Friedrich von Alvensleben (Templar)

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Seal of the order master Friedrich von Alvensleben

Friedrich von Alvensleben (* around 1265 , † around 1313) was the last master of the Knights Templar in Alemannia and Slavia (urk. 1301–1308).

family

He came from the Low German noble family von Alvensleben and was the third son of the knight Gebhard III. von Alvensleben (urk. 1270–1303) and his wife Sophie were probably born around 1265 at Alvensleben Castle . His two older brothers Gebhard IV. (Urk. 1299) and Albrecht I (Urk. 1304–1334) were the ancestors of the white and black lines of the von Alvensleben family. His sister Gertrud (urk. 1310-1313) was the abbess of the Jakobikloster in Halberstadt .

Life

Friedrich von Alvensleben is first mentioned as a Knight Templar in a document dated February 19, 1301. On April 9, 1301, he appeared as Commander of the Templar Order in Süpplingenburg . In the years before that he may have served in the Holy Land ( Outremer ) or in Cyprus , as was customary in the Order . In a certificate issued on April 21, 1303 in the Lietzen Commandery near Seelow , he then appears as Master of the Templar Order in Alemania and Slavia. As such, he is mentioned in other documents from 1304 to 1308. The fact that Friedrich von Alvensleben was also Komtur von Wichmannsdorf near Haldensleben goes back to a presumption by Wohlbrück (1818), which, however, cannot be regarded as certain. It seems that after the loss of the Holy Land (fall of Acre in 1291) the Knights Templar in northern Germany shifted its activities to the eastern colonization and supported the Margrave of Brandenburg in particular. The master of the order is said to have taken his seat in the Zielenzig Commandery in Neumark .

In the course of the persecution of the Templar Order, which began in 1307, Archbishop Burchard III. von Magdeburg arrested some Knights Templar in May 1308, including Friedrich von Alvensleben. In a papal document of December 4, 1310, the events of the summer of 1308 are described in more detail: The Archbishop of Magdeburg had the Order Master of the Templars in Germany, Friedrich (von Alvensleben) and some Order Knights in their order courts Wichmannsdorf, Rolstedt and Gerdingsdorf, which in the Halberstadt diocese, outside the Magdeburg area, arrested them in one day, kept them in custody in a safe place, and kept their movable things, which were found in the above-mentioned religious houses, as well as the religious courts themselves for other people for safekeeping and administration in the papal name until further papal orders. Therefore, the archbishop was then feuded by other temple masters and by blood relatives of the prisoners and his country was badly damaged. In addition, the temple lords had called for the help of the archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Cologne and, on special instructions from the Archbishop of Mainz, the Bishop of Halberstadt had put a ban on and excommunicated him because of the encroachment on his rights by the Archbishop of Magdeburg.

These events led to the archbishop releasing the Templars again and having to conclude a contract with them on November 19, 1308 that guaranteed them security. Friedrich von Alvensleben was no longer directly involved in this contract, but it was pointed out in the text that the contract was concluded with the power of attorney from the high master Friedrich von Alvensleben. So he was probably still alive and in office at that time. According to Loeckelius, Friedrich von Alvensleben is said to have lived in 1312 - besides him, Bertram von Greiffenberg, Komtur zu Rörchen (north of Königsberg / Mark ), and Johannes von Wartenberg, Komtur zu Quartschen (north of Küstrin ) are named. Thereafter there are no further mentions of him (as happened to the master-master Fridrico von Alvensleben, there is no news of this). There is only general information that the intended gentlemen were immediately accepted into the Order of St. John , highly honored and richly salaried - until 1319 the donations were cut at the instigation of the Pope. Friedrich von Alvensleben probably died before February 6, 1313, because on that day his sister Gertrud, abbess of the Jakobi monastery in Halberstadt, made a foundation for his annual memory.

Appreciation

The famous humanist Aeneas Sylvius, who later became Pope Pius II (1458–1464), described Friedrich von Alvensleben in his historical work as an “excellent man in whom the nobility of an ancient race, personal dignity, strength of character and greatness of soul are combined with strict justice connected ". Later historians also pay tribute to him in a similar way. The high esteem that Friedrich von Alvensleben enjoyed in posterity may also have contributed to the fact that in the earlier tradition of the Order of St. John he was considered its first master master in the Brandenburg Balli - like a tablet made in the 17th century (no longer available) in the Johanniter Ordenskirche in Sonnenburg (east of Küstrin ). Friedrich von Alvensleben also appears in a number of legends, which mainly take place in Neumark, as a luminous figure and myth of a noble, brave, prudent, fair, mild and tolerant knight and master master (Handtmann). In fact, very few historically verifiable facts are known about his work.

literature

  • Elias Löckel (Loeckelius): Marchia illustrata ab initio mundi ad annum Christi 1680 (German translation).
  • Justus Christoph Dithmar : Lord Master of the Knightly Order of St. John ... Franckfurth on the Oder 1737.
  • Siegmund Wilhelm Wohlbrück: Historical news of the Alvensleben family and their goods. First part. Berlin 1819, pp. 210-219
  • Peter Wilhelm Behrends: Neuhaldensleben district chronicle or history of all places of the district Neuhaldensleben in Magdeburg . First part. Neuhaldensleben 1824, p. 368.
  • L. von Ledebur: The Templars and their possessions in the Prussian state. A contribution to the history and statistics of the order. In: General archive for the history of the Prussian state. Volume 16, 1835, pp. 97-120, 242-268.
  • AWE von Winterfeld: History of the Brandenburg Ballei or the Lordship of the Sonnenburg of the Knightly Order of St. Johannis from the Hospital in Jerusalem . 1859; Reprint: Osnabrück 1993.
  • George Adalbert von Mülverstedt : Codex Diplomaticus Alvenslebianus . First volume. Magdeburg 1879.
  • E. Handtmann: New legends from the Altmark . Berlin 1883 (contains a chapter with Templar sagas in which Friedrich von Alvensleben is the main character.)
  • Konrad Schottmüller: The fall of the Templar order . 2 volumes. Berlin 1887 (reprint 1996).
  • Michael Schüpferling: The Templar Order in Germany . Kirsch, Bamberg 1916.
  • Marie Luise Bulst-Thiele : Sacrae Domus Militiae Templi Hierosolymitani Magistri. Studies on the history of the Knights Templar 1118 / 19–1314 . Goettingen 1974.
  • Gunter Lehmann, Christian Patzner: The Templars in Central Germany . LePa books, 1st edition Erfurt 2004, 2nd revised and changed edition 2014
  • Reimar von Alvensleben : Friedrich von Alvensleben - last master of the Knights Templar in Alemania and Slavia . LePa books, Erfurt 2008

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dithmar, p. 10, Schottmüller, p. 437
  2. ↑ Mülverstedt, 1st volume, pp. 676-677
  3. ↑ See Lehmann / Patzner, pp. 110 ff and the literature cited there
  4. ↑ quoted in Dithmar, 1737, pp. 14/15
  5. ↑ Mülverstedt, Volume 1, p. 188
  6. ↑ Behrends, p. 368
personal data
SURNAME Alvensleben, Friedrich von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Templar, Master of the Templar Order in Alemannia and Slavonia (1301–1308)
DATE OF BIRTH 1265
DATE OF DEATH around 1313