Fatty milk riot

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Vinzenz Fettmilch, Conrad Gerngroß and Conrad Schopp, the leaders of the Fettmilch Uprising, on an engraving from 1614
Expulsion of the Jews from Frankfurt on August 23, 1614 after the Fettmilch uprising. Caption: “The Jews moved out on August 23rd, when the Fischerfeld gate was opened to them and they were allowed to drive up and down the water, their 1380 people, young and old, were counted as they walked out of the gate. Fig. 37 Exodus of the Jews from Frankfurt in 1614. Equal time. Kpfr. by Georg Keller. Munich, Kupferstichkabinett. "
The looting of Frankfurt's Judengasse during the Fettmilch uprising; Engraving by Matthäus Merian from 1628

The Fettmilch uprising (also known as the "Fedtmilch uprising" ) of 1614 was an anti-Jewish revolt in the imperial city of Frankfurt am Main, led by the gingerbread baker Vinzenz Fettmilch . The uprising of the guilds was directed originally against the mismanagement of the of patricians dominated council of the city, but degenerated into the looting of Jewish quarter of all Frankfurt and the expulsion of Jews from. He was finally put down with the help of the Emperor , the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel and the Electorate of Mainz .

The history

The uprising had its cause in the consolidation of the patrician regiment in Frankfurt at the end of the 16th century as well as in the resentment of the citizens about the mismanagement of the council and the limited influence of the guilds on the politics of the Free Imperial City. The political demands of the guilds were associated with anti-Jewish resentment from the start .

Outbreak of the riots

Matthias' coronation procession on June 13, 1612 in front of the Frankfurt Römer

The unrest began on June 9, 1612, when citizens and guild masters demanded that the council read out the privileges of the city before the election of the new emperor Matthias . The last time this had happened 36 years earlier, on the occasion of the election of Rudolf II . The council rejected the citizens' request, so that rumors arose that it wanted to withhold the knowledge of imperial tax exemptions from them.

In addition, the citizens demanded a greater say in the guilds in the city regiment. The 42-member council was dominated by the 24 members from the patrician families who belonged to the Alten Limpurg Society . This was the part of the Frankfurt patriciate that oriented itself towards the lifestyle of the nobility and no longer lived from long-distance trade and money transactions, but from income from property . Opposite him was the Zum Frauenstein company , in which the town's merchants had come together. They shared the remaining 18 council seats with the representatives of the craft guilds. This distribution of seats was fixed. In addition, the council was not determined by all citizens, but instead chose his successor if a member left or died.

In addition to a stronger representation, the guild masters demanded the establishment of a public grain market in Frankfurt in 1612 in order to be able to enforce lower grain prices, as well as a lowering of the usury rates allegedly demanded by the Frankfurt Jews from 12 to 6 percent. (In fact, Jewish and Christian bankers in Frankfurt took roughly the same interest rates.) The number of residents in Judengasse was also to be limited. In addition, there were demands of the Reformed , who demanded civil equality in the Lutheran Frankfurt and were later to join the uprising in large numbers. In addition to these specific but very different demands, there was a general resentment that had been pent-up for decades about the council's regiment, which was perceived as autocratic, and which in some public statements had referred to the citizens as "subjects".

Merchants, master craftsmen and other debtors from moneylenders from Judengasse were responsible for the anti-Jewish turn that the uprising finally took . They hoped, along with their creditors , to get rid of their obligations to them.

Fragile compromise: the civil contract

In the dispute over the reading of the privileges, the grocer and gingerbread baker Vinzenz Fettmilch, who had been a citizen of the city since 1593, became the spokesman for the guild masters. They first turned to the electors or their deputies who were staying in Frankfurt for the election of the emperor , and finally to the new emperor himself when Matthias came to Frankfurt for his coronation. Both the electors and the emperor initially refused to interfere in the internal affairs of Frankfurt. But when the guilds then formed a committee to negotiate with the council, Matthias set up an arbitration commission.

In this commission, in turn, which was provided by the neighboring sovereigns, the Elector of Mainz and the Landgrave of Hesse , the patricians saw a threat to the status of the Free Imperial City. In addition, they feared negative effects of the inner-city unrest on the Frankfurt trade fair . Nuremberg and other trading cities had already asked the Frankfurt magistrate whether he could guarantee the safety of foreign merchants. Therefore, on December 21, 1612, the council agreed to a civil contract. This new city constitution, which remained in force essentially until 1806, provided for an expansion of the council by 18 members, as well as a committee of nine guilds, which had the right to examine the city's accounting books. The council expanded in this way elected the insurgent Nicolaus Weitz to the city school in 1614 .

The situation worsened again

During this examination it turned out in 1613 that Frankfurt was heavily in debt and that the council had wasted funds that should have been used to care for the poor and sick . The tax collectors had embezzled fines for their own benefit. It also became known that the patrician Johann Friedrich Faust von Aschaffenburg tried to thwart the emperor's confirmation of the civil contract.

Another conflict concerned the so-called “Judenstättigkeit”, the ordinance that regulated the life of Jews in Frankfurt. The protection money that the Jews had to pay under this ordinance did not go to the city treasury, but was divided among the council members. In order to prevent the unlawfulness of this procedure from becoming public, the council had reprints of the "Jews' activity" confiscated . At the same time rumors arose that the Jews were making common cause with the patricians. Vinzenz Fettmilch finally published the document with which Emperor Charles IV had ceded his sovereign rights over the Jewish inhabitants of Frankfurt to the city in 1349 . It contained the fateful sentence that the emperor would not hold the city responsible if the Jews “perished or perished or were slain”. Many saw this as a license for a pogrom .

The riot

When Frankfurt's enormous debt - 9½ tons of gold guilders - became public, a crowd stormed the Römer , Frankfurt City Hall, on May 6, 1613 , and forced the keys to the city treasury to be handed over to the guilds' committee of nine. In the months that followed, the council could only spend as much money as the committee approved. Due to the mutual violations of the civil treaty that had just been adopted, the emperor again advocated a compromise. On January 15, 1614, both parties signed a new contract.

Threat of imperial ban

Since the council was still unable to provide any evidence of the whereabouts of the 9½ tons of gold guilders, the radical wing under Vinzenz Fettmilch prevailed among the guilds. On May 5, 1614, he had the city gates occupied by his supporters, the old council declared deposed and its members arrested in the Römer. As a result, an imperial herald appeared in the city on July 26, demanding that the council be reinstated. When this was not obeyed, on August 22nd, the emperor threatened the imperial ban on any citizen of Frankfurt who was not prepared to submit to his order by oath.

The looting of the Judengasse

Looting of the Judengasse
The expulsion of the Jews from Frankfurt

The rebels, who had long believed they would be supported by the emperor, now directed their anger against the weakest link in the chain of their supposed opponents. On August 22nd, a crowd of journeymen shouted "give us work and bread" roamed the city. Around noon, the now drunken stormed journeyman the Judengasse , which completed a ghetto was formed on the eastern outskirts. It was surrounded by walls and only accessible through three gates.

One attacker and two Jewish defenders of the alley were killed in the fighting. The Jews eventually fled to the adjacent cemetery or to the Christian part of the city, where many were hidden by Frankfurt citizens. In the meantime, the rebellious mob plundered the Judengasse until it was driven out by the Frankfurt vigilante around midnight. The looting caused damage to the value of 170,000 guilders .

Vinzenz Fettmilch himself does not seem to have been involved in the looting. In his later trial, he claimed it was against his will. He may have lost control of his followers for a short time. However, no convincing evidence could be provided for attempts by Fettmilch to stop the excesses. The fact is, however, that the next day he forced the expulsion of all Jews from Frankfurt. Most of them sought refuge in the neighboring towns of Höchst and Hanau in Electoral Mainz and Hesse .

The end of fat milk

The execution of Fettmilch on the Roßmarkt in Frankfurt on February 28, 1616

The anti-Jewish excesses and the conflict with the emperor that it evoked caused Fettmilch's reputation to decline rapidly; more and more of his followers turned away from him. On October 28, 1614 announced an imperial herald the Romans that the imperial ban on fat milk and about the carpenter Konrad Gerngross and Schneider Konrad Schopp was imposed, as the ringleaders were the rebellion. It was not until November 27 that the aldermen Johann Martin Baur dared to arrest the most powerful man in town until then. As a result, four more Frankfurters were declared eight, including the Sachsenhausen silk dyer Georg Ebel.

The column of shame erected in Töngesgasse instead of Fettmilch's house

In a lengthy process that dragged on for almost the whole of 1615, Fettmilch and a total of 38 co-defendants were not directly convicted of the excesses against the Jews, but of crimes against the majesty because they had disregarded the emperor's orders. Seven of them were sentenced to death , which was carried out on February 28, 1616 on the Frankfurt Roßmarkt . Their oath fingers were cut off before they were beheaded , and fat milk was also quartered after his execution. The heads of Fettmilch, Gerngroß, Schopp and Ebel were impaled on the Frankfurt bridge tower, where at least one of them could still be seen in Goethe's time . Goethe reports on it in poetry and truth :

“Among the ancient remains, from childhood on, the skull of a state criminal, stuck on the bridge tower, was strange to me, who of three or four, as indicated by the empty iron tips, had survived since 1616 through all the rigors of time and weather. Whenever you returned to Frankfurt from Sachsenhausen, you had the tower in front of you and the skull caught your eye. "

Fettmilch's house in Töngesgasse was demolished and a pillar of shame was erected in its place , which recorded his crimes in German and Latin.

After the executions, which dragged on for several hours with the reading of the judgments, an imperial mandate was proclaimed, which ordered the restoration of the Jews who had been driven out in August 1614 to their old rights. On the same day, the Jews, who until then had mostly found refuge in Höchst and Hanau, were brought back to the Judengasse in a solemn procession. An imperial eagle was affixed to the gate with the inscription “Roman Imperial Majesty and the Protection of the Holy Empire”.

Consequences of the uprising

The return of the Jews to Frankfurt in 1616

With imperial support, the old council, ruled by the Alten Limpurg Society, largely achieved its goals. The number of council members from this society was limited to 14, but all claims by the citizens against the old council were dismissed. The weight in the council shifted slightly in favor of the merchants of the Zum Frauenstein company .

While the commercial element in the city regiment was slightly strengthened, the influence of the craftsmen declined even further. The guilds had to pay a fine of 100,000 guilders to the emperor and were dissolved. In future, the trade supervisory authority lay directly with the council. Nine citizens of Frankfurt who participated in the riots were banned from the city forever, and 23 temporarily. More than 2,000 citizens had to pay fines.

It was only more than 100 years later that the citizens of Frankfurt succeeded in peaceful means in obtaining the rights that they had forfeited in the misguided Fettmilch uprising. With the support of the emperor, the committee of nine was reintroduced in 1726, which put an end to the worst grievances of the patrician city regiment by controlling the finances.

The Jews were to be compensated for all property damage from the city treasury, but never received the money. And although victims of the uprising, they too were largely subjected to the old restrictions. The new “ Jewish population ” for Frankfurt, which was issued by the imperial commissioners from Hesse and Kurmainz , stipulated that the number of Jewish families in Frankfurt should remain limited to 500. Annually only 12 Jewish couples were allowed to marry, while Christians only had to prove sufficient assets to the treasury to obtain a marriage license . In economic terms, the Jews were largely equated with the Christian survivors ; Like them, they were not allowed to keep open shops, to do small shops in the city, to enter into a business association with citizens and to acquire no real estate, all restrictions whose roots went back well into the Middle Ages. What was new in the area was that Jews were now expressly permitted to do wholesale trade, for example with pledged goods such as grain, wine and spices or long-distance trade in cloth, silk and textiles. Presumably, the emperor strengthened the economic position of the Jews in order to create a counterweight to the Christian merchant families who now ruled in Frankfurt after the guilds were ousted.

The Jewish community celebrates the anniversary of their solemn repatriation every year on the 20th of Adar of the Jewish calendar with the celebration of Purim Vinz . His name is also reminiscent of the first name Fettmilchs, as does the song Megillas Vintz (also: Vintz Hans Lied) published by Elchanan Bar Abraham around 1648 , which was sung on the occasion into the 20th century. It had Hebrew , Yiddish, and German text; its melody was that of the German march "The Battle of Pavia" . The polyphonic song is an important source for the events of the Fettmilch Uprising to this day.

The Judengasse ghetto existed in Frankfurt until the Napoleonic era.

literature

Contemporary sources:

  • Joseph Hahn (called Juspa) : Josif Ometz. Frankfurt am Main (Hahn was a chronicler of the Frankfurt Jewish Community at the time of the Fettmilch uprising).
  • Nahmann Puch : Untitled Frankfurt or Hanau 1616. Ed. Bobzin, Hermann Süß: Wagenseil Collection , Harald Fischer Verlag, Erlangen 1996, ISBN 3-89131-227-X (a Yiddish song on the fat milk uprising and the consequences for the Jewish community).
  • Horst Karasek : The Fedtmilch uprising or how the Frankfurters heated up their council in 1612/14 (= Wagenbach's pocket library , volume 58), Wagenbach, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-8031-2058-6 .

Modern scientific literature:

  • Wolfgang Benz : Handbook of Antisemitism , Volume 4: Events, Decrees, Controversies , de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-598-24076-8 , pp. 132-134.
  • Friedrich Bothe: Frankfurt's economic and social development before the Thirty Years' War and the fat milk revolt (1612–1616), Part II. Statistical processing and documentary evidence (= publications of the Historical Commission of the City of Frankfurt , Volume 7). Baer, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1920
  • Robert Brandt, Olaf Cunitz, Jan Ermel, Michael Graf: The fat milk uprising. Civil unrest and hostility towards Jews in Frankfurt am Main 1612–1616. Frankfurt am Main 1996, DNB 953714098 (catalog for the exhibition project of the Frankfurt Historical Museum).
  • Christopher R. Friedrichs: Politics or Pogrom? The Fettmilch Uprising in German and Jewish History. In: Central European History. 19, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986, ISSN  0008-9389 , pp. 186-228.
  • Markus Huth : The Frankfurt "Fettmilchaufstand". Investigations into the Frankfurt riots 1612–1616. Student thesis, Grin-Verlag 2005, ISBN 978-3-640-34512-0 .
  • Rainer Koch : 1612–1616. The fat milk riot. Social explosive in the citizenry. In: Archive for Frankfurt's History and Art (AFGK). 63, Kramer, Frankfurt 1997, ISSN  0341-8324 , pp. 59-79.
  • Isidor Kracauer: The Jews of Frankfurt in the Fettmilch uprising 1612-1618. In: Journal for the History of the Jews in Germany. Braunschweig 1890, No. 2, pp. 127-169; Issue 3, pp. 319-365 and 1892, Issue 1, pp. 1-26.
  • Matthias Meyn: The imperial city of Frankfurt before the civil uprising from 1612 to 1614. Structure and crisis (= studies on Frankfurt history , volume 15). Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-7829-0235-1 (Dissertation University of Bochum 1976, 256 pages).
  • Jutta Rolfes: The Jews in the imperial city of Frankfurt am Main at the time of the Fettmilch uprising 1612–1616. In: Archive for Frankfurt's History and Art (AFGK). 63, Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISSN  0341-8324 , pp. 223-237.
  • Heidi Stern: The expulsion of the Frankfurt and Worms Jews in the early 17th century from the perspective of the contemporary witness Nahman Puch. Edition and commentary on a Yiddish song. In: Ashraf Noor (ed.): Naharaim 3, 2009, vol. 1. De Gruyter: Berlin, New York, pp. 1-53.
  • Rivka Ulmer: Turmoil, Trauma, and Triumph. The Fettmilch Uprising in Frankfurt am Main (1612-1616) According to Megillas Vintz. A Critical Edition of the Yiddish and Hebrew Text Including an English Translation (= Judaism and Environment - Realms of Judaism . Volume 72). Lang, Bern / Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-631-36957-3 .
  • Turniansky, Chava, The Events in Frankfurt am Main (1612–1616) in Megillas Vints and in an Unknown Yiddish 'Historical' Song , Michael Graetz (Ed.), Creative moments of European Jewry in the early modern period , University Publishing House C. Winter, Heidelberg 2000, pp. 121-137.

Film adaptations

Web links

Commons : Fettmilch Uprising  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Horst Karasek : The Fedtmilch uprising or how the Frankfurters fueled their council in 1612/14 (= Wagenbach's pocket library , volume 58), Wagenbach, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-8031-2058-6 and Wolfgang Benz : Handbuch des Antisemitismus , volume 4 : Events, decrees, controversies , de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-598-24076-8 , pp. 132-134.
  2. ↑ Lothar Gall (ed.): FFM 1200. Traditions and Perspectives of a City . Thorbecke. Sigmaringen 1994, ISBN 3-7995-1203-9 , p. 127.
  3. ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: From my life. Poetry and truth. First part, 4th book. In: Goethe's works. Hamburg edition in 14 volumes. Text-critically reviewed and annotated by Erich Trunz. Hamburg 1948 ff: Christian Wegener. Volume 9, pp. 148f. (On-line)
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on September 28, 2004 in this version .