Christoph Gerke

Christoph Gerke (born August 2, 1628 in Braunschweig ; † April 11, 1714 there ) was mayor and chronicler of the city of Braunschweig.

family

His father Henning Gerke was born in 1576 as an apprentice at the Schunter in the Principality of Lüneburg and received school and commercial training in Braunschweig. After several extensive trade trips to Eastern Europe, he moved to Braunschweig in 1610 and acquired citizenship there . In 1627 he married the daughter of Quedlinburg mayor Elisabeth Nürnberger, her mother Christoph Gerkes, as a second marriage . Henning Gerke held several municipal political offices before he was elected mayor of the Weichbildes Sack in 1659 at the age of 83 . He died in 1665.

Life

Christoph Gerke attended high school in Quedlinburg and moved to the Martineum in Braunschweig. From June 1649 he studied philosophy and law at the University of Jena . He continued his law studies in July 1652 at the Königsberg Albertina . In 1655 Gerke returned to Braunschweig, where, after a short period as a lawyer, he switched to the city's services. From 1657 to 1661 he was secretary of the " narrow council ", then councilor of the soft picture Hagen . In 1662 he was elected Little Mayor and 1667 Great Mayor of Hagen, making him a member of the city's political governing body, the “Narrow Council”.

After the submission of the city to Duke Rudolf August , Gerke received a protest from the council to carry out the symbolic handover of the keys to Major General Johann Georg von Stauff on June 12, 1671 . The new city lord, Duke Rudolf August, confirmed Gerke as mayor and appointed him first councilor. The old council constitution with the five soft picture councils was abolished and a council consisting of 16 senators and dependent on the sovereign was set up.

Gerke was married three times and died on April 11, 1714 at the age of 85. He was buried in the Katharinenkirche in Brunswick .

Works

Gerke wrote a handwritten chronicle of almost 2,000 pages, which is preserved in two volumes in the Braunschweig city archive . The history of the city from its origins to 1613 is described in the first volume, the time up to the subjugation of the city in 1671 in the second volume. The exact time of origin of the chronicle is not known; the “Preface to the Reader” is dated June 17, 1665. While the description of the medieval unrest was adapted from older chronicles such as Hermann Bote's shift book , Gerke's chronicle is primarily for contemporary events such as the plague of 1657 and the siege and submission of the city in 1671, an important source. Only recently has its city history been publicly accessible in excerpts through publication in the series "Quaestiones Brunsvicenses", vol. 11/12, part of the chronicle of Braunschweig Mayor Christoph Gerke (1628–1714) , Ed. Manfred RW Garzmann, Hannover, 2000, ISBN 3-7752-5790-X .

literature

• Norman-Mathias Pingel: Gerke, Christoph. In: Braunschweiger Stadtlexikon. Supplementary volume, published on behalf of the city of Braunschweig by Luitgard Camerer, Manfred RW Garzmann and Wolf-Dieter Schuegraf with special assistance from Norman-Mathias Pingel, Braunschweig, 1996, page 51, ISBN 3-926701-30-7 (with portrait).
• Norman-Mathias Pingel: Gerke, Christoph . In: Horst-Rüdiger Jarck, Dieter Lent u. a. (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon: 8th to 18th century . Braunschweig 2006, pp. 255f. ISBN 3-937664-46-7 .
• Henning Steinführer , Claudia Böhler (Ed.): The Braunschweiger Mayors. From the establishment of the office in the late Middle Ages to the 20th century. oeding print GmbH, Braunschweig 2013, ISBN 978-3-941737-68-6 .