Fygen Lutzenkirchen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The sculpture of Fygen Lutzenkirchen on the Cologne town hall tower
Seidmacherinnengäßchen

Fygen Lutzenkirchen (also Lützenkirchen , nee van Bellinghoven ; * around 1450 , † after 1515 ) was a silk entrepreneur from Cologne .

Life

Fygen Lutzenkirchen was an important representative of the guild of silk makers, one of the "Cologne women's guilds ". The women's guilds all worked mainly for export, with the silk industry, which had the monopoly on the manufacture of silk fabrics in Cologne, was particularly successful around 1500. In the Middle Ages, apart from Paris and Cologne, there were no guilds in any other European city ​​that consisted almost exclusively of women.

1474 Fygen Lutzenkirchen was approved as a master; by 1497 she had trained 25 apprentices. However, she sent her own daughters to apprenticeships with guild members. She was magistrate of her guild six times . Fygen was married to the merchant and councilor Peter Lutzenkirchen. For almost 20 years, the couple alternately chaired the “Seidamt” and complemented each other in their entrepreneurial activities. Among other things, Peter Lutzenkirchen imported raw silk for his wife's business. When her husband died in 1498, Fygen Lutzenkirchen's active role in the silk industry ended. She devoted herself to handling the inheritance and trading in wine and drugstore goods . Presumably her daughter Lisbeth, who had been admitted as chief silk maker since 1496 and who was married to the son of a wealthy family of textile entrepreneurs, continued to run the business. Lisbeth's mother-in-law Trynken Imhof was next to her mother the most successful silk maker in Cologne. In 1515 Fygen was one of the wealthiest citizens of Cologne and one of the six richest women in the city. She owned several houses in the city, including the old Wolkenburg farm . The date of her death is unknown.

Guild House and Historic Trade Street

Some of the old town streets still refer to historical trades of the Cologne guilds by their names. For example, since the 15th century, the alley “Unter Seidmacher” - today's name “Seidmacherinnengäßchen” goes back to an application by the Cologne Women's History Association - was made up of a variety of property names mentioned in the medieval shrine books , which were initially kept in Latin, among others inter Sellatores (under saddlers), inter nectrices mitrarum (under bonnet weavers) or wherever children's shoes were sold , the name under silk makers as the one that refers to what was probably the most important craft there at the time. At the end of the 14th century, the silk house stood in the alley. This building was supplemented in 1395 by an older "Seidhaus" in the lane "Unter Riemenschneider", the construction of which led to the name of the street being changed to "Unter Seidmacher".

Commemoration of the city

As a representative of the economically successful Cologne women of the late Middle Ages, Fygen Lutzenkirchen was included in the figure program for the Cologne town hall tower in 1992 (No. 38, 1st floor); the sculpture comes from the Cologne sculptor Wolfgang Reuter .

In 1997 a street in the Cologne-Nord industrial park in the Cologne-Niehl district was named after Fygen Lützenkirchen (sic).

literature

Web links

Commons : Fygen Lutzenkirchen  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Margret Wensky: Fygen Lutzenkirchen (around 1450 - after 1515), silk entrepreneur. Rhenish History Portal, September 30, 2010, accessed on January 9, 2015 .
  2. ↑ a b sculptures on the first floor. City of Cologne, accessed on January 9, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Glasner, Vol. 2, p. 256 ff
  4. ↑ Peter Glasner: The legibility of the city. Cultural history and lexicon of medieval street names in Cologne , Volume 1, p. 357
  5. ^ Christoph Mathieu: Re-encounter with Fygen Lützenkirchen. Kölnische Rundschau , December 21, 2007, accessed on January 9, 2015 .
  6. ^ Marion Werner: From Adolf-Hitler-Platz to Ebertplatz: a cultural history of the Cologne streets , p. 97
personal data
SURNAME Lutzenkirchen, Fygen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lützenkirchen, Fygen; Bellinghoven, Fygen van (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Silk entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH around 1450
DATE OF DEATH after 1515