Georg Friedrich Schott

Georg Friedrich Schott (* 1736 / 1737 ; † 31 May 1823 in Kirn ) was a salm-kyrburgischer archivist and Government . He is suspected of having made numerous forgeries of documents from the Middle Ages and the early modern period .

Life

Little is known about Schott's life. His knowledge of the Latin language suggests that he attended high school, but he probably did not have academic degrees. He had one or two brothers and two sons, Friedrich († 1840) and Johann Thomas Lothar († 1860). In 1784 he was appointed a councilor by Friedrich III, Prince of Salm-Kyrburg . On May 30, 1785, at the instigation of the electoral council Andreas Lamey , to whom he worked and with whom he was in lively correspondence, he became an extraordinary member of the Electoral Palatinate Academy of Sciences .

In the turmoil after the French annexation of his hometown Kirn in 1794, he lost his job as the Salm-Kyrburg government councilor and archivist at the end of 1798. Until then he worked at his place of employment in Kirn. In 1792 he had received an order from his employer to set up a princely house and state archive. In the course of this work he registered the administrative files of the Wildgrafschaft Kyrburg, which are now in the Anholter archive . Since he had not received a salary since the annexation, he requested the employer to pay an annual pension as compensation for the arrears from 1803 in a lawsuit at the Reich Chamber of Commerce. In a letter from 1801 he complains about his “present poor situation where I live without earnings or pay”. During this time he was “ plundered twice by the Franks and finally by the Emperor Hussars ”. This emergency did not seem to have left him until his death, although he received a small pension from Prince zu Salm-Kyrburg until the end of his life. He died on May 31, 1823 at the age of 86 in poor circumstances to Kirn.

Scientific work

Published works

• 1780: "Diplomatic message from the Winterhauch, where the history of the Nahgau Landgraviate , the Heidengericht zu Sien and the Wildgrafschaft will be presented shortly".
• 1792: “Diplomatic message from the Fürst-, Wild- and Rheingräfl. Landgraviate in Nahgau and its first owners and namesake of the Wildgräfliches Haus ”, published under somewhat mysterious circumstances under the name of Professor Franz Joseph Bodmann, who is in correspondence with him, in Erfurt .
• 1828 ( posthumously ): "Over the Disibodenberg "

Unpublished manuscripts and documents

• 1801: "Origines domus Ringravicae" (sold to Bodmann in 1805)
• "Castles, cities and monasteries of the Nahegau"
• "Contributions to the oldest history of the Nahegau"
• 1806: "Something from Enkirch"
• 1822: “The Hundsrück in its location, name and extent. Explained from annals and documents. "
• "History of the Dissibodenberg Monastery"
• further unpublished documents

Most of these works were acquired by Friedrich Gustav Habel and added to his collection, which was temporarily to be found at the Mildenburg in Miltenberg, Bavaria . Altogether there are likely to be over 2000 copies of documents from the late 8th to the end of the 16th century. Many of these documents were entered in important works such as the Mittelrheinische Regesten by Adam Goerz or the document book on the history of the Middle Rhine territories by Heinrich Beyer , as many documents had been destroyed in the unrest of the French period and the specimens from Schott are copies of irretrievably lost certificates looked.

Forgery of documents

The suspected counterfeit

For a long time, Schott's documents were unquestionable, until there were initially a few and then numerous suspicious factors that indicated that a large number of the pieces were modern forgeries. Pioneering work for this was done above all by Hans Wibel , who in his contribution "The forgery of documents by Georg Friedrich Schott" provided a lot of evidence of the forgery character of some of the documents. In the period that followed, further investigations appeared that strongly questioned the authenticity of other documents from Schott's hand.

Motivation for counterfeiting

A possible financial enrichment as a reason for the forgeries is relatively unlikely, Schott only sold his documents or works when his financial hardship drove him to do so. A plausible possibility is that he tried to get his client, the Prince of Salm-Kyrburg as a descendant of the old Rhine Counts , evidence of the longest possible tradition of his lineage by means of medieval documents.

literature

• Hans Wibel: Georg Friedrich Schott's falsifications . In: New archive of the society for older history for the promotion of a complete edition of the source writings of German histories of the Middle Ages . tape 29 . Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hanover and Leipzig 1904, p. 653 ff . ( Online full text).
• Hans Wibel: Addendum to "Georg Friedrich Schott's falsification of documents" . In: New archive of the society for older history for the promotion of a complete edition of the source writings of German histories of the Middle Ages . tape 31 . Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hanover and Leipzig 1906, p. 194 ff . ( Online full text).
• Emil Schaus: Contribution “Idar” . In: Rheinische Heimatblätter . tape 11 . Rheinische Verlagsgesellschaft MBH, Koblenz 1924, p. 348 ( online full text).
• Emil Schaus: A Schott forgery on the history of the Nahegau . In: New archive of the society for older history for the promotion of a complete edition of the source writings of German histories of the Middle Ages . tape 29 . Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1924, p. 363 ff . ( Online full text).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ K. Schwartz: Habel's handwritten estate . In: Annals of the Association for Nassau antiquity and historical research . tape 11 . Wiesbaden 1871, p. 382 f .
2. ↑ ^{a b} H. Wibel: Addendum to "Georg Friedrich Schott's forgery of documents" . In: New archive of the society for older history for the promotion of a complete edition of the source writings of German histories of the Middle Ages . tape 31 . Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hanover and Leipzig 1906, p. 196 Note 3) ( online full text).
3. ^ Letter from Prince Moritz zu Salm-Kyrburg and his sister Amalia von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen from March 4, 1805 on the salary and compensation matter of the former Salm-Kyrburg archivist Schott . ( Digitized version , Google Books )
4. ↑ ^{a b} H. Wibel: The forgery of documents by Georg Friedrich Schott . In: New archive of the society for older history for the promotion of a complete edition of the source writings of German histories of the Middle Ages . tape 29 . Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hanover and Leipzig 1904, p. 653 ff . ( Online full text).
5. ↑ GF Schott: Diplomatic message from the Winter Hauch, where the history of the Nahgau Landgraviate, the Heidengericht zu Sein and the Wildgraviate are briefly presented . In: Forest archive to expand forest and hunting science and forest and hunting literature . tape 9 . Ulm 1790, p. 209 ff . ( Online in the Google Book Search full text).
6. ^ GF Schott: About the Disibodenberg . In: Chronicle of the Trier Diocese . 1828.
7. ^ Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt; Collection C 1 C No. 16: "Chronicle of the Wild and Rhine Counts House ('Origines Domus Rhingravicae')"; ( Link )
8. ↑ State Main Archive Koblenz; Holdings 700,321: “Estate GF Schott, archivist from Salm-Kyrburg, 18th century”; Finding aid: Case files 1 + 2 ( Link )
9. ↑ State Main Archive Koblenz; Holdings 700,321: “Estate GF Schott, archivist from Salm-Kyrburg, 18th century”; Finding aid: Case 3 ( Link )
10. ↑ See http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Franz_Joseph_Bodmann
11. ↑ E. Schaus: A forgery by Schott for the history of the Nahegau . In: New archive of the society for older history for the promotion of a complete edition of the source writings of German histories of the Middle Ages . tape 29 . Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1924, p. 363 ff . ( Online full text).
12. ↑ P. Acht : Mainz document book . Volume II: The documents from the death of Archbishop Adalbert I (1137) to the death of Archbishop Konrad (1200), Part 1: 1137-1175. Hessian Historical Commission Darmstadt, Darmstadt 1968, ISBN 3-88443-001-7 , p.  227 f. Remarks Reg. 119 .
13. ↑ P. Acht : Mainz document book . Volume II: The documents from the death of Archbishop Adalbert I (1137) to the death of Archbishop Konrad (1200), Part 2: 1176-1200. Hessian Historical Commission Darmstadt, Darmstadt 1971, ISBN 3-88443-002-5 , p.  991 (for remarks Reg. 602 and p. 1006, Remarks Reg. 610).