Christophoro Gerdesio, Consuli Reipubl. Lubecensis primario , Lubecae: Venator, 1661
• Georg Wilhelm Dittmer : Genealogical and biographical news about Lückeck families from earlier times , Dittmer, 1859, p. 35 ( digitized version )
• Emil Ferdinand Fehling : Lübeck Council Line. Lübeck 1925. No. 747