Ernst Friedrich (Baden-Durlach)

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Margrave Ernst Friedrich von Baden-Durlach - copper engraving of a medal

Ernst Friedrich von Baden-Durlach (born October 17, 1560 in Durlach , † April 14, 1604 in Remchingen Castle ) took over the government of the northern part of the margraviate of Baden-Durlach in 1584 when he was of legal age . He promoted the formation of the first illustrious grammar school in the margraviate. With his conversion from Lutheranism to Calvinism and the occupation of the margraviate of Baden-Baden , he triggered serious conflicts - including with the emperor - the consequences of which damaged the lower margraviate of Baden-Durlach and ultimately led to territorial losses.

Life

Ernst Friedrich was the eldest son of Margrave Karl II of Baden-Durlach and Anna von Veldenz . From 1577 he received his education at the court of his Lutheran guardian Ludwig von Württemberg .

The guardian government 1577–1584

Since the death of his father († 1577) had a guardianship government with his mother Anna, Elector Ludwig VI. von der Pfalz (until 1583), Duke Philipp Ludwig von Pfalz-Neuburg and Duke Ludwig von Württemberg ("the Pious") performed government affairs, with Ernst Friedrich taking part in the meetings of the guardianship government from his 20th birthday. His guardians signed the Agreement Formula of 1577 and the Agreement Book of 1580 in Ernst Friedrich's name .

The division of the country

Since Ernst Friedrich and the second eldest son Karl II, Jakob, wanted their own domains and the will of Charles II, which prohibited a division of the country, was not signed and sealed, the remaining guardians complied with the sons' demands, and Ernst Friedrich received the lower one Margraviate with the main towns Durlach and Pforzheim .

His brothers Jakob and Georg Friedrich also received parts of the country, so that the country was further divided beyond the existing division into Baden-Durlach and Baden-Baden . The margraviate of Baden-Hachberg fell back to Ernst Friedrich in 1590 after Jacob's death. After Ernst Friedrich's death, his brother Georg Friedrich was able to reunite the entire margraviate of Baden-Durlach.

marriage

Margrave Ernst Friedrich married Anna von Ostfriesland on December 21, 1585 (born June 26, 1562 - April 21, 1621), the daughter of Count Edzard II of East Friesland and widow of his guardian Elector Ludwig VI. from the Palatinate. There were no children from the marriage.

The sponsor of the Illustre high school

High school illustrious in Durlach (building on the right in the picture) around 1643 by M. Merian

In addition to the middle school in Pforzheim (residence town until 1565), Karl II founded a middle school in his new residence town Durlach , which was financed from the proceeds of the former Gottesaue monastery . Only boys were taught religion, Latin and Greek, and higher education continued at the University of Basel. For gifted children from all over the margraviate, the middle school also had an alumni (boarding school) attached. Under the guardianship government, a gymnasium illustrious zu Durlach was established in 1583 , whereby the three Lutheran princes in the guardianship government were able to fall back on experience in their own territories. The middle school was expanded into a grammar school with the aim of shortening university education through better preparation and thus keeping funds in one's own country. In addition, the grammar school was intended to replace university attendance for prospective pastors. Control over the training of pastors was a political issue of the first order in the times of the Augsburg religious peace.

In 1586 the new building constructed to accommodate the grammar school was opened by Ernst Friedrich, the structure and curriculum of the school followed the concept of Johannes Sturm , which he had already introduced in Strasbourg and Lauingen .

Ernst Friedrich as guardian

In 1584 Ernst Friedrich took over the guardianship of his youngest brother Georg Friedrich, together with his brother Jakob and his mother.

After the death of his brother Jakob (1590) he took over the guardianship of his children. Jacob's ancestral owner, Ernst Jakob, who was born a few days after Jacob's death, was baptized as a Protestant and the two nieces, Anna and Jakobäa, were raised as Protestants. Even after they were of legal age, they remained true to the evangelical faith. The denominations fought for every princely child to strengthen their power base. Accordingly, a legal dispute arose over the guardianship, in the course of which Ernst Friedrich was threatened with the imperial ban and he in turn sought and received the support of the evangelical imperial estates . In 1601, however, Ernst Friedrich resigned from his guardianship, as he was already in conflict with the emperor over the occupation of Upper Baden and hoped for some relief from his indulgence.

The Upper Baden occupation

On November 21, 1594 he occupied the margraviate of Baden-Baden ( Upper Baden occupation ) of his cousin Eduard Fortunat von Baden militarily, as he was over-indebted to the margraviate.

The convert

Stafforter Buch - The Calvinist Creed of Margrave Ernst Friedrich von Baden-Durlach (1599)

When he took office in 1584, Ernst Friedrich refused - like his brother Jakob - to sign the formula of concord - the Lutheran creed - and was already leaning towards the Reformed Church. In 1599 he converted to the Reformed creed and had a new creed printed at Schloss Staffort (the Staffort book).

The Stafforter book

The term “Stafforter Buch” comprises two publications that appeared in 1599 and were given the common name “Stafforter Buch” after the printing location at Schloss Staffort. The first part has the title "Christlichs Bedencken and considerable wolfundirte motifs of the lucid high-born prince and Mr. Ernst Friderichen Marggraven of Baden and Hochberg ..." etc. and from page 359 also contains the attached second part; the second part, which was also printed separately with an additional introduction and published again in Heidelberg in 1601, bears the title: "Kurtze vnd Einfeltige besides God's Word and the old Christian churches create confession ...".

The Stafforter book denies various articles of the Lutheran concord formula and is a pamphlet against the Lutherans - the Catholics, however, are not attacked directly in this publication. It is disputed whether Ernst Friedrich is the sole author, only formulated the basic ideas himself and left the detailed elaboration to Reformed theologians, or whether they wrote the work in full and Ernst Friedrich only had the book published under his name.

The reason for this book was Ernst Friedrich's need to give pastors and teachers in his territory a uniform guide, which met with local resistance as soon as sanctions were taken against Lutheran pastors who did not want to follow the guide. In addition, Ernst Friedrich wanted to win his Lutheran brother Georg Friedrich over to his Reformed ideas, but this failed completely. With the publication under his name, Ernst Friedrich also wanted to vehemently counter all rumors that he wanted to convert to Catholicism like his brother Jakob in 1590.

Ernst Friedrich's argument with Pforzheim

The margrave tried to spread the Reformed creed in the population by filling pastoral positions with Calvinists and by recalling strict Lutherans, which he met with resistance. The city of Pforzheim in particular fought against the recall of Lutheran pastors as early as 1601. On September 11, 1601, the Pforzheimer elected a 13-member committee that wrote to the margrave that one would rather die than put up with a change of religion. The tensions were so great that on September 17th, after a baseless rumor about the armed intervention of the margrave, the citizens of Pforzheim took up arms. For Ernst Friedrich this turned a religious dispute into a political uprising. Nonetheless, he allowed his councilors to dissuade him from a violent solution to the conflict, especially since his strictly Lutheran brother Georg Friedrich had promised the Pforzheimers his support before the Reich Chamber of Commerce. However, he had one of the spokesmen, the lawyer Peter Ebertz, arrested. Ebertz was freed by the citizens, fled via Württemberg to Speyer, where he was arrested again at the request of the margrave, but was freed again by the Reich Chamber of Commerce. Pforzheim received Lutheran clergy again, but the further course of the smoldering conflict remains unclear. For reasons that had not been proven, Ernst Friedrich marched against the city of Pforzheim on April 14, 1604 with a troop of mercenaries and soldiers. However, he suffered a stroke while resting at Remchingen Castle and died there on the same day. The margrave was already in poor health and it is assumed that the news of the preparations for military resistance in Pforzheim excited him so much that this triggered the stroke. Despite his change of faith, he was buried in the Pforzheim family crypt in the Lutheran castle and collegiate church of St. Michael .

Others

From 1588, Margrave Ernst Friedrich had Gottesaue Castle built.

In 1598 Ernst Friedrich closed the Frauenalb convent in the county of Eberstein and, together with Count von Eberstein, took over the administration of the monastery property. The two patrons of the monastery thus drew the consequences of the abbess exceeding their competence and of sexual derailments. Politically and economically, the two evangelical patrons were naturally accommodated by the misconduct and provided a pretext for the collection of the goods and the dissolution of the convention.

See also

Fonts

  • Short and simple ..... confession ..... Staffort Castle 1599 ("Das Stafforter Buch") ( digitized in the Google book search)

literature

  • Ernst Albrecht: Life and death of the margrave Ernst Friedrich von Baden-Durlach (1560-1604) in contemporary documents. In: Udo Wennemuth (Ed.): Reformed traces in Baden . (= Publications of the Association for Church History in the Evangelical Church in Baden. 57). Evang. Press association for Baden, Karlsruhe 2001, ISBN 3-87210-912-X , pp. 68-86.
  • Werner Baumann: Ernst Friedrich von Baden-Durlach. Stuttgart 1962.
  • Werner Baumann: Ernst Friedrich von Baden-Durlach, Felix Platter and Polan. In: Theological Journal. 59th year 2003, pp. 335-341.
  • Peter Ebertz: Consistent report / declaration vnd Defensionschrifft… Against the new Staffortische Calvinisten vnd Zwinglianer… . ( Digitized in the Google book search)
  • Arthur Kleinschmidt :  Ernst Friedrich (Margrave of Baden-Durlach) . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, p. 245 f.
  • JGF Pflüger: History of the city of Pforzheim. Pforzheim 1861, p. 365ff. ( Digitized in the Google book search)
  • Karl Friedrich Vierordt : History of the middle school opened in 1586 in Durlach and transplanted to Karlsruhe in 1724 , Karlsruhe 1859 ( digitized in the Google book search)
  • Karl Friedrich Vierordt: History of the Protestant Church in the Grand Duchy of Baden. 2nd volume, Karlsruhe 1856, pp. 29-41.
  • Friedrich Wielandt:  Ernst Friedrich (Margrave of Baden-Durlach). In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 606 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Ernestus Fridericus Marggraf of Baden. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 8, Leipzig 1734, column 1729 f.
  • Gunter Zimmermann: The “Staffort book” as an introduction to Reformed theology. In: Working group for historical regional studies on the Upper Rhine e. V., 431. Minutes of the conference "Denomination and Politics in Baden around 1600 Conference on the 400th anniversary of the death of Margrave Ernst Friedrich von Baden (1560–1604)" in Karlsruhe-Durlach (online)

Historical novel

Web links

Links to drama and literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See BSLK , p. 16 and p. 763.
  2. ↑ s. Baumann pp. 21/22.
  3. ↑ s. Vierordt p. 16; in many sources - including the websites of the successor institutes, the Markgrafengymnasium in Durlach and the Bismarck-Gymnasium in Karlsruhe, Ernst Friedrich is named for short as the founder of the grammar school
  4. ↑ s. Baumann, pp. 55-57.
  5. ↑ s. Works and web links
  6. ↑ s. Baumann, pp. 164-168; Baumann comes to the conclusion that Ernst Friedrich is the main author who made use of professional help
  7. ↑ s. Baumann pp. 163/164.
  8. ↑ Ebertz published the pamphlet: Consistent warhaffter report / declaration vnd Defensionschrift ... Against the new Staffortische Calvinists and Zwinglians ...
  9. ↑ Otto Bickel et al: Remchingen - history of its districts and the noble family of the same name. Remchingen 1993, p. 107.
  10. ^ Karl Friedrich Vierordt : History of the Protestant Church in the Grand Duchy of Baden. Volume 2, pp. 33-36; Emil Strauss tells the events in his novel The Naked Man with poetic freedom
  11. ↑ s. Baumann, pp. 128/129.
predecessor Office successor
Anna von Veldenz Margrave of Baden-Durlach
1584–1604 		Georg Friedrich
personal data
SURNAME Ernst Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ernst Friedrich of Baden-Durlach
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Margrave of Baden-Durlach
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1560
PLACE OF BIRTH Durlach
DATE OF DEATH April 14, 1604
Place of death Remchingen