Geislingen uprising
In the Geislingen uprising in 1514, the residents of Geislingen an der Steige rose against the rule of Ulm .
causes
Charges and charges
The city of Ulm was entitled to sovereign power over its entire territory . This usually included judicial and military sovereignty and the right to tax. The “landlord” and “tithe master” of the rural dweller who tilled the land could also be someone else. The Ulm hospital owned a lot of real estate in the Ulm region. In other places, the valid and tithe lords were the council, the city and the parish church building maintenance . Extensive use was made of taxation, validity and tithe law.
The subjects therefore had to suffer heavy burdens of all kinds. These included in particular taxes and validities for the award of certain municipal offices and justice to certain houses, laypersons or fees in cases of change (purchase, exchange, inheritance or handover), fruit or monetary values, the tithing (large or small tithe ), blood tithes for pigs, calves , Filling, lamb, from ducks, geese and chickens, Noval or Neugereuth , flax , garden, hay, Öhmdzehnten , bees tithes (hamlet above Helfenstein and Schalkstetten). Most serious, however, were the forced labor and the fundamental lack of freedom.
Compared to other areas, the tax rates were moderate, but taxes were not only collected once a year, but as often as necessary. There was a major and minor tithe. The great tithe is raised especially with the plow, the little tithe of developed with the hoe lands, ie, for example. Of peas, lentils, cabbage, beets, hemp, flax, etc. In the large tithes they took from the winter fruits tenth sheaf to the field, the tenth heap of oats. The small tithe was measured partly with the rod, partly by pile. The big tithe usually had to be addressed to the actual tithe (hospital, council, parish church), the smaller one usually the pastor.
The tithe levies had long since become untrue to their name, because they often amounted to more than a tenth of the income, sometimes up to a third of the same. In Bräuningsheim, for example, two farmers had to tithing half of their fruit yield. In Türkheim the community had to pay 6 guilders instead of tithing when the Neugereuthacker lay idle. Other taxes were baking justice and the market tariff .
The taxes were also sometimes inconsiderately collected. Complaints were made about the harshness of the officials who raised the crop yield , as they - if at all - showed little consideration for crop failures or hailstorms. The brutality of the sub-officials was also criticized.
The compulsory labor was also hard: the farmer did work with his mare by harnessing or hauling. The mercenary a. D., the small farmer of the Middle Ages, did services with his hand. In Süßen, for example, almost all farmers were required to serve.
Serfdom
The lack of freedom of the person, called serfdom , was felt the hardest . The farmer, the beast of burden of society, should remain in bondage. The serf had to pay taxes (for example, body interest, body fowl , death) to his body master every year . He also had to put up with inheritance restrictions, increased compulsory labor and restrictions on freedom of movement.
There was a local and a staff bondage. The latter, which in old Ulmischen accounts is sometimes referred to as "help stone" and sometimes as "Werdenberg", existed in all official places with the exception of cake. Here, as in the official city of Geislingen, local serfdom prevailed. Those who had their seat in one of the two places were serfs because of the place. But he was free from burdens. Therefore easy serfdom. If one moved to another place of the Ulm rule, one came into severe serfdom. Then you had to pay the "interest and death". If a man married "women or daughters" from the named places, he also had to surrender to the gentlemen of Ulm with serfdom and was not allowed to change his body or property.
In 1503 the emperor and various princes of the union stood up for a citizen of Geislingen named Klaus Stöcklin. He had “asked the council to accept his children as citizens of Ulm”. However, the request was denied.
The large taxes, the various services and burdens brought the peasants and citizens to revolt.
The course of the uprising
negotiations
As early as 1480, the Geislingen subjects filed various lawsuits. And when ungeld was placed on the brandy in 1511 , the discontent was renewed. In February 1512 they sent three delegates to Ulm. Again, they brought complaints. In doing so, they aroused the council's greatest disapproval. In the event of a recurrence, this promised them the strictest measures.
That didn't scare the Geislingers. In 1513 she presented again in Ulm. On June 23, 5 representatives of the Geislinger citizenship turned to the local Vogt Walter von Hirnheim, to the caretaker Burkhard Senft and to the court (today one would say local council). They expressed the request to support their concerns at the Ulm Council, "which was a bit wrong because an honorable Councilor Sach itzo". The ringleaders of the movement, who came from Geislingen, Nellingen, Weiler ob Helfenstein and Ettlenschieß , were called Klaus Jüngling von Ettlenschieß, Jörg Schüblin von Nellingen, Hans Hetzel von Weiler and Lienhard Schöttlin von Geislingen.
First they let themselves be reassured by the steward and keeper. But that didn't take long.
While the Vogt was at the Bundestag in Nördlingen, they turned to the nurse again under the leadership of Schöttlin. They forced the mediation of the Mayor of Geislingen, Lorenz Moerdlin. At its instigation, the nurse appealed to the court. After lengthy negotiations, this set up a committee of twelve men (as many as there were community judges appointed by Ulm with Vogt and Pfleger). After the Vogt returned home, three from the court and three from the twelve formulated the subjects' complaints in 26 articles. An eight-member commission, five from the twelve and three from the court, presented the complaint to the Ulm City Council.
requirements
In the complaint, they complained about the purchase rights to the mercy goods, about the severity of serfdom and about revoked water and property rights. They demanded the Flösgraben in Geislingen as far as the upper pond, the Linsenbach, both chutes in front of the upper and lower gate, which were called bulwarks. All the kennels around the city, the Ratzenbühl, the forest around the mountain to Helfenstein, that Burgwieslein under the castle for the community. Likewise the letters in which the Counts of Helfenstein had guaranteed them freedoms. Hospital nurses, city servants, bailiffs, sub-baptizers and Eicher, who would be paid by the community, should only be Geislingers, the wine for those who have recently given birth should be exempt from “unpaid”. Finally they complained about the extraordinarily high burdens "which one took from them in a few years while sparing others".
The Ulm City Council did not hurry to answer. This led to new unrest in the communities. The new Vogt von Geislingen, Hans Walter von Laubenberg, reported this to Ulm after Whitsun 1514.
The end of the uprising
Ulm now intervened with force. In the period from July 22nd to 26th, Helfenstein Castle was "provided with artillery, men and provisions." 460 servants lay there under Captain Heinrich Wick.
Spoken judgments
The ringleaders of the movement were captured on July 27 and 29, 1514 and brought to the tower in Ulm. There they were questioned "strictly honestly and seriously," that is, with the torture. During the dispute, the Geislingen pastor Doktor juris Georg Oswald, son of a respected Ulm family, took the side of his parishioners. The advice of Ulm did not allow itself to be softened by the advocacy of the Blaubeurer office and certain aristocrats. In Geislingen, a one-week curfew was imposed, which was only lifted after the Geislingers again paid homage to the Ulm Council and swore the Leipheim oath . The Geislingers were fined annually by 100 up to a total of 1400 guilders. On August 11, the verdict was passed on the main ringleaders. Four were banned from the Ulm area:
Jürg Bassler, Claus Jungling from Ettlenschiess, Jörg Scheblin from Nellingen and Hans Hetzel from Weiler have sworn primal feuds and are allowed to return against payment of the etching and an honorary penalty.
The Tucher Christa Koch is forbidden to ever leave Gyseling again in his life and he is only allowed to wear a broken prett or by-knife and not go to any carousing.
The Weißgerber Roggenburger is banished across the Rhine.
Schnitzer, Stöcklin and Wäch are banished across the Lech, with the condition that they will not come over for a lifetime without intercession and grace.
Not much is known about the further fate of the exiles. One of the four turned a petition to Ulm's Swabian allies, who then appealed to the Ulm Council to allow him to return to Ulm because he lived in great poverty in his place of exile. The answer from the Ulm Council is not known.
In the case of Lienhard Schöttlin, the high council of the city of Ulm came to the decision "that Lienhard Schöttlin, born in Geislingen, will be judged with the sword to the end because of his serious offense against the city of Ulm until he comes from life to death."
This was also a difficult judgment for Ulm law. According to the red book of the city of Ulm, only violent crimes, i.e. manslaughter and rape, were punished with death. Exceptionally, however, it was approved that the body would find its final resting place in Geislingen.
Result of the uprising
The uprising did not bring any significant advantages. A few insignificant requirements were met, otherwise everything stayed the same.
“In 1514 the Geislingers rebelled against their lords of Ulm, by the Geislingers, in order to keep a fair amount of justice, but nothing more than water that they did not have before, and the grass for those meant on the ditch was approved ; then she said that because nothing was passed on to them, they did not want to accept that either, because they had had a free train so that they could become citizens and proper citizens in Ulm. Hence the Ulm mayor and two rulers and several of the council, and when they arrived at Geislingen, the Geislingers had to swear to them and the bailiff that they wanted to obey the Lords of Ulm as their authorities, and then quite a few Jurors and some not. Thereupon the gentlemen of Ulm provided the Helfenstein Castle with artillery and occupied it, also accepted and sent a pennon of servants, who took the town, captured ten men and had them led to Ulm, among which the leader of this rebellion was a Beck, the afterwards the head was cut off in Ulm and the others expelled from the land. "
literature
- Gabriele Haug-Moritz : The Geislinger uprising of 1513/14. In: Ulm and Oberschwaben , communications from the Association for Art and Antiquity in Ulm and Oberschwaben 47/48, 1991, pp. 144–204.
- Georg Burkhardt, Albert Kley, Karlheinz Bauer: History of the city of Geislingen an der Steige: From prehistory and early history up to 1803. 1963, pp. 174–177.
- Christian Schöllkopf: Historical reports from Geislingen and its surroundings. 2nd issue, approx. 1929.
- Claus Bisle, Roland Funk: Schöttlin. The Geislinger uprising in 1514. Game of love and betrayal, right and wrong. 2008.
- The red book of the city of Ulm .