History of the city of Speyer
The history of the city of Speyer begins in 10 BC. With the establishment of a Roman camp . The name Spira , from which the current name Speyer finally developed, appears for the first time in 614. Speyer gained fame primarily through the Reichstag and the Imperial Cathedral .
Timetable
- 10 BC BC: The first Roman military camp Noviomagus , settlement of the Germanic Nemeters on the left bank of the Rhine, civil settlement in front of the military camp
- around 83: Noviomagus civil settlement becomes capital in the territory of the Nemeter (Civitas Nemetum)
- 346: Jesse is mentioned as a bishop for Speyer .
- 496/506: Franconian settlement, first mention of the name Spira
- around 800: Beginning of the Carolingian cathedral construction
- 838: first of a total of 50 court and imperial days in Speyer
- 946: Market and coin law
- 969: Emperor Otto the Great's immunity privilege ; Bishop becomes city lord, construction of the city wall begins
- 1030: Emperor Konrad II lays the foundation stone for the Speyer Cathedral .
- 1047: Emperor Heinrich III. transfers the body of Saint Guido from Pomposa to Speyer.
- 1076: King Heinrich IV sets out from Speyer to do penance to Canossa .
- 1084: The first Jewish community settles in Speyer
- 1111: The great freedom letter of Heinrich V.
- 1193: Emperor Heinrich VI. concludes a contract with his prisoner Richard the Lionheart at the Reichstag in Speyer (March 21, 193 - March 25, 193) about the ransom of 100,000 silver marks to be paid.
- 1226: Speyer becomes a member of the Rhenish Association of Cities
- 1230: first Speyer town charter
- 1294: The bishop loses most of his previous rights and the city of Speyer is from now on a free imperial city .
- 1526: The Reichstag in Speyer negotiates Luther's teachings.
- 1527: Speyer becomes the seat of the Imperial Chamber Court (until 1689)
- 1529: At the Reichstag in Speyer on April 19, the evangelical imperial estates "protest" against the resolutions hostile to the Reformation ( Speyer Protestation )
- 1544: Great Jewish privilege granted by Emperor Karl V.
- 1689: The city is almost completely destroyed by French troops under General Mélac during the War of the Palatinate Succession
- 1792: Speyer is conquered by French revolutionary troops and remains under French rule until 1814. It becomes the seat of a sub-prefecture in the Donnersberg department .
- 1816: The city becomes the district capital of the Palatinate and is the seat of the government of the Bavarian Rhine District, later the Bavarian Palatinate
- 1918: French occupation (until 1930)
- 1923/24: establishment of the autonomous government of the Palatinate by separatists; Assassination attempt on its president Franz Josef Heinz
- 1936: occupation of the Rhineland; Speyer becomes a garrison town again
- 1938: opening of the first permanent bridge over the Rhine ; Pogrom Night : National Socialists set the synagogue on fire
- 1945: Rhine bridge blown up by German troops. American troops occupy the city, which are soon relieved by the French army
- 1947: Foundation of the German University for Administrative Sciences
- 1956: New Rhine Bridge; first town twinning with Spalding (Great Britain), 1959 with Chartres (France)
- 1969: The Speyer district is merged with the Ludwigshafen district
- 1990: The city celebrates its 2000th anniversary.
- 2011: The city celebrates 900 years of civil liberty.
Celts, Romans and Teutons
The time before the Romans
Of great importance for the development of Speyer was its convenient location on the Rhine , a central central European traffic artery. The immediate proximity to the river on the flood-proof high bank was an advantage, as was the nearby confluence of the Neckar valley into the Rhine plain, which established the connection to the southeast towards the Danube, and the proximity of the Kaiserslautern Basin, which conveyed traffic to the west and southwest . The existence of five Rhine ferries in the immediate vicinity of the city in the Middle Ages also indicates the importance of Speyer as a traffic junction .
Numerous finds from the Neolithic , Bronze Age , Hallstatt and Latène Age suggest that the Rhine bank terraces in Speyer, in particular the lower terrace tongue in the immediate vicinity of the river, have always been interesting places to settle. At least five settlements from the Bronze Age can be identified: in Speyer-Nord , on Roßsprung, in the area of the town hall, on Rosensteiner Hang and in the Vogelgesang residential area.
One of the most famous finds from this time (around 1,500 BC) is the " Golden Hat ", which was found 10 km northwest of Speyer, near Schifferstadt , and is now kept in the Palatinate History Museum in Speyer. In the second century BC, the area of Speyer was the settlement area of the Celtic Mediomatrics, who built a small fortified settlement (oppidum) south of the Speyerbach estuary .
Around 70 BC BC Suebi crossed the Upper Rhine under Ariovistus in association with other Germanic tribes, including the Nemeters , and invaded Gaul. Speyer may have been captured by the Nemeters. With the help of the Romans, Ariovistus became 58 BC. BC ( Gallic War ) repulsed across the Rhine. The Nemeters are first mentioned in Caesars De Bello Gallico . However, it is not clear whether Nemeters stayed in the Speyer area at this time or were only settled there a few years later (approx. 10 BC). The Roman name of Speyer from this time on was initially Noviomagus Nemetum, then Civitas Nemetum. Archaeological Germanic finds in Speyer exist from the last decade of the 1st century BC. A Celtic grave in Johannesstrasse from the period between 50 and 20 BC is therefore an interesting find. As Celtic graves are the exception in the Palatinate and Upper Rhine during this period.
The Romans on the Rhine
After the subjugation of Gaul by the Romans in 50 BC. BC, the Rhine became part of the border of the Roman Empire , even if the area was still outside the military scene . 15 BC The Romans conquered the area of the Celtic Raetians and Vindeliker between the Alps and the Danube, but attempts to subdue areas on the right bank of the Rhine failed for the time being. At the instigation of Emperor Tiberius, Drusus had castles built for legions and auxiliary troops from the Alps to the North Sea along the Rhine . One of these camps and forts was Speyer, which was located on the Roman Rheintalstrasse around 10 BC. It was probably built for a 500-strong infantry force. The Romans also used the favorable location of the Hochgestade in the immediate vicinity of the Rhine. This first fort was located in the eastern area of today's Maximilianstrasse, roughly between Kleiner Pfaffengasse and Großer Himmelsgasse. The southern fortification ditch could be dug along the Kleine Pfaffengasse.
This Roman military post became the impetus for city building. Partly at the instigation or with the permission of the Romans, the Germanic Nemeters had settled under Emperor Augustus in the area of the Vorderpfalz ; Germanic tribes had also settled in the neighboring regions of what is now Rheinhessen and Alsace: the Vangionen and the Triboker . The finds in Speyer indicate that not only Romans were stationed there. Sometimes it was either Germanic soldiers from a regular auxiliary unit or a tumultuous contingent under their own leadership. The existence of the first fort was short-lived. Finds indicate that two more forts, each slightly offset from the first, were built in the period that followed. The second was built up to about 10 AD immediately south of the first, whereby the north wall in the Kleine Pfaffengasse roughly coincided with the south wall of the first fort. Remains of the second fort were found during excavations in the area of the Judenhof. The south of the fort presumably bordered the upper edge of the high bank, where the Rhine flowed directly past at that time. There was a system of moats to the west and north. The new construction of the second fort corresponds to the reorganization of the Rhine line after the Roman defeat in the Varus Battle .
In the area of this second camp, an extensive civilian settlement ( vicus ) arose , one of the germ cells of ancient Speyer. On both sides of the western arterial road, with the approval of the Romans, traders, craftsmen, soldiers' families and the entertainment industry settled down. About 3000 m² of this settlement were examined during the construction work for the foundation hospital. The settlement presumably extended from Herdstrasse to Zeppelinstrasse. It experienced its first heyday in the 2nd century. The settlement area was around 25 hectares. Another smaller settlement area from this period can be found at the opposite eastern end of the fort in the area of the cathedral hill.
From 30 AD, representative buildings in a U-shaped arrangement were built in the settlement on the south side of the street in the area of the foundation hospital, presumably a market forum, which underlines the growing importance of the early Roman Speyer. From this it is in turn concluded that a market right (ius nundinarum) already existed for the vicus . The salary of the troops was an essential basis for economic development. Intensive trade connections served a large part of their supply of everyday goods and reached as far as central Italy, the Rhone, southern Gaul and Spain. Speyer was also a stage stop on the important Rheinuferstraße.
Around the same time, the second fort was replaced by a third one - a little inland, between the middle Maximilianstrasse and Ludwigstrasse. The reason for this could have been flood problems, but also a lack of space or simply the need for renewal. According to the findings so far, this last fort seems to have been considerably larger than its predecessor. According to the finds, this fort existed at least until the withdrawal of the auxiliary troops in 74 after the conquest of the areas on the right bank of the Rhine.
After the conquest of the areas on the right bank of the Rhine, Speyer was no longer of military importance as a border town. From 83 Speyer belonged to the province of Germania superior . After the military withdrew, the fort was abandoned, the civilian settlement was given the right to self-government and, due to its supra-regional importance in the Nemeter area, became the seat of the Civitas Nemetum regional authority . Civitates were self-governing corporations under " peregrine " law, the structure of which was based heavily on the structure of Roman cities. The Civitas administrative offices on the Rhine had the legal status of vicus ; but there are milestones where Speyer is also referred to as “ colonia ”. The Civitas Nemetum comprised the area of what is now the Vorderpfalz and Northern Alsace. How far areas of the Palatinate Forest belonged is not known. Vicus and civitas formed a unit, and all residents were considered “cives” or “incolae” of the civitas. As the seat of a regional administrative center, a small-town representative city emerged. Due to the triangular shape of the terrace tongue, the settlement could only expand to the west and, with an area of no more than 25 hectares, approximated the later Salian city limits with the city wall. In the old town of Speyer today, practically no building work below street level is possible without encountering remnants of that time. The numerous finds - among them z. B. the oldest preserved and still closed wine bottle in Germany, the so-called Roman wine from Speyer - can also be viewed in the Palatinate History Museum.
Around 150 the city appeared under the Celtic name Noviomagus (Neufeld) in the world map of the Greek Ptolemy ; the same name is in the Itinerarium Antonini , a travel guide of Antonius from the time of Caracalla (211-217) and on the Tabula Peutingeriana , a road map from the 3rd century. It can also be found on distance columns along Rheinuferstraße. Two new traffic axes can be identified from this time. A six to eight meter wide, 700 m long east-west axis from the period between 80 and 100 AD, laid out as a boulevard like a Decumanus , began at the cathedral hill and led over Kleine Pfaffengasse to Königsplatz and in a straight line further west. It was lined with rows of colonnades along its entire length .
Another east-west street, the old Vicus Street, continued to exist and is occupied immediately north of the foundation hospital.
Furthermore, a north-south axis was created, for example from Hagedorngasse in the north, over the Kaufhof area, to the old Vicus-Strasse in the south. The fort has largely been over-planned. The area of the former third fort was obviously used to erect representative buildings that correspond to the importance of the city. Massive remains of the wall and other finds of special quality that were discovered in the area of Königsplatz indicate that a forum area with a temple stood there. The dimensions of the Jupiter column found in the courtyard indicate a size that is comparable to the famous Jupiter column from Mainz. Due to numerous other finds of pillars and altars, it can be assumed that the Jupiter cult was given a special rank in Speyer. The centrally located district in the Königsplatz area was the administrative and business center. The discovery of a parapet stone with a corresponding inscription proves that there was also an amphitheater , as was common in cities of this size and importance.
In 2013, Roman graves were discovered during excavations on the Marienheim site, which belong to a burial ground from the 1st to 5th centuries in the area of today's western Ludwigstrasse (suburban area). The 120 grave sites included 4 stone sarcophagi, 48 body burials and about 70 cremation graves with rich grave goods.
Speyer at the time of the Great Migration
The storms of the Migration Period did not spare Roman Speyer either. Initially, the flourishing development of Speyer continued after the Danube border collapsed between 166 and 170 and despite the increasing Germanic invasions across the Limes . For a time the Romans were able to repel the Alamanni , who appeared from 213 onwards. From 260 onwards the constant attacks of the Alamanni on the Limes could no longer be repulsed, the Roman imperial border had to be withdrawn to the Rhine, and Speyer became a border town again ( Limesfall ). People fleeing across the Rhine had to be taken into Speyer. Initially, this did not lead to any serious changes for Noviomagus. However, the Alemanni managed to cross the Rhine again and again, mostly in winter when it was frozen over, and around 275 the city was almost completely destroyed. Numerous skeleton finds and traces of fire testify to the extent of the destruction. Nothing is known about the fate of the population. From 286, under Emperor Diocletian , the northern provinces and the administration were reorganized; the civil and military administrations were separated. Infrastructure and localities were rebuilt. Noviomagus flourished again, whereby the settlement development was concentrated only between Domhügel and Heydenreichstraße while maintaining the Roman main street.
Another destruction by invading Alemanni under their prince Chnodomar took place around 352, who conquered the entire left bank of the Rhine. As part of the reconquest campaigns under Constantinus II and Julian from 355 onwards, Civitas Nemetum was wrested from the Alemanni again. The Alemanni incursions continued, however, the situation remained unsafe and the settlement was not rebuilt. Rather, Emperor Valentinian I began to fortify the left bank of the Rhine. Small units with their own names were stationed for border defense. Speyer became a garrison location again in 369 at the latest. For Nemetae , as Speyer was now called, the "Vindices" are listed in a troop manual (Notitia dignitatum). A mighty fortress with 2.5 m thick defensive walls was built in the area of the cathedral hill. The northern wall ran parallel to the north side of the later cathedral. The course of the southern wall at the foot of the slope of the terrace tongue is probably related to the construction of a Rhine port, which took place at the same time. The edge corresponds to the south side of the museum, in front of which the remains of ships were found underground during its expansion. This resulted in a north-south extension of around 230 m for the fortress. The east-west extension could not yet be determined exactly, but it should have been about the length of the cathedral. This area offered enough space for the civilian population in times of need. Findings in the fortress area suggest that there was an early Christian community. For the year 346, Jesse is named as the first Speyer bishop, so that Speyer is occupied as a bishopric from this point in time . The grave finds just outside the fortress indicate that the rural population was still pagan. Even if the settlement was not rebuilt, there was enough confidence in security that many settlers returned to the area. Obviously some of the Alemanni remained with the approval of the Romans.
In 406, Suebi , Vandals and Sarmatian Alans put pressure from advancing Huns across the Rhine and overran Speyer on their way into inner Gaul (see Rhine crossing from 406 ). A richly decorated princely grave in Altlußheim on the right bank of the Rhine , about 4 km from Speyer, testifies to the presence of Alano- Sarmatians , Huns and East Germans .
This did not mean the end of Roman life in the region, but with it the Romanesque population began to withdraw from the area on the left bank of the Rhine (Vorderpfalz and Northern Alsace). This process was presumably faster in the country than in the cities and it can be assumed that Speyer lost much of its importance. The Romans tried to hold the Rhine border by assigning the defense of Germanic peoples as federates . The Franks were supposed to take over this task for the province of Upper Germany (Germania prima) , but they did not prevent such incursions as 406. Even the brief settlement of the Burgundians in 413 in the Worms area did not bring the desired security and the Roman order remained fragile.
While most of the Germanic peoples who came across the Rhine moved further west, from 450 onwards a gradual land seizure in the form of court formations can be observed, also in the area around Speyer. At least three such branches can be detected on Woogbach and Roßsprung, one to two km northwest of the fortress (cathedral hill). From 454 the Romans gave up their attempts to hold the Rhine border; the Speyer troops were incorporated into the Roman field army. The influx of Germanic peoples increased. The Upper Rhine area became Alemannic. Due to their influence, the decline of the Romanesque way of life in the Speyer - Strasbourg area took place more quickly than between Worms and Cologne. Speyer no longer fully participated in the last Roman prosperity on the Rhine in the 5th century.
Around 475, the Winternheim settlement was built 2 km south-west of the fortress and 500 m south-west of what later became the German pen, directly on the upper edge of the lower terrace (today's Vogelgesang residential area). It initially consisted of a single courtyard and was later extended to the west. Since it is assumed that the entire left Upper Rhine region was in Alemannic hands at the time, it was surprising to find that the North Sea Germans, i.e. Saxons, can be assigned to them. Based on similar finds further north, it can be assumed that other tribes besides Alemanni also settled in the area. Winternheim, probably a weaving village, existed until the 12th century and had a parish church in St. Ulrich. After his abandonment, the village became a desert , which finally disappeared from the surface in the 15th century, while the last traces of the church disappeared after the 16th century. Remnants of the village came to light in 1978 when building land was opened up and were excavated on an area of 30,000 m 2 by 1981 . In 1983 the parish church with a cemetery was excavated west of the Closweg.
In the 5th century the village of Altspeyer , also called Villa Spira , developed on the area between Bahnhofstrasse, Hirschgraben / Petschengasse and the Nonnenbach , which later became the suburb of Altspeyer. Due to the settlement and construction activity in the 18th – 20th Apart from numerous graves, little is known about it.
The fortress on the cathedral hill still existed around 500, but it cannot be determined what proportion the Romanesque population still had. The transition of the name Nemetae to Spira indicates that Latin was soon no longer spoken.
Emperors, bishops and citizens - the way to the city
A newbeginning
In a battle in 496/497 near Zülpich and another battle in 506, the Franks under Clovis defeated the Alamanni and Speyer became part of the Frankish kingdom. With that Speyer got again connection to the Gallic-Roman culture. As part of the reorganization of the administration, Romanised officials and bishops from southern Gaul came to the Rhine. The Franconians also largely followed their predecessors in terms of the administrative structure, for example in setting up the districts. The new Speyergau corresponded roughly to the civitas Nemetum.
In addition to an orderly administration, the expansion of the Frankish Empire to the east also brought Speyer out of isolation economically, and old and new trade relations were resumed. Christianity, oppressed under the Alamanni, could flourish again. The settlement activity increased again under Frankish rule. At least some of the branches that emerged near Speyer around 500 (Altspeyer, Winternheim, Marrenheim, Heiligenstein , Mechtersheim , Otterstadt and Waldsee) were probably of Franconian origin. Similar settlements can also be found in the immediate vicinity of Mainz and Trier.
For the first time, instead of Noviomagus, the name Spira, introduced by the Alemanni, is mentioned in the “Notitia Galliarum” from the 6th century. Thus the city took over the name of the suburb Altspeyer, which can already be deduced in 496/509. In this context, another bishop, Hilderich von Speyer , is named in the files of the Paris Council of 614, who took part in the National Council of the Franconian Empire reunited by Chlothar II . The re-establishment of the diocese of Speyer is assumed for the middle of the 5th century. The Rhenish dioceses were characterized by the fact that, in contrast to the Gau division, they extended on both sides of the Rhine. The first churches and monasteries in Speyer emerged in the 6th and 7th centuries. The establishment of the diocese of Speyer must also have been linked to the construction of a cathedral for the bishop, which is also supported by the appearance of the patrons, Maria and Stephan since 662/664. The earliest detectable site is St. German south of the city. With a length of 19.7 m, a ship's breadth of 8.9 m and a transept of 15.5 m, St. German was generously dimensioned for its time, although its function is not exactly clear. Another early church was St. Stephan in the area of today's state archives, also outside the former city wall. For a time this was considered to be the predecessor of the cathedral and served as the burial place of the bishops. There is also evidence of a church of St. Maximus, but its location is not known.
With the emergence of the bishopric and the construction of a fortified bishop's palace , Speyer began to develop as a center of spiritual and secular power. The Frankish King Sigibert III. assured the Speyer Church under Bishop Principius around 650 tithes of all proceeds from the royal estates in Speyergau; in addition, she was exempt from taxation by the count. Principius successor Dagobert I was 664/66 of the still underage King Childeric II. The immunity granted. A number of sources of income were associated with this, such as the Heerbann and the " Stopha ". These privileges were confirmed to Bishop Freido on June 25, 782 by Charlemagne during the Saxon Wars .
In the period that followed, the transfer of privileges was a means of kings and emperors to create loyal pillars across the country for the regional nobility. With the increasing power of the bishops, the emerging bourgeoisie in Speyer soon found itself in a tense relationship between the nobility of Speyergau, the church and the emperor. The resulting disputes were to shape the emancipation history of the city for almost six centuries.
The Carolingians built a royal palace in Speyer and Charlemagne stayed several times in the city. Ludwig the Pious held court in Speyer in 838. This marked the beginning of a series of 50 Imperial Diets held in Speyer by 1570 .
Bishops as city lords
The town's lord was a Gaugraf on behalf of the king, but rights were transferred to the bishop as early as the sixth and seventh centuries, for example by the Frankish king Childerich II , which led to a gradual shift in power. Under the Carolingians , Speyer was not of great political importance. The kings only spent a short time in the city; B. Charlemagne at the end of August 774, Lothar I in the summer of 841 or Ludwig the German in February 842. The prosperity and power of the Speyer Church, on the other hand, increased further in the 8th and 9th centuries. She owned numerous goods in the entire Speyergau as well as in the vicinity of the city. Within a radius of 8 km around the city, the bishop even had a closed belt of possessions.
In the literature there are references to several cathedral structures . Accordingly, the Frankish king Dagobert I had a first cathedral built for the bishops of Speyer around 636. St. Stephan was rebuilt either inside or as a whole at the end of the 8th century. 782 speaks of a cathedral church with the traditional name Church of St. Mary or St. Stephen . In 846, Bishop Gebehard (846–880) consecrated a second cathedral. In 858 there is talk of a cathedral, the Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Mary, which stands in the city of Speyer , the Church of St. Mary built in the city of Speyer, or the aforementioned Holy Cathedral . In 865 the name was built in honor of St. Mary, and consecrated in 891 in honor of St. Mary . In further writings 853/54 the Speyer Cathedral is mentioned . Therefore, the construction of a Carolingian cathedral in Speyer is assumed for this period. The location includes a. Sections in the former and now poorly accessible Roman street grid as well as under the western half of today's cathedral are in question. No remains have been found so far.
With the division of the empire ( Treaty of Verdun 843) after the death of Ludwig the Pious , Speyer was now in the East Franconian part, which one of the three sons, Ludwig the German , took over. In the following years Speyer bishops took part in numerous synods and conducted negotiations in Paris and Rome on behalf of the emperor. In 891 Bishop Gebhard I received a gift from King Arnulf for the cathedral monastery. In 911 the East Franconian line of the Carolingians ended for lack of heir to the throne and the Franconian Duke Konrad I was elected king.
During his reign in 913, a violent dispute between Bishop Einhard I and Gaugraf Werner is documented for the first time . The bishop was part of Konrad I, who, with the support of the bishops, was in dispute with oppositional dukes. Gaugraf Werner, ancestor of the Salier family , who gladly expanded his possessions at the expense of the church, blinded the bishop, presumably because of the division of sovereign rights in Speyer. The bishop did not recover from it and died in 918. Conrad I was followed in 919 by the Saxons Heinrich I and 936 Otto the Great .
On March 13, 949, Salierduke Konrad and Count des Speyergaus ( Konrad the Red ), son of Count Werner and son-in-law of Emperor Otto, transferred important rights and goods to the Speyer Bishop Reginbald , which were associated with significant income. These included the right to coins , half a duty, market supervision and market taxes, the salt pfennig and the compulsory pfennig and a tax on wine that was only levied on foreigners. This decisively strengthened the position of the Speyer bishop, because three years earlier he had half the right to mint, half the right to customs, jurisdiction over thieves, trade sovereignty in the city and the like. get various taxes transferred. The son's atonement for his father's crime against Bishop Einhard is seen as the background to this important transmission. Thus the city of Speyer and its suburbs were exempt from counts or other public courts, apart from that of the episcopal bailiff. An important milestone in the direction of becoming a town in the award document of 949 was that its content was made known to the clergy and the townspeople. With this handover the actual rule of the city of the bishops began. With this strong economic base of the bishops, to which the Rhine ferries belonged, there was hardly anything left in favor of separating the episcopal city from the market and merchant settlement.
The increase in power of the Speyer bishops did not end there. Otto the Great also relied on the support of the bishops (Ottonian imperial church policy). During his Italian campaign, in which the Speyer Bishop Otger also took part, in October 969 he granted the Episcopal Church the privilege of immunity , its own jurisdiction and control over coins and customs . With this, the counts left the city as a power factor and Speyer finally fell under the protection, control and rule of the bishops. With the right to mint, Speyer developed into one of the most important mints in the empire by the 12th century.
Bishop Balderich (970–986), one of the most learned men of his time, founded the cathedral school in Speyer, based on the St. Gallen model , which was to become one of the most important in the empire. Under the Salian and Staufer emperors, the Speyer bishops and students of the cathedral school increasingly assumed the role of governors and functionaries of the empire. Speyer seemed to take on the character of a royal city or imperial country city .
The first walling of the still small urban area is occupied for 969 and was done at the instigation of the bishop. This beginning of the Speyer city fortifications was supposed to protect the city above all from the Hungarian invasions that took place around this time. The urban area ranged from the Episcopal Church to today's Dreifaltigkeitskirche and Webergasse. The walled area was still relatively small and is estimated to be between 8 and 14 hectares. The bishop was not only responsible for the walled city (civitas), but also the immediate neighborhood (“circuitus” or “marcha”) with the suburb directly adjacent (market and merchant settlement) and the village of Altspeyer. Thus Speyer was not yet a closed urban settlement.
The 10th century, after a period of stagnation, was accompanied by an increase in population and economic activity. The city's convenient location (Rhine, Rhine crossings, highways) favored economic development. This went hand in hand with significant steps towards becoming a city. Merchants settled in the suburbs (documented for the first time in 946) and a port with an adjoining market area (wood market, fish market) developed in the area of the Speyerbach estuary. The Ottonian road system is completely disappearing. The urban structure of today's Speyer and the actual city development, the process of which took over 200 years, goes back to this time. During this time the most glamorous section of the Speyer town history began, which would last until the 15th century. The history of the city was also the history of the empire. Even if two well-known quotes about Speyer from the 10th and 11th centuries are not to be taken literally, they still reflect the development of the city. A pupil of the cathedral school (973–981) and later Speyer bishop (1004–1031), the poet Walter von Speyer , described Speyer as “vaccina” (Kühstadt) in a dedication for his teacher and predecessor, Bishop Balderich (970–986) . Ottonian Speyer was still very much rural. In 980 the bishop in Speyer recruited twenty armed horsemen for Emperor Otto's Italian campaign. For example, Worms provided forty, Mainz and Strasbourg a hundred each.
About 150 years later, on the occasion of the burial of Emperor Heinrich V in Speyer Cathedral in 1125, the English monk Ordericus Vitalis wrote about Speyer from the metropolis Germaniae (capital of Germany). This expresses the political importance of the city at that time, but the concept of “metropolis” at that time cannot be compared with today's term “capital”.
The Salier, cathedral building and city extensions
On September 4, 1024 , Salier Konrad II , who came from Speyergau , was elected king of Germany near Oppenheim am Rhein. The Salians are considered to be the second founders of Speyer; with them the city moved into the center of imperial politics and became the spiritual center of the Salian kingdom. With the election of Konrad II began the targeted promotion of the city and church, which was continued by the Hohenstaufen. When Konrad II and his wife Gisela were not on the road, they mostly lived in Limburg an der Haardt and were often in Speyer. The town clerk Christoph Lehmann (1568–1638) wrote in the "Chronica der Freyen Reichs Statt Speyer": "Because Conrad lived a lot and often in Speyer in the royal palatio, they called Cunradum the Speyer."
In the meantime, crowned emperor in 1027, he laid the foundation stone for the Speyer Cathedral in Speyer, on the site of the former bishop's church , on the tip of the lower terrace closest to the Rhine. The construction work began in 1030, according to other research results in 1027. Speyer, together with Goslar, became the most important place of Salian founding activity .
The cathedral was to serve as a burial place for his dynasty and "the expression of imperial power and dignity sculpted in stone". and was the largest church in Christendom at the time. Konrad had experienced builders brought to the city and a. the Speyer Bishop Reginald from St. Gallen, Bishop Benno von Osnabrück and Bishop Otto von Bamberg . The cathedral construction, which lasted for several decades, gave the decisive impetus for the further development of the city; the arrival of numerous craftsmen, artists and traders brought an economic boom.
Other important buildings and extensions were built together with the cathedral. Immediately at the northeast corner, the royal and bishop's palace was added, which was probably completed in 1044/45. Since the Carolingian era it was customary for the bishops to expand their residence in such a way that it could also serve the residence of the kings. The Palatinate was a 74 m long, 16 m wide, three-story building with a floor height of 6 m, had its own chapel and a connecting passage to the cathedral. The dimensions and elaborate architectural structure were unparalleled for secular buildings in the Salier period. With the city wall running to the north, the cathedral and the Palatinate formed the Freithof . On the south side of the cathedral a square cloister , the two-story cathedral monastery building and the cloister building of the cathedral chapter were built . Overall, the cathedral, the Palatinate and the other additions made up a representative building complex that was unparalleled in the empire.
The extensive and long-term construction activity led to the expansion of the city. Overall, it was given a largely new orientation, and the characteristic floor plan was created with the three streets spreading fan-like from the cathedral to the west. After the course of the stream was covered, the middle one was gradually extended to 650 m and a width of up to 50 m, to the Via Triumphalis between the cathedral and the old gate that was later built . Even if the parallel Korngasse later rejuvenated a section, this east-west axis, today's Maximilianstrasse , still shapes the cityscape today. The unusual width of the street can still be seen on the old gate and between the cathedral and the old coin. During this time the city was expanded to approx. 50 hectares with a new walling, which was completed around 1080. The suburb of Altspeyer and the attached Jewish quarter also had its own wall at this time.
The monastery of St. Johannes Evangelist / St. Guido on the Weidenberg, presumably old Salian property, was started under Emperor Konrad II . In the Salian period, the St. Germansstift on the Germansberg and, under Bishop Sigibodo , the Trinity / All Saints Monastery not far from the cathedral.
Konrad II died on June 4, 1039 and was buried in the cathedral, which was still under construction, which under his son, the young Heinrich III. was continued. He, too, was very fond of the city, often visited "his beloved Speyer" and endowed the cathedral 1043-1046 with the magnificent Golden Gospels of Henry III ( Codex Aureus Escorialiensis , today in Madrid), one probably in the monastery Echternach incurred Gospels . In this it says u. a .: " Spira fit insignis Heinrici munere regis (Speyer is awarded and enhanced by the promotional work of King Heinrich)". In 1046 Heinrich III. from his coronation as emperor in Italy relics to Speyer, a. a. the bones of the blessed Guido von Pomposa , which were solemnly buried in 1047 in the still young St. Johannes Stift on the Weidenberg (later St. Guido Stift). After Goslar and Regensburg Speyer was under Heinrich III. and under Henry V the most preferred palatinate in the empire. Henry III. was buried after his death on October 28, 1056 in the presence of Pope Viktor II in the still unfinished cathedral.
His widow, Agnes von Poitou , who continued the reign for her six-year-old son, Henry IV , was favored by the city and the early Salian cathedral, as was Henry IV himself later, who confirmed the privilege of immunity.
The political relations between the Speyer bishops and the empire were further intensified. In the dispute between the emperors and the popes ( investiture dispute ), they were among the most loyal partisans of Henry IV and Henry V, z. B. Heinrich I von Scharfenberg (1067-1072), Rüdiger Huzmann (1073-1090), Johannes I, Count in Kraichgau (1090-1104) and Bruno von Saarbrücken (1107-1123). It was Bishop Rüdiger who brought the letter of deposition to Pope Gregor VII in 1076 and Bishop Bruno, as Chancellor of Henry V, negotiated the Worms Concordat with Pope Calixt II .
Heinrich IV set out from Speyer for Canossa in December 1076 , accompanied by Bishop Hutzmann. Because of his partisanship for the emperor, the bishop was banned by the pope until the end of his life in 1090 .
At the cathedral, static problems soon had to be overcome and the foundation secured against flooding from the nearby Rhine. In 1080, at the instigation of Henry IV, work began on the late Salian cathedral building (Speyer II), which gave the city a second growth spurt. Up until the completion in 1102, architectural history was written in Speyer: The central nave, which was raised to its present height, was vaulted for the first time at a height of 33 m. The cathedral was the largest church building of its time and, with its monumentality, symbolized imperial power and Christianity. After Conrad II was buried in it, the cathedral became the church of the Holy Sepulcher for seven other emperors and kings. After the destruction of Cluny Abbey , the cathedral is still the largest Romanesque building today .
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At the beginning of the following century, a further expansion of the Speyer city wall became necessary and in the period between 1200 and 1230 the stacking area (fish market) was included in the walling. An indication of the increasing population can also be seen in the establishment of new parish churches; in the second half of the 12th century St. Bartholomäus, St. Jakob and St. Peter were created. The increasing residential density within the walls and the associated urbanity represented a departure from the rural location and a further important step in urban development. This may also be expressed in the fact that from the end of the 11th century "Spira" was the sole name of the City is used. Until then, the city was either called "civitas Spira vel Nemeta" or even just "Nemetum" in documents.
Konrad II and his successors equipped the cathedral monastery with goods and bailiwick rights that formed the basis for a successful economy. This included the area of Bruchsal and the associated Lusshardt forest , widely scattered property on the upper Neckar, in the northern Black Forest, in today's Palatinate and in Kraichgau . In a further distance, the bishopric got goods in the Hunsrück , the nearby England and the Hessian mountains. Heinrich IV gave the church of Speyer little by little possessions in the Wetterau , in the Remstal , in the Nahegau , in Saxony and gave it the counties of Lutramsforst (southern Palatinate) and Forchheim . In fact, the entire Speyergau came into the possession of the church.
In a document in connection with the settlement of Jews in 1084, the population of Speyer was the first to speak of “cives” as citizens, and in the following years an independent municipal law developed. This right is mentioned in another document from Henry IV from 1101 as “ius civile” or “ius civium”. In 1084, a Rhine port in the area of the Speyerbach estuary is also mentioned for the first time. At that time, Speyer was the third largest storage area and the largest wine transhipment point on the Upper Rhine. Cloth, fabrics, wine, spices, grain, fruit, millstones, ceramics and weapons were traded. The slave market also flourished from ancient times to the 11th century.
Bishop Hutzmann's successor in 1090 was Heinrich IV's nephew and confidante, Johannes Graf im Kraichgau. In his time until 1114, the diocese received further goods from the emperor in the Rastatt area . Heinrich IV died in Liège in 1106 and was buried by his son, Heinrich V, on August 14, 1111 in the royal choir of the Speyer Cathedral. Until then, Henry IV had been in the unconsecrated Afra chapel.
The Jewish community of Speyer
In 1084, at the instigation of Bishop Rüdiger Huzmann , one of the first Jewish communities in the Holy Roman Empire settled in Speyer. Speyer, together with Worms and Mainz, belonged to the so-called ShUM cities and soon developed into one of the most important centers of Ashkenazi Jewry .
The great letter of freedom of 1111
On the day of his father's burial in Speyer Cathedral, August 14, 1111, Heinrich V granted the city further privileges. The Great Letter of Freedom was the first city in Germany to grant its citizens personal freedoms, and the granting of these citizens' privileges marked the beginning of the development of the Free Imperial City.
The solemn introduction read: According to the fact that we have resolved to exalt ourselves before other cities by divine grace and assistance of the city in the memory of our ancestors and because of the steadfast loyalty of their citizens to us, we have decided to use their rights from imperial power on the advice of ours Fasten princes . Together with his picture, the letter was affixed in gold letters above the cathedral portal, where it was lost in the course of the later damage to the cathedral.
The privilege freed the people of Speyer from the oppressive inheritance tax and granted them a say in the case of coin deterioration. In addition, the accommodation and transport obligation (on the Rhine) was lifted and the citizens were no longer forced to buy the ban wine. They could no longer be tried in extra-urban courts and were exempt from market and trade taxes, as well as city duties. These privileges, which were also due to immigrants, created the prerequisites for a personally free population with a uniform legal status, e.g. B. Ownership Guarantee. This letter became a model for other cities in the empire. What became clear for the first time with these privileges was the developing interest of the empire in strengthening the bourgeoisie as a counterweight to episcopal power.
In 1116, Bishop Bruno of Saarbrücken sided with the nobles who opposed Heinrich V in connection with the investiture controversy under the leadership of his brother, Archbishop Adalbert of Mainz . Speyer, loyal to the Salians and Staufers in its partisanship, then drove the bishop out of the city. It was the first time that a documented political act by the citizens of Speyer was manifested.
Heinrich V, who succeeded in negotiating a compromise in the investiture dispute with Pope Calixtus II , died childless in Utrecht in 1125 and was buried as the last Salic emperor in the Speyer Cathedral.
Staufer
In the subsequent dispute over the royal crown, the Welf Lothar III, protected by Archbishop Adalbert von Mainz , prevailed . who was crowned king on September 13, 1125. In this case, too, the Speyer people held on to the Staufer antagonist, who later became Konrad III, and again a Speyer bishop, Siegfried II von Wolfsölden (1127–1146), was chased out of the city because he had held on to the Guelph. Speyer took in the Hohenstaufen and they made the city, as described in the imperial chronicle , their "houbetstat", their most important base. In 1128 King Lothar and Archbishop Adalbert besieged Speyer, which must have been completely walled at that time, but in the course of which it had to surrender to starvation. This dispute underscored Speyer's military and political importance.
Lothar III. stayed in Speyer twice, 1135 and 1136, for a long time. After his death in 1138 the Hohenstaufen came with Konrad III. to power. This continued the policy of the Salians in Speyer, which u. a. in the further existence of the common Palatinate with the bishops and the important function of the cathedral school as Reich Chancellery was expressed. The emperors could still be sure of the support of the Speyer bishops, who held the highest imperial offices. The cathedral school developed into the "Diplomatic School of the Reich" and many clergymen of the cathedral monastery were in the service of the Reich Chancellery.
The sermons of Bernhard von Clairvaux at Christmas 1146 in Speyer Cathedral moved Conrad III, who was staying at a Reichstag in Speyer, to take part in the Second Crusade . Four sandstone plates with brass writing in the nave of the cathedral commemorate this event.
Under his nephew, Friedrich Barbarossa , Heinrich V's privilege of 1111 was confirmed and extended in 1182. It is the oldest document in the Speyer city archive. In contrast to the Speyer people, the residents of the bishopric outside the city walls remained subjects of the bishop and were subject to the laws of serfdom and inheritance law until modern times . Barbarossa, who considered the Speyer Cathedral to be his last resting place, did not return from the Third Crusade in 1190 . His second wife, Empress Beatrix of Burgundy , and his little daughter Agnes were buried in the cathedral in 1184. Beatrix had brought the Free County of Burgundy (Franche-Comté) into the marriage as a dowry .
The successor to Barbarossa was his son, Heinrich VI. , whose reign was marked by the confrontation with the church, opposition princes and the breakaway Sicily. In December 1192, the English King Richard the Lionheart , who in the autumn of 1190 in Sicily a against Emperor Henry VI. directed support contract with the illegitimate ruler Tankred, captured on the way back from the 3rd crusade near Vienna and on March 25, 1193 at the Reichstag in Speyer to Heinrich VI. to hand over. On the opening day of the Reichstag (March 22, 193), there was a memorable rhetorical argument between the emperor and his prisoner, which ended unexpectedly in the reconciliation gesture of an embrace. In spite of all this, the emperor enforced his demands and the Speyer Treaty stipulated a ransom of 100,000 silver marks (around 23 tons of silver). It was presumably at this Reichstag that he granted the city the right and freedom to elect a council of twelve citizens from among its number. The document has not been preserved, but this right was confirmed in January 1198 by Philipp von Schwaben in a contract with the city of Speyer. With the obvious consent of the bishop, Philip legitimized the council constitution, which also prevailed in Lübeck , Utrecht and Strasbourg at the turn of the century . This privilege represented a further important step towards becoming a town and underlined the emperor's interest in strengthening the bourgeoisie. It is particularly noteworthy that the twelve councils were not appointed by the bishop and did not have to take an oath on him. If the election of the councils was not already in practice, this privilege represents the hour of birth of the Speyer city council. Heinrich VI. died in Messina in 1197 at the age of 32 and was buried in the Cathedral of Palermo .
Henry VI. three-year-old son could not take over the inheritance, whereupon a fight between the Staufers and Welfen for the rule of the king broke out ( German throne dispute ). In the aforementioned contract of January 1198, Speyer again sided with the Staufers and concluded a mutual aid alliance with their candidate, Philipp von Schwaben , the youngest brother of Heinrich VI. In the same year, the Staufer party elected Philip as king, while the supporters of the Guelphs elected Otto IV of Braunschweig . In the spring of 1199, pro-Hohenstaufen princes gathered in Speyer and on May 28th wrote a protest note denying the Pope the right to participate in the German election, let alone declare it lawful and Innocent III. called for no further violations of the rights of the empire in Italy. The princes threatened to come to Rome to enforce Philip's coronation as emperor. Unimpressed by this, Otto IV received from Innocent 1201 the approval of his coronation with the promise to cede territories in Italy to the church ( Neusser Oath ). In the same year Otto besieged Speyer, where his opponent, King Philip, was staying. In 1205 Philip held a court day in the city. The power struggle tended in favor of Philip, who, however, fell victim to a murder in Bamberg in 1208 in which the Imperial Chancellor and Speyer Bishop, Konrad von Scharfenberg (1200 to 1224), was personally present. Otto IV, now generally recognized as king, tried in December 1208 to get Speyer out of the Hohenstaufen camp with an extensive confirmation of privileges. On March 22, 1209 he renewed the Neuss oath of 1201 to the Pope in the Treaty of Speyer , which he never kept.
From 1207 important offices of the city were occupied by citizens and since then the council has kept its own seal . With these privileges Speyer continued to occupy a pioneering position in the empire. In the further course of the 13th century, the role of the city council strengthened and from the middle of the century the city council developed into a city court.
Frederick II , the son of Henry VI, managed to wrest power from Otto IV when he was of legal age. In 1213 he had the body of his murdered uncle, Philipp von Schwaben, transferred to the cathedral during a court day in Speyer. Under Frederick's reign, the cathedral school became the Reich's diplomatic school. The Speyer bishop Konrad von Scharfenberg accompanied him to Rome in 1220 for the imperial coronation. A first time for this year Hospital of the Teutonic Order is in Speyer. In 1221 the Franciscan Caesarius von Speyer began his mission in Germany.
The 13th century in Speyer was to be marked by the dispute over the rights of the city rulers. At the beginning of the 13th century there were increasing signs of an increasingly independent city council and that the council constitution took on institutional forms. In 1220 the city council is registered as universitas consiliariorum , in 1224 as consiliarii Spirensis cum universo eorum collegio , in 1226 and 1227 the first contracts in its own name, e.g. B. with Strasbourg. Eventually, jurisdiction passed from the church to the city. During the contest for the throne of Frederick II, the cities were encouraged to pursue a more independent policy. Around the mid-twenties, Speyer formed a city league with the cities of Mainz, Worms, Bingen, Frankfurt, Gelnhausen and Friedberg. However, this was banned on the court day of the new regent Duke Ludwig of Bavaria in November 1226, mainly at the instigation of the clergy princes. With the consent of the bishop, the council issued the first Speyer town charter in 1230, which dealt with violations of the town's peace. Two mayors were named for the first time. In 1237 the city council appeared as an independently acting institution under the name Consules et universi cives Spirenses .
In the 13th century, many orders founded monasteries in Speyer: In 1207, the Denkendorf Monastery took over the Holy Sepulcher Monastery near the Thieves Bridge in the suburb of Altspeyer, which had been administered by a women's convent . In 1212 Cistercians from Eusserthal established a branch on the site of today's Wittelsbacher Hof , after the Cistercians from Maulbronn Monastery had received the Maulbronner Hof on Johannesstrasse a few decades earlier . In 1228 the penitents from St. Leon settled in the city, who were later affiliated to the Dominican order at their own request; her St. Magdalena monastery is the oldest in Speyer today. A Franciscan monastery was built on today's Ludwigstrasse by 1230, in 1230 German rulers took over a religious house with a hospital on the site of today's consistory, and in 1262 the Dominicans came , to whom today's Ludwigskirche on Korngasse goes back. Around the middle of the century, Augustinian hermits began building a monastery on the site of today's district and city savings bank (former Siebertsplatz, now Willy-Brandt-Platz). In 1294 the Carmelites completed a monastery at today's Postplatz. In 1299 Clarissen came from Oggersheim to Speyer, who expanded a courtyard in the area of today's St. Klara-Kloster-Weg to the St. Klara-Kloster . Many monasteries maintained courtyards in the cities as bases for trade; in Speyer alone there were 19 monastery courtyards, twelve of which belonged to Cistercian abbeys.
The city expanded again due to strong influx: in 1232 the suburb of Hasenpfuhl was first mentioned. At the end of the century, the first mint in Speyer was created on the site of the old town department store Alte Münze today .
In the escalating dispute between the emperor and the church, Speyer again took sides in 1239 for Friedrich II, who was banned for the second time, and his eleven-year-old son Konrad. This led to open hostility with the bishops Konrad V. von Eberstein and from 1245 with Heinrich von Leiningen as well as with the Speyer clergy, who represented the Pope. In 1247 Frederick II ordered the clergy to be expelled from Speyer; however, it is not known whether this succeeded. The papal-minded clergy could no longer feel safe in Speyer. This was the first time that tensions between the city and the church emerged, which became apparent with the growing independence of the city council from the beginning of the 13th century. Despite the political independence, the sources of income remained almost entirely in the hands of the bishop, which is why the city council had no means of directing the city's fortunes.
In a certificate from July 1245, Friedrich II granted Speyer the privilege of a fortnightly autumn fair, which was to be spread in numerous cities. Trade fairs held an excellent position in the economic life of the Middle Ages and were a core part of the economy of that time. Friedrich justified this policy with the general benefit of promoting the exchange of goods. The Speyer autumn fair from Simon and Judas was important for the Electoral Palatinate , the diocese and for the Neckar area to Heilbronn. For this purpose, the city issued invitations to all cities and those involved in action in the empire, in which, as an encouragement, the tariff was reduced by half for the participants. Exceptions were Utrecht , Cologne , Trier and Worms , important trading partners of Speyer, with whom special regulations existed. What is remarkable about this invitation is that the city arbitrarily took the right to lower the tariffs. Today's Speyer autumn fair goes back to this fair. In long-distance trade, Speyer remained completely oriented towards Frankfurt , which could also be reached by water.
The Speyer Cathedral Chapter
The old cathedral chapter (capitulum) of the prince-bishopric was an ecclesiastical body with around 30 clergy and various duties towards the church. The economic basis of the cathedral chapter were foundations and donations, such as B. the Zehnthof in Esslingen . The chapter essentially supported the bishop in the administration of the diocese, but represented an independent institution with its own statutes and rules and was not subject to episcopal control. It elected the bishop and represented him in his absence. Over time, the chapter was consistently occupied by the nobility and in 1484 the Pope even determined that only the nobility may be admitted as members. The cathedral chapter owned goods that were also not under the control of the bishop. Heinrich III, who presented several foundations in 1041 and 1046, even did so on the condition that the bishop is excluded from the administration. Every canon or canon (canonicus capitularis) was entitled to a benefice or an income and was obliged to live near the cathedral. The chapter was headed by the provost (praepositus), the highest office after the bishop. From the end of the 12th century, the leadership went to the cathedral dean (decanus).
The old cathedral chapter represented an important economic factor in the city, as it had facilities such as wine cellars, barns, granaries, workshops, bakeries, etc., in which cathedral vicars (vicarii) carried out their activities under the supervision of the cathedral chapter. There were about 70 cathedral vicars in connection with the Speyer cathedral. Therefore, the cathedral chapter in Speyer played an important role in the struggle for power in the city.
Subordinated to the cathedral chapter and led by a cathedral chapter, the chair brotherhood , was the Speyer chair brotherhood , a community of lay people who prayed daily in the cathedral for the rulers buried here and lived in their own benefice houses.
- The library of the cathedral chapter
Three libraries were associated with the cathedral: the cathedral library with the liturgical books as part of the cathedral treasury, e.g. B. the Speyer Gospels (Codex Aureus Spirensis), the Palatinate Library of the Bishop (from approx. 1381 in Udenheim) and the Library of the Cathedral Chapter, the largest of the three libraries. In his praise of Speyer (Pulcherrimae Spirae summique in ea templi enchromata) in 1531, Melanchthon's pupil, Theodor Reysmann , noted that this library is located in a room that adjoins the assembly room of the cathedral chapter on the upper floor of the east wing of the cloister and that whose main entrance was secured by an iron door (Enchromata, lines 785-810). Another access to the library was possible through a door in the cloister, which led to a spiral staircase, which in turn led directly into the library ( Hern d (octor) Balthasar Feldman Vic (arius) is approved, he can have a key to the snail, so now in the Creutzgang hienuff in the Liberej ). From the minutes of the cathedral chapter of February 11, 1503 it emerges that books were lost and in future no lending should be allowed without the knowledge and consent of the chapter ( item one should also renew the order of the book (s) r halves, and that further no book about the libery is to be taken, it is done then with will and my lords know about the chapter ). Some books were chained. Such requests were almost always denied.
In August 1552 troops of the Margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach, Albrecht Alcibiades (1522–1557), occupied the city and looted the cathedral and the adjacent buildings. Archival material was lost and the books were brought to the nearby house of the Teutonic Order, where they were packed. Albrecht had in mind to give the books to his stepfather, the Count Palatine von Neuburg (later Elector Palatinate), who had always kept an eye on them. This did not happen because the troops had to leave the city hastily. It is not known whether all of the books were returned to the library.
One of the most important manuscripts in the library was an anthology from the 9th or 10th century with around a dozen ancient and early medieval works on geography, transport and administrative history, which was lost after 1550–1551. All known and existing copies of the Notitia Dignitatum , a unique document of the Roman imperial chancelleries and one of the very few surviving documents on late antique administration, are derived either directly or indirectly from this Codex Spirensis . The Notitia was the largest document in the Codex.
Escalating dispute between the city and the clergy
The second half of the 13th century was marked by violent disputes between the city and the bishop, and above all the monasteries , which were only exacerbated by the investiture dispute. The four Speyer collegiate monasteries, Domstift, St. German, Weidenstift and Dreifaltigkeitsstift, succeeded as "the ecclesiae Spirenses , as an alliance representing the entire priesthood of the city" to argue for power with the bishop and council and represented an important power factor in the City. They did not shy away from falsifying their own history in order to achieve their goal. The pens and the bishop did not always pull together.
It was the cathedral chapter in particular that developed into the actual adversary of the citizenship. There were always mutual threats, economic sanctions, punitive and countermeasures affecting taxes and revenues. On the one hand, the church did not want to forego income and, on the other hand, did not want to pay taxes to the city. Citizens refused to pay the church for this. For example, Bishop Beringer threatened those citizens with the ban if they did not pay their interest to the Speyer canons. The power struggle between Pope and Emperor had an impact on these conflicts from outside. While the citizenry sided with the emperor, the clergy stood with the pope. The emperor and the pope granted their partisans privileges. The city received the Speyerbach back from Friedrich II in 1242. The permission for the autumn fair in 1245 can also be seen in this light. The Popes Gregory IX. and Innocent confirmed possessions to the cathedral chapter in 1239 (church in Heiligenstein and Deidesheim) and in 1244 extensive rights. On July 30, 1246, Pope Innocent even took people and possessions of the cathedral church under his special protection. Emperor Friedrich II then ordered the clergy to be expelled from Speyer. It is not known if this was implemented.
After the deposition of Frederick II by Pope Innocent IV in 1245 and especially after Frederick's death in 1250 and the death of his successor, Conrad IV. In 1254, a period of uncertainty and unrest began that lasted until Rudolf I was elected in 1273 . In July 1254, Speyer merged with 58 other cities to form the Rhenish League of Cities and Princes , which proclaimed a general land peace for a period of ten years in order to overcome the uncertainty during the interregnum . Agreements on tariffs were also made here. Due to their strengthened position of power, the cities were able to have their good behavior towards the king and pope rewarded with confirmations of privileges, such as from William of Holland in 1254 and 1255 and Richard of Cornwall in 1258. However, the alliance dissolved again in 1257. In 1258, Speyer agreed with Worms to recognize the ambiguous election of Alfonso of Castile as German king instead of Richard of Cornwall, who was also elected. Should Alfons not accept the election, Speyer and Worms would vote for another king.
In the middle of this century it is documented for the first time that there is “public property” in Speyer in the form of municipal property. In 1259, a donation from councilor and mint house mate Ulrich Klüpfel of goods and rights in Böhl and Iggelheim created the basis for the first civic foundation, the "Spital".
In the opinion of the pens, the bishops had shown themselves to be too indulgent in the erosion of the rights of the church towards the city. This met with vehement resistance from the city's four monasteries, especially the cathedral chapter, who felt they were affected by the unmoney collection by the citizens. On April 1, 1262, Bishop Heinrich II had given the city the right to “Ungeld” (taxes on wine) for a period of five years. In return, the city council renounced the free council elections, which it had long been granted. Nevertheless, this concession by the bishop went too far for the four foundations and in 1264 they united against this agreement. The trigger for this was that the citizens of Speyers u. a. The monastery clergy had destroyed buildings and plantings and the church faced harassment. As a countermeasure, the monasteries decided that neither councilors, other citizens, nor their relatives up to the fourth generation, could become canons or brothers of the Speyer Church or receive a benefit . In spite of these threats, the payment of the cash and other taxes was still refused. In the following year there was finally an uprising of some councilors and citizens in 1264/65, who also turned against the compliance of the council to the bishop, and not only the collegiate clergy, but also the episcopal court, citizens and Jews were exposed to violence. This rebellion represented the first open and serious resistance of at least part of the Speyer citizenship against the bishop and the clergy. The leaders, along with their families and helpers, were banished from the city in December 1265, but were accepted by the Count of Leiningen . The tension between clergy and citizens continued to smolder. On November 1st, the imperial immediacy of the city of Speyer was confirmed. Speyer was seen as a shining example for other cities in terms of the freedoms it gained . Pope Clement IV, in turn, in 1268 confirmed all previously promised privileges for the Speyer Church, which also included freedom from secular taxes.
In 1273, shortly after his election , King Rudolf I of Habsburg held a court day in Speyer, where he renewed the privilege of Friedrich Barbarossa from 1182 to his citizens and campaigned unsuccessfully for the restitution of the exiled insurgents. Under Rudolf I, Speyer served as a model for the founding of cities and city surveys. B. Neutstadt (1275), Germersheim (1276), Heilbronn (1281) or Godramstein (1285). With Otto von Bruchsal , the provost of Guido pen was another Speyer Court Chancellor of the King.
In 1275 the city treasurer tried to bring the cathedral clergy to a secular court, whereupon the ban was imposed on him in 1276. However, this was of no consequence as he remained a member of the city council. In addition to the disagreements about the unmoney, there was also the serving of wine and the church's taxes on grain exports. Due to the church's refusal to pay taxes, the city imposed an export ban. On Good Friday 1277, the spokesman for the monasteries, cathedral dean Albert von Mussbach , was murdered. The murderer or murderers were not caught, possibly even covered by the city. The Pope demanded an investigation into the complaints of the Speyer church and the city extended measures against the clergy. Citizens were banned from buying wine from the church. Bakers were no longer allowed to grind their grain in church mills. In addition, the city began to build two towers next to the cathedral and the houses of the canons. In 1279, the pens complained to the Pope that the city required them to pay a purchase and sales tax, had banned citizens from buying wine in their homes and exporting wine and grain to avoid market and sales fees. On April 13, 1280, the bishop was forced to give in to the city. He swore to respect all of the city's privileges in future, which was the first time that he unconditionally recognized the city's freedoms. The city then set about securing its power by obliging knight Johannes von Lichtenstein to serve in the war against all its enemies for one year. Lichtenstein left a third of the Hohenstaufen castle Lichtenstein (Pfalz) and the Kropsburg to the city . The city's four monasteries took this as an opportunity to join forces again to defend their rights and freedoms.
The monasteries could not expect any support from the bishop for their concerns towards the city and in 1281 renewed their alliance to defend their rights. The economic war between the city and the clergy came to a head. From the revenge of King Rudolf on October 21, 1284 it emerges that the ban on the export of grain was renewed after the clergy wanted to sell grain outside the city at higher prices. The city also banned the clergy from buying and importing wine, which the clergy wanted to use to undercut the city's price and make a profit. Citizens refused to pay the "small tithe" to the church, and construction of the two towers continued. The clergy then left the city and the bishop imposed an interdict in vain . He also dismissed the episcopal office holders and dissolved the courts, whereupon the office holders were replaced by citizens. As part of the revenge, a compromise was finally reached, but this did not resolve the conflict. The serving of wines and jurisdiction were left out. Therefore, the city decided in 1287 that council members were not allowed to hold a number of offices on the side: chamberlain , mayor , bailiff , mint master and customs officer , which excluded the bearers of the most important episcopal offices from the council.
Rudolf I died on July 15, 1291 in Speyer and was buried in the cathedral. The sculpture on his grave slab shows a lifelike image of the king, which was created shortly after his death and is considered an outstanding artistic achievement of this time.
Speyer becomes a Free Imperial City
In 1293 Speyer concluded an "eternal" alliance with the cities of Worms and Mainz to assert their rights against their bishops and the king. In September 1294, the council under the mayors Bernhoch zur Krone and Ebelin filed a solemn protest against the bishop's presumptuous approach in front of the cathedral. This protest was read out in all Speyer churches. On October 31 of the same year, Bishop Friedrich and the city council signed a treaty that met the city's long-standing demands in all essential points and laid down the end of episcopal power. Citizens were with their goods from duties and taxes, the "bitter gas" (duty to provide accommodation), from the spell of wine , the army control , collections , Prekarien exempt and other services. The bishop filled courts and offices at the suggestion of the council. In the future he was not allowed to arrest clerics or lay people without proof of guilt. A regulation should be found with regard to the sale of wine. This treaty also contained a passage that described the banishment of the rebellious citizens in 1265 as unjust and their heirs were allowed to return to the city. This ended the tense rule of the bishops and Speyer became a free imperial city , but the dispute over the special rights of the monasteries was not yet settled.
In connection with the disputes between the city and the clergy, there is one of the oldest evidence of the Carnival in Germany. In the Speyer chronicle of the town clerk Christoph Lehmann from 1612, who reports from old files, it says: “In 1296, the mischief of the Carnival started a little early / in it a number of burgers in a hiding place with the Clerisey servants carried away the worst / afterwards This is a difficult matter to be attached to the council / and the wrongdoers to be punished. ”(Clerisey Gesind means the servants of the bishop and the cathedral chapter , i.e. the clergy ). The chaplains accused a number of council members and citizens of various acts of violence, e.g. B. violent entry into the courts of cathedral clergy, into the ecclesiastical immunity area around the cathedral and physical attacks on church servants. Obviously, there is talk of assaults, which the cathedral chapter took as an occasion for a lawsuit against the council and citizens of Speyer and threatened with excommunication . However, due to the determined response from the city, the matter petered out, and it is telling that even such a threat did not deter citizens from such actions.
On February 2nd, 1298, Bishop Friedrich promised to impose an excommunication, an inhibition or an interdict only after proper summons and conviction. The pens' displeasure turned against the bishop, and they continued to oppose the loss of their privileges. Mediation by the Archbishop of Mainz did not come about until 1300. In the meantime, the city received further rights from King Adolf . According to a document from 1297, King Adolf took the citizens of Speyer and Worms under his protection. In return, the two cities agreed to support the king. The citizens were given the right to be prosecuted only in their own city. In addition, they received the diverted Speyerbach back, and in 1298 they received the income from the city's Jews. In the battle of Göllheim on July 2, 1298, a contingent from Speyer took part on the side of Adolf against Duke and Anti-King Albrecht von Habsburg . Adolf was killed in the process. Albrecht was confirmed as king shortly afterwards. In Speyer he quickly found an ally in his conflict with the Rhenish electors; as early as February 1299 he confirmed the privileges of the city, which became his preferred residence. In 1301 he officially gave the citizens the right to collect the unpaid.
Despite the mediation of the Bishop of Mainz, the disputes continued due to minor incidents. After the death of Bishop Friedrich, Sigibodo II von Lichtenberg , a partisan of King Albrecht, was elected as his successor. However, he had to assure the Speyer clergy in an "election surrender" that he would revoke the concessions to the city. In addition, a force of 60 mounted mercenaries was set up to fight against the citizens. The city denied entry and homage to the new bishop, and rather prohibited the sale of wine by and interest payments to clergy. As a result, there were armed conflicts for over seven months, and the area around Speyer and the courtyards of the church were devastated. On October 4, 1302, the warring parties concluded a treaty in which almost all of the citizens' demands were granted. It even remained with the ban on serving wine by clergy. This left the bishops only with the rights that they had already negotiated with Bishop Friedrich in 1294. Their sphere of influence was limited to the area of cathedral immunity , which is why it was also called cathedral city. There were two independent political rulers within the city walls.
Housemates and guilds
In the 14th century the generalis discordia , the dispute between the citizenry and the clergy, played only a subordinate role. In the Wittelsbach-Habsburg throne dispute, Speyer was again at the center of imperial politics. Against this background, a power struggle developed between the Münzer household members and the guilds over the occupation of the council .
The emergence of an urban leadership class was originally a side effect of the episcopal city rule. From the noble and bourgeois servants as well as experienced and wealthy citizens, an administrative patrimony arose , which was of decisive importance for the early days of urban development. Thanks to their long-standing monopoly in monetary transactions, the Münzer household had developed into a highly influential group with excellent contacts to royalty. From the 1270s onwards, the merging of the administrative patronage with merchants, the local nobility of the area and, above all, the Münzer house members, created a new leadership class, which was particularly characterized by its economic power.
The beginnings of the guild system are not documented in Speyer. When they were first mentioned at the beginning of the 14th century, they were already characterized by a high level of organization. Cloth production played a key role in Speyer, for which reason the madder dye plant was cultivated in the area . It is certain that the guild bourgeoisie had by far the largest share of the Speyer population. Properly organized professional groups in Speyer were bakers / millers, fishermen, gardeners, farmers and butchers, who make up about a third of all mentions in documents. Textile production and services (trade, wine bars, transport, market traffic) are each named with around a fifth. There was also fur and leather processing and trading, the construction industry, metal processing and, last but not least, municipal servants and supervisory staff. Some of the trades were increasingly or only represented in certain urban areas: the Lauer in the west of the Hasenpfuhlvorstadt, the Hasenpfühler around the port area on the Speyerbach, the gardeners in the Gilgenvorstadt, the fishermen in the Fischervorstadt. The guild houses of shopkeepers, shoemakers, Brontreger, old clothes and blacksmiths were grouped south, those of bakers, butchers, Salzgässer, tailors, winemakers, weavers, clothers and stonemasons north of the large Marktstrasse (today Maximilianstrasse), with a focus on the Salzgasse / Fischmarkt and Greifengasse.
Due to increasing pressure from the guilds, the council change of 1304 resulted in a contract on the future composition of the Speyer council. In the future, this should consist of 11 members of the household and 13 representatives of the guild, with each group having a mayor. By clever tactics, however, the members of the household managed to keep the council in their hands again until 1313.
King Heinrich VII held a court day in Speyer in 1309, where he performed a symbolic act: on August 29, he left the bodies of Adolf von Nassau and Albrecht von Habsburg , who had faced each other as enemies in the Battle of Göllheim in 1298 In 1309 they were solemnly buried next to each other in the cathedral. The last two kings found their resting place in the Speyer Cathedral and at the same time made it the largest collection of royal tombs in Germany. The following year, on September 1, 1310, he had his fourteen-year-old son, Johann von Luxemburg, married Elisabeth in Speyer .
In 1313 epidemics and hunger crises broke out across Europe, from which Speyer was not spared.
On March 20, 1327, 13 guilds joined forces to form a confederation with the obligation of unconditional mutual help against everyone and enforced the introduction of a new council order. With 16 representatives of the guilds against 15 of the housemates, the sole rule of the housemates ended. From this point on, documents were only notarized by the two mayors, but not by the entire council. In the night of October 22nd to 23rd (Severin's Day) 1330, the housemates tried one last time to turn the tide and take over the city in a military coup. They hoped for the approval of Emperor Ludwig of Bavaria . The Severin rebellion was thwarted and the ringleaders were banished from the city. In an atonement treaty mediated by the cities of Mainz, Strasbourg, Worms, Frankfurt and Oppenheim in December 1330, the council was set to 28 members with equal representation.
The members of the household had to forego their last privileges in 1349, when the principle of the pure guild constitution prevailed in Speyer. From this point on, the members of the household had to establish themselves as a guild and were thus only one group among 14 other guilds.
As an imperial city, Speyer was a member of the Rhenish bank in the Reichsstädtekollegium of the Reichstag and had a seat and vote on the Upper Rhine district assemblies. In 1346 and 1381 city days were held in Speyer .
Free imperial city and endangered independence
With the rule of the guild, politics only got into calmer waters to a limited extent. The second half of the 14th century began in Speyer with the unspeakable annihilation and expulsion of the Jewish community, with epidemics and the march of flagellators . The following decades were dominated by rivalries between influential Speyer families, which led to armed conflicts and conspiracies. The city saw itself financially heavily burdened by the high expenditure for the urban alliance policy and the bishop and individual disempowered housemates tried to exploit the atmosphere of displeasure. In the middle of the century the power games of Rudolf von Offenburg , from 1352 councilor, from 1358 one of the mayors of Speyer, caused outrage. Under the charge u. a. He was banned from the city in 1369 for betraying the peace order, slander and the worst party formation and found exile with Margrave Rudolf IV of Baden. His opponents in town, the Frispecher family, occupied the most influential positions when he left. The council election regulations of July 1375 helped to secure these positions, which led to an open riot against the council, led by housemate Heinrich von Landau . With a group of 13 citizens, he disempowered the council and brought Rudolf von Offenburg back to the city. The riot failed, however, because they were denied the desired formal approval of this takeover by the civil parish. The whole town had armed itself and a dispute could only be prevented by mediation by councilors from Mainz and Worms. Heinrich von Landau and Rudolf von Offenburg fled the city; some followers were caught and executed. Heinrich von Landau found asylum with Bishop Adolf von Nassau, who had been in dispute with Speyer since 1372. In May 1376 their attempt to besiege the city failed; Heinrich's liaison officers in Speyer were discovered and executed and Count Palatine Ruprecht the Elder. Ä. had to mediate an atonement between the city and the bishop .
In 1386 a conspiracy was uncovered within the city council, the background of which was the rivalry between the Frispecher and Fritze families. After the overthrow was thwarted, a council rule stabilized, which was increasingly taken over by the guild oligarchy, which was shaped by the authorities.
The controversies between city, bishop and clergy continued to smolder in the background. The still existing privileges of the clergy with regard to the wine bar, place of jurisdiction and increasing possession of the dead hand (property transferred to the church, which was no longer subject to taxation) aroused the displeasure of the city council and the citizens. All of these privileges resulted in significant revenue shortfalls for the city. In 1323 she forbade the citizens to buy wine from clergy outside the agreed and scheduled time. In 1345 this ban was tightened again. In 1343 members of the ecclesiastical court were excluded from citizenship , with which the city also tried to hinder the activity of the ecclesiastical court. At least a part of the clergy then applied for civil rights.
In the second half of the 14th century it also became apparent that the Speyer bishops had never given up their claim to rulership. To represent their interests, they won the support of Emperor Charles IV and, above all, the Count Palatine near the Rhine, whereas the city could no longer fully rely on the support of the emperors. Speyer had forfeited this support as partisans of the anti- Luxembourg coalitions against Charles IV in the city leagues. In addition, the city had opposed a candidate favored by Charles IV, Lamprecht von Brunn , who became Bishop of Speyer in 1336. This consequently achieved that Charles IV confirmed the unfavorable revenge of King Rudolf of 1284 for Speyer, whereby the treaties of 1294 and 1302, which were unfavorable for the church, could be called into question. Charles IV went even further and on April 20, 1366, in the so-called Magna Charta of the bishopric, confirmed all rights and possessions of the church in Speyer, ignoring all existing conditions and calling on the city to appoint the bishop as its spiritual and secular To recognize gentlemen. On the other hand, the city succeeded in exploiting the differences between the emperor and the bishop in its favor. When Bishop Adolf , who had besieged the city unsuccessfully in 1376, got into a political conflict with Charles IV, the emperor confirmed the citizenship's right to tax and the right to change the size of wine in 1378.
With Nikolaus von Wiesbaden , however, a bishop came into office in 1381, who showed himself adamant in alliance with the powerful Count Palatine ( Electors of the Palatinate), followed in 1399 by Raban von Helmstatt . Raban was a close confidante of Count Palatine Ruprecht III. who was elected king in 1400. In the course of his 30-year term in office, Raban succeeded in reducing the city's privileges bit by bit. The city of Worms shared a similar fate, where from 1405 a supporter of Ruprecht, Matthäus von Krakau , became a bishop, and many other imperial cities that saw their privileges in question. As early as 1401 Raban received an extensive confirmation of the episcopal privileges from Ruprecht I, which at the same time suspended all conflicting rights. With the help of the king, Raban was able to expose the city to reprisals in 1405 by blocking the import of grain in order to force the revocation of statutes against the clergy. The citizens then refused to pay tithes , whereupon the cathedral chapter excommunicated Mayor Fritze. The city and the clergy inundated themselves with lawsuits and counterclaims in the years that followed. 1411 obtained the city from the Pisan antipope John XXIII. a series of protection and certification documents. A tried and tested leverage of the clergy was also for the collegiate clergy to leave the city. In 1414 the Speyer was able to persuade King Sigismund to confirm his privileges, which Raban undermined in the same year by further affirming church rights. Confiscations, coercion and minor acts of violence became more common. An attempt to have the dispute settled before King Sigismund at the Council of Constance failed completely. Rather, the dispute was further fueled when the former mayor Conrad Roseler gave Bishop Raban his view of things during a verbal battle: "The king is our lord / you do not / have no command over us / we owe you obedience / So we do nothing against you as authorities / and only acted against our contrary ”. In 1418 the cathedral clergy moved out of the city again.
The Speyer council recognized that it would not get any further with negotiations, complaints and arbitrations alone and sought military assistance from 1419. He found this with Duke Stefan von Pfalz-Simmern-Zweibrücken , an opponent of Bishop Raban's territorial policy. As early as 1410, the city had begun to build an exemplary Landwehr (see: Speyerer Landwehr ), which ran around the city mark without interruption and consisted of a system of ditches and a wall provided with hedges. At intervals there were waiting areas (towers) made of stone or wood. The Harthäuser Warte was built in 1410, the Niederwarte (at Spitzrheinhof) in 1432, the Landauer Warte in 1445 and the Wormser Warte in 1451. Within the city, a mercenary force was maintained as the core of an urban armed force. The background to this reinforcement and armament was the spreading feuds , in which Speyer was often included. With the support of Duke Stephen, the citizens of Speyer demolished the Mariantraut bishop's castle, which was under construction in Hanhofen, in 1419 and used the material to strengthen their own city wall. This was followed by a lengthy lawsuit and arbitration proceedings against the citizens of Speyer before Count Palatine Ludwig III. , the brother of the Duke of Zweibrücken, in which Raban questioned the independent city tour and demanded compensation of 450,000 guilders. The arbitration decision of the Count Palatine on October 3, 1419 followed the bishop's requests in all essential points and was catastrophic for Speyer. The clergy not only got the right with regard to the money, the import of grain, the wine bar, the courts and offices in the city, the bishop was also confirmed the secular power in the city.
Raban succeeded in evading a request for help from the city to Pope Martin V, and the appointment to Archbishop Konrad III. to be transferred from Mainz . The Conradin Revenge of May 27, 1420 essentially corresponded to the arbitration ruling of the Count Palatine and in some cases even went beyond it. Finally, in 1421, Raban managed to have Emperor Siegmund's confirmation of privileges from 1419 invalid.
The city was left with the active resistance of the citizens of Speyer. The council ignored the contempt, declined further mediation, and continued to seek politico-military support. With Count Emich VII. Von Leiningen , Margrave Bernhard von Baden and even with the Bishop of Mainz, alliance and aid agreements were concluded. Bishop Raban then conquered Speyer by military means and found support from Count Palatine Ludwig III, his brother Duke Otto of Bavaria and the Archbishops of Trier and Mainz, who put together an army. The siege began in June 1422 and the city held out for two months before the defensive forces weakened. Emperor Siegmund intervened and prevented the submission of the city. However, Speyer was forced to recognize the Conradinian respect, to pay a total of 43,000 guilders in damages and to raise the army's wages of almost 60,000 guilders. With the help of special taxes, Speyer was able to pay the last installment in November 1426.
In letters of complaint to Emperor Siegmund, the city endeavored from 1425 to abolish or soften the revenge, in which it detailed the events surrounding the bishop and the disadvantages for the empire. First of all, she managed to get Siegmund to get the revenge and to use the city again in its full rights, but the certificate is never issued. Again, Bishop Raban, together with the Archbishop of Mainz, succeeded in thwarting and significantly weakening a judgment favorable to the city. After all, Speyer received at least a formal confirmation of its privileges and customary law in March 1431, but the revenge remained in force for all newly emerging disputes and could not be changed without the consent of the clergy. For Speyer, this state of affairs represented considerable financial losses, restrictions on its previous rights and thus a break in the previous urban development. The loss of the imperial city freedoms had only been averted with difficulty. The legal distinction between citizens of the city and the spiritual inhabitants remained. But Bishop Raban's attempt to gain control of the city had failed and Speyer was slowly recovering from this crisis.
1434 came with the Elector Ludwig III. From the Palatinate a protection and umbrella contract for 10 years. From 1439 the region was threatened by marauding Armagnaks , mercenaries dismissed from the French service. In 1439 Speyer concluded an alliance with Mainz, Worms and Strasbourg, which envisaged the formation of an army of 100 Gleven , 30 each from Mainz and Strasbourg and 20 from Worms and Speyer. City and clergy moved closer together, possibly due to external danger. The bishop also contributed to strengthening the town's defenses and hired a workman and gunsmith who could also produce powder and train soldiers. On April 25, 1440 there was even a friendship treaty. In 1441 a city council was held in Speyer to advise on the threat, in 1443 the city wall was repaired and the Landwehr expanded. On February 28, 1443 another umbrella and protection contract was signed with Elector Ludwig IV of the Palatinate, which was taken over by his successor, Friedrich I. Speyer's relationship with the king also improved. Friedrich III, elected in 1440 . von Austria visited the city at the end of July 1442 in order to pay homage. In 1444 the Emperor asked Speyer to send emissaries to the Reichstag in Nuremberg, where the Armagnak danger was discussed. On November 1st, another Reichstag was held in Speyer on this subject, but the Armagnaks withdrew to Lorraine.
However, there was no shortage of armed conflicts in those years, because Speyer was repeatedly involved in feuds , partly because it was involved itself, partly because it had to support allies. On the night of May 5th to 6th, 1450, a fire broke out in the cathedral, which destroyed the organ, the western dome, the bells and the entablature of the nave. The greatest damage that the cathedral had to suffer by then had been repaired by 1453. The general peace in the region was only interrupted in 1455 when an open conflict broke out between the Electoral Palatinate and Pfalz-Veldenz under Duke Ludwig . Speyer participated with a troop contingent of 50 riflemen on the Electoral Palatinate side.
From 1459 to 1462 Speyer again had to take part in a war in the Palatinate, this time in connection with the Palatinate War and the Mainz collegiate feud against Kurmainz . His allies included u. a. again Duke Ludwig von Zweibrücken-Veldenz, Count Emich von Leiningen and Count Ulrich von Württemberg. Allies of the Electoral Palatinate were besides the city of Speyer u. a. the Bishop of Speyer, the Landgrave Ludwig of Hesse, the cities of Weissenburg, Strasbourg, Heilbronn and Wimpfen. Speyer participated with 200 riflemen who were sent to Mannheim at short notice in April 1460. Shortly thereafter, the city provided the Palatinate army with 30 twigs , 60 riflemen and 10 glaives. This war led to great devastation, in the course of which Meckenheim was devastated by the Kurmainzern, Hassloch, Böhl and Igelheim by the Electoral Palatinate. The latter then attacked the Schauenburg castle on Bergstrasse and dragged it. From July 4th to 7th, 1460 there was a battle near Pfeddersheim, in which Speyer took part with 60 riflemen and ten army wagons. On August 24, 1460, 50 Speyer riflemen took part in the storming of the Hassloch Castle in Leiningen. On April 17th, 1461 the castle was stormed again and razed to the ground. In the battle of Meisenheim in June 1461, Veldenz and Leiningen were defeated. However, this did not settle the situation. Because of disputes over the occupation of the Archdiocese of Mainz two alliances and Speyer arisen saw himself in the precarious position that the bishop belonged to the other party with the pope and the emperor to counterparty the Palatinate and Hesse, on even the imperial ban was imposed and the excommunication. The city was heavily wooed by both parties, but was able to stay out of the further conflict by clever tactics, although the population supported the Count Palatine and violent clashes with the bishop broke out. After it was over with the battle of Seckenheim , which was victorious for the Electoral Palatinate and in which the bishop's mercenaries had also participated, the city quickly reconciled with the elector and bishop. However, it was very unsettling for Speyer that the new Archbishop of Mainz seized the city on October 28, 1462 and ended the time of the free imperial city for Mainz.
With Matthias von Rammung , a bishop took over the office in Speyer in 1464, who again made concrete efforts to expand or regain the powers of the church. In 1465, through no fault of its own, the city came into conflict with the church because, at the behest of the imperial court, it was supposed to help a citizen gain his rights against the bishop. To make matters worse, the elector turned against Speyer in the escalating dispute. In alliance with the bishop and his former opponent, Duke Ludwig von Veldenz, he even considered taking the city. Only on December 21, after the involvement of Emperor Frederick III. to a contract that settled the dispute. In the period that followed, relations between the city and the bishop improved and in 1467 there was even a friendship treaty, which did not end the tensions with the clergy. The completion of the Episcopal Marientraut Castle near Hanhofen in 1470 had to be grudgingly accepted by Speyer.
In 1470/71 Speyer again found itself in a situation in which it had to laboriously strive for a neutral stance. Once again, Elector Friedrich I crossed over with the Kaiser because he seized the city and the Weissenburg Monastery and both Elector and Kaiser demanded Speyer's military help in the war that broke out.
A prosperous city
Like Worms or Strasbourg, Speyer was both a “ free ” and an “ imperial ” city, and emphasis was placed on the difference in meaning between the two names. Imperial cities were subject to the emperor or king in person. Free cities regarded themselves as directly subordinate to the Reich.
After the political setbacks around 1420, the city began to recover from the middle of the century. In the guild lists of 1514, eight full and eight half guilds were listed. All the guilds were:
- Housemates or Münzer
- Chandler: with shopkeepers, pharmacists, glaziers, Säcklern, White tanners, Nest Learning, Nadlern, painters, plumbers, upholsterers, cards painters , Gürtlern, brushing ties and wine servants
- Weavers: with wool weavers, linen weavers, sergeant weavers, blue dyers and black dyers
- Cloths: with clothers, hat makers, grain knives, cloth shears and sack carriers
- Tailor: with tailors and silk stickers
- Blacksmiths: with goldsmiths, farriers, locksmiths, spur makers, armor makers, jug makers, cutlers and bathers
- Butcher
- gardener
Belonged to the half guilds
- Salzgässer: with Hökern (small traders), rope makers and oil sellers
- Rabbit feeler: with shipmen, shipbuilders and carters
- Furrier
- Carpenters: with carpenters, joiners, wagons, turners, stoners, benders, stonemasons, bricklayers and slaters
- baker
- Fisherman
- Cobbler
- Lauer (red tanner)
The number of guilds was not constant. Their meaning can be deduced from the order, which could also change over time. The housemates provided the Speyer patriciate , whose importance for business and politics developed from their predominant function as wholesalers and moneylenders. Speyer played a remarkably strong role on the money market in southwest Germany, with the patricians as well as the city and increasingly established citizens operating as lenders.
The mainstay of the economy, however, was the manufacture and trade of cloth, on which around 15% of the population depended. Taking into account secondary trades that depended on the production of cloth, such as B. wool combs, spinners, walkers, dyers, the proportion was even higher. The export of cloth went to the North and Baltic Seas, Silesia, Transylvania and Switzerland. The city was also important for the wine trade. Palatinate and Rhenish Hessian wines were shipped from Speyer, mostly across the Rhine, all over the world.
By the end of the century, two well-known printing companies had established themselves in Speyer, Peter Drach and Conrad Hist .
The Dominican Heinrich Kramer (lat. Henricus Institoris) published his book, Hexenhammer (lat. Malleus Maleficarum) in Speyer in 1486 , which appeared in 29 editions until the 17th century. It was intended to serve as the religious and legal basis for the witch trials in the context of the Inquisition , but was never officially recognized as such.
Speyer played a role that could hardly be overlooked in the city's urban policy. From the middle of the 15th century, the cities were usually asked by the emperors to take part in the diets; from 1489 they took part regularly, even if they were far from being considered equal with the other territories. At the end of the 15th century, the registry of the Rhenish city group was set up in Speyer .
Speyer had been asked to take part in the 1471 Reichstag in Regensburg, where it was a question of military aid against the Turks who had taken Constantinople. The cities then met at several city days , including one on August 1, 1473 in Speyer, at which they spoke out against aid after the 10th pfennig. However, the emperor managed to force the cities to contribute 1,396 men to an imperial army of 10,000 men. Speyer accounted for 22, six on horseback and 16 on foot. The distribution of these burdens makes it clear what rank the city was given in comparison to others: Worms had to contribute 15 men to the army, Weißenburg nine, Nuremberg 42, Frankfurt 45, Strasbourg and Cologne 60 each. On the occasion of the Reichstag in Augsburg in 1474 On August 1st and again on November 30th, 1471, city days were held in Speyer to discuss further aid against the Turks. Again the cities were reluctant. On the other hand, the cities agreed to help in the war against Duke Charles of Burgundy, who had attacked the Cologne monastery. Speyer made 200 men available for this, ten of whom did not return home after six months. In Frankfurt 1486 monetary contributions of 527,900 guilders were resolved; Speyer should pay 4,000, Weißenburg 800, Worms 2,000, Heilbronn 2,000, Wimpfen 300, Frankfurt 10,000, Strasbourg 12,000, Nuremberg 12,000. In 1487 again monetary contributions were decided in Nuremberg, of which 1,500 went to Speyer, 300 to Weissenburg, 600 to Worms, 2,000 to Frankfurt, 3,000 to Strasbourg. Then in 1489 men were called in again to form an army of 29,487 men for the war against France and Hungary. Speyer accounted for 85 of them, Worms 58, Weißenburg 17, Strasbourg 137 and Frankfurt 167. In 1488 Speyer sent 74 mercenaries for a campaign by the emperor to Flanders in order to free the heir to the throne Maximilian from captivity.
Maximilian I succeeded his father to the throne in 1493 and visited Speyer a few months later until July 1494, where he was not only his wife, but also Duke Albrecht of Saxony , the Neapolitan ambassador and allegedly King Richard III. from England, as a retinue.
In 1511, the large sculpture of the Mount of Olives , designed by the Heilbronn artist Hans Seyfer , was completed in the cloister on the south side of the cathedral . In those days, the roofed structure with a small chapel inside was praised as a great work of art.
In the years 1512–1514 the western main gate of the city fortifications, the old gate , was significantly increased. The round arch arcades show influences from the Renaissance . The city gate has been preserved to this day and is one of the highest in Germany.
Citizens' uprising 1512/13
The city's obligations to the Reich led to high tax burdens on citizens for direct and indirect taxes. The tax system provided for a relatively greater burden on smaller assets. Due to increasing taxation, displeasure about the tax exemption of the clergy also increased.
In 1512/13 there was a civil revolt against the council, supported by the guilds. There were similar surveys between 1509 and 1514 in at least 19 other cities. The trigger was a rumor from the carpenters' guild masters in Lent 1512 that the council wanted to deceive the citizens in order to get more income. They had found an old letter from 1375, in which it was about the reduction of the wine measure. In the warming atmosphere, arrests and guild meetings took place in June 1512, which all guilds soon joined. An essential requirement was that the council submit the city bills. The whole citizenry appeared in arms. The council court was occupied, two prisoners freed and some councilors fled to the cathedral. The insurgents elected a committee of all guilds on June 28, 1512, which began negotiations with the council. The council bowed to the committee and issued it with a security deed conferring the right to negotiate freely. The council was thus practically incapable of acting. Some council members were banned from the city, and mayor Jakob Meurer moved to the bishop in Udenheim. The emperor sent a mediator to Speyer who succeeded in having the city accounts for several years presented to witnesses from other cities. In further negotiations it was about the wine measure and the wine money. The committee wanted the purchase of wine to be subject to a tax, which would finally tax the clergy. The committee also called for higher taxation of the rich. The council refused on the grounds that the rich would then leave the city. After no agreement could be reached with the council, a community meeting was called on August 7th in Retscher. The council made minor concessions but was tough on the matter. The emperor once again sent a delegation to arbitrate, to which the conflicting parties presented their positions.
The true background of the uprising came more and more to light. The inactive acceptance of the revenge by the council had damaged the city by 100,000 guilders; within 30 years the clergy would have gained goods worth 60,000 guilders. The committee accused the council of, among other things, evasion, embezzlement and mismanagement and the costly feud with Mr. von Heydeck. He summarized his complaints in 39 articles, on which the emperor was to decide: Among other things, the council offices were to be filled by two people each from the council and the community, the formerly larger measure of wine should be reintroduced, the household money of wine and flour for one Halved year, a wine purchase tax or the double lap are introduced by the rich. The council rejected all allegations with justifications, pointing to the community's duty of loyalty and obedience. An arbitration did not come about. On August 25, 1512, the council sought support from the Kaiser at the Reichstag in Cologne. The mood in the city remained heated, but there were no acts of violence. On September 30th, the emperor's decision on the 39 counts was communicated to the citizens; the main demands were rejected. While there were noticeable changes in the urban constitution, the attempt to change the oligarchical city regiment had failed. The contrasts in the city continued to smolder and the citizens' committee stuck together. An uprising by the weavers on December 21, 1512 could not change the situation, and the guilds expressed their confidence in the council on April 8, 1513.
Meanwhile, the council's efforts to mitigate the Conradin revenge resumed and negotiations dragged on through 1513. After several attempts, an agreement was reached on December 19, 1514 on what would later become known as the “great revenge”. In it there were some concessions to the city.
Reichstag and Reformation
In the first half of the 16th century, Speyer became the focus of German history. More than 50 court days took place in Speyer and of the 30 Reichstag that existed in this century, five were held in Speyer (see main article Reichstag zu Speyer ). In addition, Reich Deputation Days took place in Speyer , e. B. 1558, 1560, 1583, 1595, 1599/60, Electoral days, e.g. B. 1588 and Reich Moderation Days, z. B. 1595.
With regard to humanistic thoughts in the run-up to the Reformation as well as the direct influence of Lutheran teachings, there are indirect references to influences in Speyer. In the decades around the turn of the century there was a circle of friends of humanist-minded clergy in the city, including the bishops Matthias von Rammung and Ludwig von Helmstatt . The latter appointed Jakob Wimpfeling as cathedral preacher in Speyer in 1483 . His successor was another humanist, Jodocus Gallus , in 1498 . Wimpfeling and Gallus were members of the Rhenish Literary Cooperative ( Sodalitas litteraria Rhenania) and the above-mentioned circle of friends also included the Provost Georg von Gemmingen . The center of the Speyer humanists was the house of cathedral dean Thomas Truchseß von Wetzhausen , a pupil of Johannes Reuchlin , who also participated in the judgment in the Reuchlin dispute in 1514 (see dark man letters ). The host was also cathedral vicar Matern Hatten , with whom well-known humanists of the empire were in contact. Erasmus von Rotterdam and the Heidelberg scholar Hermann von dem Busche frequented Hatten and met in Speyer in 1518. Erasmus visited the city four times. Busch, in turn, was in contact with Luther and Melanchton . Cathedral vicar Hatten also maintained good relations with the Speyer Auxiliary Bishop Anton Engelbrecht (from 1520), who represented Reformation ideas, which is why Bishop Georg deposed him and in 1525 he fled to Strasbourg. Hatten and Engelbrecht played a role in Bucer's release from the vows of the Dominican Order in 1521. Martin Bucer (Martin Butzer) also lived with Hatten for a few months in 1520 when he was on the run from an impending heretic trial in Heidelberg. At Hatten's instigation, a pastor came to Speyer in 1525 who preached Lutheran. Hatten, who officially acknowledged Luther's teachings, was tried and dismissed by the cathedral chapter in 1527, after which he also went to Strasbourg. It is not clear whether this pastor was the first to preach Lutheran, because other Speyer clergy from this time were also known for their Lutheran sentiments: Werner von Goldberg, who had to renounce his pastor at St. Martinskirche (northern suburb), Michael Diller, Prior of the Augustinian Hermit Monastery and Anton Eberhard, Prior of the Carmelite Monastery.
Speyer printers must have participated in the dissemination of Lutheran writings early on, because in 1522 Pope Hadrian VI. the council to refrain from printing and disseminating such publications. An early Lutheran-friendly attitude of the council can be inferred from at least 1522/23, because the city advocated a general council and the end of abuses in the church at the Reichstag. At the city days of Speyer and Ulm in 1522 and 1524, people spoke out against hindering the practice of Protestant teaching. The Edict of Worms of 1521 was generally considered to be impracticable and the councils did not adhere to it. For fear of anger or even mockery, which already happened in 1524, the processions in Speyer were no longer carried out in the usual form. The conclusion seems justified that Lutheran ideas in Speyer, as in most imperial cities, not least because of the centuries-old deep-seated anti-clerical mood, fell on particularly fertile ground and had gained a firm foothold by 1525.
Farmers and Citizens Survey
In 1525 the Rhine area was covered by a farmers' survey that reached the Speyer Monastery on April 20th. The uprising was mainly directed against church property and the peasants turned against the tithe, the interest and the validity . On April 30th they planned “to go to Speyer and there to destroy the nests of the clergy, which had been preserved much with disadvantage and great harm to the poor”. The Lutheran influence on this survey is evident. On the approach to Speyer, the intention was announced to "occupy the city of Speier and to reform the clergy in it if they please" and they even expected the support of the city for this. Citizens should remain unmolested.
The discontent of the peasantry had also gripped the bourgeoisie; there were meetings at which the abolition of vengeance was demanded. On April 24, the council submitted eight complaint articles to the four foundations under pressure from the citizens. In case of non-acceptance, the citizens would attack the four pens and destroy the cathedral. Faced with the threats (rebellious peasants and citizens), the clergy accepted the eight articles on April 25, 1525, and on April 28, they took the civic oath. In doing so, it gave up all previous special rights, submitted to the general burdens and duties and even took on a share of the defense burdens. However, the council wanted to prevent solidarity between the citizens and the farmers. Negotiations with the advancing farmers took place at the beginning of May, which culminated in the Treaty of Udenheim (place of residence of the bishop) on May 5, 1525. In it the farmers were made concessions, the city was spared and they moved on.
On 23/24 June 1525 succeeded the Palatinate Elector Ludwig V to the rebellious farmers in Pfeddersheim (near Worms) and to beat them with devastation. This defeat immediately had an impact on Speyer, because the clergy immediately set about canceling the forced promises made to the elector. On July 8, Speyer had to declare the contract with the clergy null and void and recognize the respect of 1514 again. The only concession was that the clergy had to pay an annual contribution of 200 guilders as compensation for the city's losses. With this, Speyer's most serious attempt to disempower the clergy had failed. However, the city continued its efforts to achieve changes in its favor. On January 4th, she was able to conclude a new revenge with the clergy, which in turn brought some improvements for the city.
Reichstag from 1526
Faith, Reformation and uprisings have been the dominant themes in domestic politics since Luther's publication of the theses and the Worms Reichstag in 1521. Against this background, the Diet of 1526 met in Speyer. As in all host cities, accommodating, catering and looking after several thousand guests represented a great challenge for the council and citizens. The list of direct members of the Reichstag with their higher entourage alone comprised 1,000 people. On the other hand, such events generated considerable income for a city.
At the previous city days, questions of faith had already been discussed extensively. Emperor Charles V was represented by his brother, Archduke Ferdinand . Official negotiation topics at the request of the emperor were the question of faith and compliance with the Worms Edict until a council, precautionary measures against further uprisings, defensive measures against the Turks and the bearing of costs for the Reich regiment and the Reich Chamber of Commerce .
The Reichstag began splendidly on June 25, 1526 with a procession of the princes and emissaries to the cathedral and a solemn high mass. There was already a smaller evangelical group, but there were still no rigid fronts between old and new believers and the dealings remained collegial. Nobody thought of a split in the church. The most prominent Lutherans were Elector Johann von Sachsen and Landgrave Philipp von Hessen . In their entourage were Johannes Agricola , Georg Spalatin and Magister Adam von Fulda , who preached during the conferences in Speyer. In addition, the majority of the imperial cities represented were Lutheran. The most influential among them were Nuremberg and Strasbourg, but also Ulm, Frankfurt and Augsburg. Important representatives in Speyer were the mayor of Worms Philipp Wolff, Jakob Sturm and Martin Herlein from Strasbourg, Bernhard Baumgärtner from Nuremberg and Bernhard Besserer from Ulm.
After two months of deliberations and disputes, the Reichstag on August 27 did not make a clear decision on belief. The attempt to reform the national church failed because of the emperor's opposition. Rather, a momentous compromise was reached: The assembly asked the emperor to convene a general council or a national assembly within a year and a half. Until then, every imperial estate should behave for himself and his country in such a way “as everyone hopes and trusts to answer to God and imperial majesty”. The religious division of Germany had become evident at this Reichstag.
The Reichstag passed two resolutions apart from the big issues that were of great importance for Speyer: the Reich Regiment , also known as the Reichsrat, and the Reich Chamber of Commerce , the highest representatives of the Reich alongside the Kaiser, were to be relocated from Esslingen to Speyer, which was a very important one for the city represented high distinction. The two institutions moved in the following year. The imperial regiment was dissolved by the emperor a few years later, in 1530, but the court stayed in Speyer for 162 years until 1689 and had multiple economic and political effects. In addition to the high-ranking judges working directly there, numerous chamber court staff, the independent authority of the court registry with subordinate officials, subordinate officials and employees as well as freelance workers such as procurators and lawyers came to the city with their staff.
Not least with reference to the resolution of the Reichstag of 1526, the Reformation spread further in the empire. On the following diets in 1527, only the Turkish threat was dealt with, although Emperor Charles V absolutely wanted to see the new doctrine eradicated.
Reichstag from 1529 and protestation in Speyer
In 1529 a second Reichstag was convened in Speyer , at which the emperor wanted to mobilize the imperial estates against the Reformation. Ferdinand, meanwhile king, represented the emperor again and this time help against the Turks, the question of faith, maintenance for the imperial regiment and imperial court and, if necessary, further questions should be on the agenda. Charles V had canceled the resolution on the question of faith of 1526 with the order to make a resolution in his favor. In the retinue of the Protestant princes, in addition to many old faces, were the reformers Philipp Melanchthon and Erhard Schnepf ; in Ferdinand's entourage was Dr. Johann Faber , who preached passionately against Luther in the cathedral and proclaimed that the Turks were better than the Lutherans. The Reichstag was opened on March 15, 1529 and the meetings took place again in the council court, which had been enlarged. On March 22nd, a committee of 18 members decided to cancel the Speyer farewell from 1526. The only three Lutheran representatives on the committee, Elector Johann von Sachsen, Jakob Sturm and Christoph Tetzel , had voted against. The complaint of the Protestant imperial estates on April 12th against this resolution, with which the Worms Edict was supposed to come into force again, remained pointless; the committee's decision was also passed through at the general meeting.
The Protestant princes and imperial cities were not ready to submit to this majority decision and wrote on 19./20. April 1529 a letter of protest. They not only objected to the fact that the resolution of 1526 could simply be overturned by majority vote, but also advocated the principle that matters of faith cannot be decided by majority votes at all. The Reichstag refused to accept the appellation , which was then sent to Emperor Charles V. With the protestation of the evangelical princes against the Reichstag resolution at Speyer , a world-historically significant event began in Speyer: even if this protest was only a legal act at first, it sealed the separation of the Christian church in Western Europe. The protestation of the princes and cities is considered to be the hour of birth of Protestantism and since this Reichstag the supporters of the Reformation movement were called Protestants . On the same day, Electoral Saxony, Hesse, Strasbourg, Nuremberg and Ulm discussed a defensive alliance in Speyer, in which other Reformation towns should take part. The alliance failed, however, because of the disagreement among the Protestants (Luther-Zwingli) and for fear of further politicizing the question of faith.
The Anabaptist mandate was a momentous decision of this Reichstag . More radical movements of Protestantism, which had already found many followers, were officially threatened with the death penalty.
Despite the emperor's annoyance, Diller and Eberhard were allowed to preach unmolested and secretly encouraged in the city. More and more clergymen from Speyer left their church and the new teaching was preached in one church after the other. The city made its final commitment to Lutheranism in 1540, when the council officially employed Diller and Eberhard as the "city of Speyer evangelical preachers". The citizens of Speyer subsequently converted to the Protestant faith as a whole; by 1675 there were only 42 Catholics left in the city. This decision of the city was to have an impact for a long time. In 1698, during the reconstruction after the War of the Palatinate Succession, only Protestants were allowed to settle. Another important measure in the same year was a Lutheran council school , which the council set up in competition with the bishop's cathedral school .
- Statues of three outstanding representatives of the Reformation at the Speyer Reichstag (Speyer Memorial Church)
Landgrave Philip I of Hesse
Elector Johann of Saxony
Reichstag from 1542
The Diet of 1541 in Regensburg decided to suspend the religious trials and declarations of eight against the evangelicals. The Diet of 1542 took place from February 8 to April 11, 1542 again in Speyer, still under the reign of Charles V and again under the leadership of King Ferdinand I. The focus was on the threat to the empire from the Turks, which was briefly had previously conquered furnace . The imperial estates approved a general property tax, the common pfennig , to finance the imperial army. The Protestants, encouraged by the Reichstag in Regensburg, demanded a complete new composition of the purely Catholic Reich Chamber Court with the exclusion of clergy and their recognition by all imperial estates. But you could not enforce any of these demands.
Reichstag from 1544
The Diet of 1544 lasted from February 20 to June 10 and surpassed the previous meetings in Speyer in glamor, effort and charisma. This time Emperor Charles V took part in it himself. A particularly pompous entry into the city was prepared for the Protestants. The emperor was only able to prevent evangelical preaching even in the churches with great difficulty. Even the Archbishop and Elector of Cologne, Hermann von Wied , had Lutheran preaching in his quarters in the Augustinian monastery .
At the emperor's request, effective aid to the Turks, support for the imperial policy against France, which was in league with the Turks, and the question of faith were to be negotiated again. In principle, the emperor showed himself to be more willing to compromise, because he wanted to win over the Protestants for his politics. The Protestants did not succeed in repealing the Edict of Worms, but the suspension of the Augsburg farewell in 1542. No agreement was reached on the financing of the Reich Chamber of Commerce. As a result, the Reich Chamber Court was dissolved and it could only continue to work with an emergency staff at the request of the Emperor. In addition, the use of secularized church assets for churches, schools, the poor or hospitals was made possible and a national council was promised. The assembly approved aid for an offensive against the Turks. Another Reichstag was promised for the autumn, at which the question of a council was to be discussed.
As part of this Reichstag, a dispute in the Baltic Sea region was also settled in the Peace of Speyer on May 23, which reflected the decline of the Hanseatic League . Under pressure from the Dutch, Emperor Charles V renounced the House of Habsburg against the Protestant Danish-Norwegian King Christian III. (Denmark and Norway) and a. on the crown. As a further important act at this Reichstag, Charles V granted the Jews comprehensive freedom and security with the Great Speyer Jewish Privilege . Increasing restrictions and encroachments can be seen as an occasion, fueled by Luther's well-known anti-Jewish writings of 1543.
The Reich Chamber of Commerce
When Speyer was designated as the location of the Reich Chamber of Commerce in 1526, a period of constant change of location ended for 162 years. The building of the Reich Chamber of Commerce was not far from the cathedral, where the Domhof restaurant now stands, which also has its own brewery. As an institution of the empire, the institution was a bastion of Catholicism in Germany until at least 1555. After the near dissolution in 1544, no judgments could be made until 1548. At the Reichstag in Augsburg in 1548, the court was renewed in the Catholic sense and the last Protestant procurator was dismissed. Despite the increase in personnel, there were still more than 5,000 unfinished business cases in 1552, which led to the saying: "Lites Spirae spirant, non expirant" (The processes at Speyer puff without a last puff). During these decades mainly concerned with religious trials, the judgments of the court were extremely partisan due to its purely Catholic occupation and contributed to the exacerbation of religious tensions in the empire and, for example, to the creation of the Schmalkaldic League . Luther was very angry about the court and said: “The imperial court, see what a devil whore rules it”. Even Melanchthon did not hold back with his criticism: "The Chamergericht would stay in the old state as long as the priest's feet stayed in the empire". This was not without influence on the inner-city situation in Speyer and sympathies for the new faith could not be represented with the militancy, as happened in other imperial cities.
In the Augsburg Religious Peace of 1555, it was also agreed that the Reich Chamber of Commerce should be occupied equally by Catholics and Protestants. However, the full implementation of this decision lasted until 1648. Including families and servants, the estimates are between 630 and 800 people connected with the court, accounting for 8 to 10% of the city's population. The clergy made up about as large a proportion at that time. On the one hand, these figures clearly show the great influence this population group has on city life; on the other hand, it shows what proportion of the population was freed from urban burdens. Until the court moved, there were numerous disputes ( gravamina ) in the 16th and 17th centuries , which were fought in front of the emperor. It was about taxes and duties as well as the judicial responsibilities u. a. because members of the Reichsgericht were only subject to their own jurisdiction. As a rule, the emperor decided in favor of the court. The Imperial Court of Justice was also the subject of negotiations at the peace negotiations in Münster and Osnabrück, with a Gravamina being introduced by both sides here too.
In 1577 there were 129 men including 44 licensed attorneys at the Imperial Court of Justice. In addition, there are the interns, debit bidders and parties who had proceedings in court.
One of the positive influences of the Reich Chamber Court is that, remarkably, there was only one burning of witches in Speyer . One such is documented in 1581, in which it says: "Barbara, Hans Kölers burgers wife, a sorceress, was spent on January 25th". That this did not happen more often is justified by the high legal culture that distinguished Speyer from other cities in the empire. The Reichsgericht was repeatedly involved in witch trials and mostly spoke in favor of the defendants. For obvious reasons, the court in Speyer cases was always called on as a revision instance.
Diet of 1570 and Counter Reformation
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In 1570, the last Reichstag in Speyer was held in full in the light of the Counter Reformation under the reign of Emperor Maximilian II . In the years 1545 to 1563 the long-awaited council in Trento finally came, which initiated the Counter-Reformation and in which the Bishop of Speyer Marquard von Hattstein also took part at the invitation of Pope Pius IV .
With the arrival of Petrus Canisius in 1565, the Counter Reformation made itself felt in Speyer. In May 1567, the Jesuit school with three classes was opened in Speyer; a year later, the Jesuit order was established near the cathedral in connection with a Latin school, which until 1580 had around 230 students. The Speyer council turned vehemently, but unsuccessfully, against the Jesuits because they feared the disruption of religious peace. The council then issued a ban on taking Catholic students into board and lodging.
Apart from this increase, the city's monasteries were in a poor state at the time of the Diet. The Holy Sepulcher Monastery was withdrawn in 1567 by the Duke of Württemberg because the prior and the convent had decided in favor of the new faith. The council refused to return the church to the Dominicans. Her prior was arrested and excommunicated in 1576 for fornication. There was only one friar left with the Franciscans and the buildings were neglected. The Augustinian Church was used by both denominations on the basis of a simultaneous treaty. The women's convents were impoverished and hardly played a role in the life of the city.
The Diet of 1570 was the most splendid and longest ever held in the west of the empire and far surpassed the meetings of 1526 and 1529 in splendor. Numerous princes took part again, but with this Diet a tendency towards a conference of ambassadors began. At the same time, a city conference was held in Speyer. When Emperor Maximilian moved in, over 500 people were counted in his entourage, including Empress Maria, the daughters Anna, Elisabeth, Eleonore, Margarethe, the sons Maximilian, Mathias, Albrecht, Wenzel, six personal physicians, 27 falconers and hunters, a trainer, a leopard keeper , two upholsterers, 40 bakers, 15 artisans, an organ maker, 21 trumpeters and timpanist, a bandmaster with 12 bassists, a chamber bassist, nine tenors, 13 alto players, seven treble singers and around 16 boys' choir.
With a population of around 8,000, the event was a heavy burden for the city, with both advantages and disadvantages. In advance, the council had several streets paved and temporary wooden huts built. With the emperor's entourage, an elephant came into town for the first time, for which a stable had to be provided. Since 1542, the number of better-built houses in the city that have been taken in for billeting purposes appears to have increased from 210 to 300. As part of the festivities, the marriage of the Emperor's daughter Elisabeth to the French King Charles IX took place in the cathedral . instead, which did not appear in person and was represented by the brother of the emperor, Archduke Ferdinand II .
Many smaller cities were not present at the Reichstag themselves and were usually represented by other participants. The cities of Mühlhausen and Weil der Stadt were represented by Speyer.
The meeting opened on July 13, 1570 with a mass in the cathedral and lasted eight months. The topics of the deliberations were a comprehensive reform of the Reich, further aid to the Turks, a rider and foot servant regulation, a new Reich Chamber Court regulation and a Reich Chancellery regulation. There was hardly any question of faith. The Reich reform did not get any further. Among other things, it was decided to only allow printing companies in imperial, royal and university cities. In addition, part of the land confiscated by Duke Johann Friedrich II of Saxony was to be returned to his children Johann Casimir and Johann Ernst, with Johann Casimir receiving the Coburg land.
In the Treaty of Speyer with the Emperor, Johann II gave up the Hungarian title and from then on called himself Johann Sigismund Prince of Transylvania and parts of the Kingdom of Hungary (see also Partium ). The Reichstag took place in the middle of a general economic and hunger crisis that also broke out in the city. Due to the weather, harvests failed. Rainfalls had already severely hindered the journey to the Reichstag and a number of winters from 1568 to 1573 were so hard that the Rhine froze over. The death rate skyrocketed.
In 1572 the St. Aegidien parish church was given to the Calvinists in Speyer. The second major Reformation movement had thus established itself in Speyer.
Destruction and decline
An uncertain peace
Except for one event in 1552, the time in Speyer between 1530 and 1620 was relatively peaceful. Nevertheless, the city was not spared from misfortune. There were repeated epidemics of the plague, for example in 1539, 1542, 1555 and 1574. The Schmalkaldic War of 1546 had no direct impact on Speyer. It was very helpful for Speyer that Elector Friedrich II. Introduced the Reformation in the Electoral Palatinate from April 1546 and abolished the mass.
1552 was the Protestant Margrave Albrecht Alcibiades of Brandenburg, who was shown on ecclesiastical goods, raided the Bishopric of Speyer and many places sacked . Speyer had opened the gates for him without resistance, the soldiers plundered spiritual goods and demanded a ransom from Bishop Rudolf von und zu Frankenstein , who was staying in Udenheim. Due to the unexpected death of the bishop before negotiations could take place, there had been delays and from 19 to 23 August raids and destruction began, which affected not only the clergy but also the city. At least important documents and books could be recovered later.
A guerrilla war developed within the city between the Protestant citizens and the Catholic clergy with mutual accusations, taunts, slander, and disabilities. The Church's privileges based on revenge continued to exist. The clergy and the still predominantly Catholic Reich Chamber of Commerce were foreign bodies in the city.
The history of the Free Imperial City of Speyer as part of the Protestant camp in the first half of the 17th century was shaped by the fact that it was on the one hand a member of the alliance of the Protestant Union and on the other hand was exposed to the influence of the Catholic League in the person of the Speyer bishop.
Around 1600 the system of religious peace around the compromise of 1555 ( Augsburg Religious Peace ) got into a serious crisis. With the increasing success of the Counter Reformation in the empire, the Electoral Palatinate increasingly developed into an exponent of the Protestant counter-reaction. While the Turkish wars had been able to bring about a certain cohesion over the decades, this solidarity-based external pressure disappeared with the ceasefire agreement in 1606.
In 1581 the determined Catholic Eberhard von Dienheim took over the bishopric. On the part of the Protestants, there had even been considerations to occupy the bishopric with an evangelical prince. The people of the Electoral Palatinate went so far as to consider the secularization of the Speyer bishopric. A visit to the bishopric in 1583 came to the conclusion that the way of life and the sense of duty of the clergy left a lot to be desired. The Jesuits were therefore made more responsible. In 1599 the Speyer Catholic hymn book was introduced and in 1602 the Bishop had Capuchins settle in the bishopric. The bishop lived far beyond his means and in 1605 the bishopric was in debt with 126,000 guilders. The disputes between the city and the bishop continued unabated.
Speyer joined the Protestant Union in 1610 and cultivated relations with the other imperial cities of southern Germany particularly intensively when the tensions between the League and the Union became increasingly threatening. In 1613, Bishop Philipp Christoph von Sötern began to rebuild the Episcopal Palatinate in Speyer and, against the city's protest, to expand his seat in Udenheim (from 1623 Philippsburg ) into a fortress. The league viewed this fortress as a counterpoint to the Palatinate fortress in Mannheim . On July 20, 1612, the council ordered the establishment of a Protestant consistory and in 1616 a school for Catholic girls was established, from which the St. Magdalena convent school emerged .
In 1612, after ten years of work, the first edition of the Chronica of the free imperial city of Speier by Christoph Lehmann was published . The work became very popular as it dealt intensively with the history of the empire and was published four times over the course of the following century.
In 1618 Speyer took part in the demolition of the Udenheim bishop's fortress by a Palatinate-Baden army, but its rebuilding was soon tackled.
The Thirty-Year War
In the chaos of the Thirty Years' War (1618–48), Speyer shared the lot of most imperial cities. The city's membership in the Protestant Union , its obligations to the Reich, which represented the Catholic cause, and the networking with surrounding territories, some of which were militant representatives of the Union and some of the League, and the constant reliance on bearing the burden of war on the Reich and the adverse effects of the war on trade led to indebtedness and impoverishment. In addition, there was a decline in defense capabilities due to a lack of money and personnel, so that Speyer, like the other imperial cities, soon found itself forced to take a course of neutrality. For this reason, Speyer left the Union in 1621. Neutrality vis-à-vis the empire was a novelty, and the emperor in particular insisted on his rights vis-à-vis the imperial cities, so that a balancing act between the Protestant Union and the Catholic League was always necessary.
Domestically, the Lutheran magistrate had to get along with the bishop, four foundations and the Catholic minority; the neighboring Electoral Palatinate, allied, was Calvinist. Participation in the razing of the fortress in Udenheim, which was part of the league's defense network, was to cost Speyer dearly. The city was charged with breach of the peace, and almost ten years after the outbreak of war, an agreement was reached on the payment of 150,000 guilders. After the collapse of the Union, the emperor, at the height of his power, issued the edict of restitution in 1628 , according to which all spiritual goods that the Protestants had confiscated since 1555 were to be returned. This was seen as an attempt at re-Catholicization, but the impact on Speyer was minor. The edict was de facto repealed in 1635 and legally repealed in 1648.
In the further course of the war, the walled, but hardly defensible Speyer found itself in the field of tension between the often contested fortresses Frankenthal , Friedrichsburg , Landau and Philippsburg , and Udenheim, which was rebuilt by 1623 with the help of the League. The city thus constantly assumed the role of refuge, hospital, supply station and / or troop camp. The Spaniards, who fought on the Catholic side, occupied the Electoral Palatinate. Philippsburg became the starting point for military operations of the league and Speyer had to endure troop movements, billeting and appraisals and take in wounded and refugees. 1632–35 Speyer was alternately conquered by the Swedes, the imperial and the French, from 1635 to 1644 again by imperial troops ; afterwards again by the French until after the end of the war. In 1632 the plague broke out and in 1636/37 a famine.
In addition, the city was occupied by Spaniards, Swedes, French and imperial troops, who followed each other at short intervals. Each time, money and contributions in kind had to be provided and billeting had to be endured. The last armies did not leave the city until 1650, leaving behind debts, hunger and epidemics. Even if the building fabric fell into disrepair during this long war, Speyer was fortunate to survive the time largely unscathed. Mannheim had been completely destroyed. However, the population had declined sharply and the suburb of St. Markus was given up. A council minutes of July 18, 1653 put the loss at 25%, although it had been reduced by many refugees who had stayed in the city.
With the peace of 1648 there were additional demands for money from the cities. The Reich had to pay Sweden a severance payment of five million in gold ("Swedish Satisfaction"), of which Speyer accounted for 37,000 guilders. Furthermore, the cities were still obliged to pay the emperor Roman months , the unit of account for military campaigns. Speyer thus accounted for 25 Roman months, some of which were forced off in 1653. The Spaniards demanded 500,000 Reichstaler so that they could withdraw from the Frankenthal Fortress. A large part of this also went to the imperial cities and Speyer was constantly in negotiations to take out loans and obtain debt rebates.
Speyer was not alone with his debt problem; the whole empire was affected. The imperial decree of 1654 stipulated a regulation and reduction of debts, but processes and negotiations because of the indebted imperial cities dragged on until the 1970s. To make matters worse for the city, the Electoral Palatinate gradually wrested the economic advantages of the Rhine as a trade route. Like Strasbourg, for example, Speyer had to come to terms with the loss of stacking rights.
Even in the years after the peace treaty there were repeated disputes between the city and the bishop and the city and the clergy. The bishop still had his residence not in Speyer, but in Udenheim and the city was still very anxious to prevent an episcopal government in Speyer and also hindered the activities of the episcopal officials. In particular, in 1653 there was a big dispute about the use of an escort route to the ferry connection over the Rheinhausen Weide, which was important for Bishop Lothar Friedrich von Metternich-Burscheid . There were repeated complaints and complaints from both sides. In 1670 the mayor Johann Mühlberger was removed from his office for treason ; he was accused of wanting to hand over the city to the bishop.
In the meantime there were significant shifts in the European balance of power and France developed a supremacy. It set in motion an aggressive policy of expansion and ushered in a new phase of wars. The preparations were noticeable, for example, in the increasing activities in the area of the Philippsburg fortress , which was in French hands. In 1661, Landau came under French rule and was expanded into a fortress; In 1670 the French occupied the Duchy of Lorraine and in 1681 Strasbourg. With destruction in the Electoral Palatinate and in nearby Germersheim in 1674 during the Franco-Dutch War , the conflict had come close to Speyer. In negotiations with the French and the Reichstag, the city managed to insist on its neutrality. The Electoral Palatinate did not want to accept this neutrality, put the city under pressure and occupied Dudenhofen, the waiting towers of the Landwehr and the suburb of Hasenpfuhl in 1676. In the same year the fortress Philippsburg could be recaptured by an imperial army. In 1683 the city again had to make contributions to the empire, which was threatened again in the southeast by Turks, diplomatically supported by France. The Turkish threat to the empire helped the French to continue to move their eastern border towards the Rhine without resistance from the empire.
The Palatinate War of Succession
A favorable occasion for the next step offered the Frenchman the death of the Elector of the Palatinate Charles II. , Louis XIV. Demanded unlawful the Palatinate as heir his sister Liselotte of the Palatinate , though he had in the marriage contract expressly waived and broke the Palatine War of Succession (1688–1697) from the fence, which affected the Electoral Palatinate and large parts of southwest Germany. One of the first fighting was the capture of the fortresses Philippsburg and Mainz in October 1688. When the French armies had to withdraw after the initial successes, the abandoned areas were systematically devastated in order to make it difficult for the enemy to pursue them. In addition, the French pursued the purpose of creating a glacis area for a decade , which should facilitate the defense of their own territory. Settlements in the Rhine Palatinate and northern Baden were particularly affected by this ruthless destruction at the instigation of the French Minister of War Louvois and his closest confidante Chamlay.
The city of Speyer was to suffer the same fate. Coming from the Landau fortress , French troops under Joseph de Montclar stood in front of the city at the beginning of 1689 . After Speyer was taken over by these troops, the Carmelite monastery became the headquarters. Two days after a tour of the city fortifications by Montclar, demolition work began on January 30th, during which large parts of the city wall as well as most of the towers were demolished with the help of the citizens. Some gates were even blown up. Originally the old gate next to the headquarters was also to be blown up. Since the Carmelites were able to convince the general that the monastery could collapse because of its dilapidation solely due to the associated tremors, he broke off the already prepared demolition. On May 23rd, General Duras gave the order to evacuate the city within a week. But he also said that the residents should not believe that the city would be burned down. Four days later, however, Montclar announced to the bishop that he had received orders to burn down the entire city, except for the cathedral. The generals themselves were not happy with the order and were therefore willing to provide the residents with carts to transport their property. The remaining belongings were allowed to be stored in the cathedral. The cathedral treasure was brought to Mainz at the instigation of the cathedral chapter. After the citizens took their property away, they left the city. The French made sure that the population did not flee across the Rhine. They therefore submitted an offer to relocate to Alsace and Lorraine with free building sites, ten years of tax exemption and transport assistance. As in Heidelberg and Mannheim , only a few responded to it. Those who couldn't cross the Rhine fled into the forest and hoped that Speyer would be spared because, as the French had reported, German troops were close by. The hope was in vain, as the French moved into their camp on the morning of Pentecost Tuesday (May 31st) on the Germansberg and in the afternoon began setting fire to both Weidenberg and Stuhlbrudergasse. When the apparently safe cathedral caught fire, the bishop's governor Heinrich Hartard von Rollingen had the most valuable tombs brought to the cathedral mechanics. On the night of June 1st and 2nd, a thunderstorm kindled the fire, which had mostly been smoldering up to now, so strong that the cathedral's bell tower caught fire shortly before midnight. It could be extinguished three times, but the conflagration in the cathedral continued to smolder. When the poorly accessible east dome finally burned, the cathedral could no longer be saved. In addition, drunk soldiers were caught lighting the fire in the cathedral. In the general chaos, some soldiers also managed to break into the upper imperial tombs. They were driven away by the fire, which also affected the vault in the western part and thus led to its collapse. After the fire had gone out, the extent became apparent: the city was almost completely destroyed, only the Gilgenvorstadt, the St. Klara monastery in Altspeyer, the Judenbad, the old gate and a few other houses were intact. The cathedral was also badly damaged. The building of the Imperial Court of Justice was also completely destroyed. Since Speyer was no longer allowed to be inhabited on the orders of the French, the population of the city was spread throughout southern Germany, with a focus on Frankfurt, to which the magistrate also fled, and Strasbourg.
Reconstruction 1698–1792
From 1698, the Speyer city council in Frankfurt set about collecting the scattered population and offering incentives for a return to the destroyed city. These included u. a. Tax breaks, but also threats to confiscate the ownerless property. Money was raised for the reconstruction. The Reich Chamber of Commerce was relocated to Wetzlar , which meant that an important group of the population was unable to return to Speyer. Another group, the clergy, in particular the All Saints' Day, St. Guido and the Cathedral Monastery, soon set about initiating urban life in the outskirts.
From the decades of reconstruction that began in 1698, z. B. the baroque buildings of the Reformed Heiliggeistkirche (built 1700–1702) and the Lutheran Trinity Church (built 1701–1717), the first new churches in Speyer. The town hall was not completed until 1726, and the new municipal department store (Alte Münze) was built on the municipal market. Many more houses in the late baroque style of the time were built in the main street .
But very soon Speyer was again affected by war events, the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), in the course of which the city was called upon to make contributions again. When the French began military maneuvers in the Landau area in 1703 , the city felt compelled to recall its neutrality at the Reichstag. On October 17, 1703, the French under Tallard began to siege Landau fortress. They had only lost this to the imperial army a year earlier. A Hessian (imperial) -Netherlands auxiliary corps under Johann Ernst (Nassau-Weilburg) and Friedrich von Hessen-Kassel should now rush to the fortress to help and gathered on November 13, 1703 southwest of Speyer, where they wanted to wait for reinforcements move on to Landau the next day. While the imperial family set up their headquarters in Speyer, the Dutch generals moved into quarters at Heiligenstein. Tallard preferred not to wait for an attack, but to attack himself, and met the encamped German troops on November 15, when the entire leadership in Speyer celebrated the Emperor's birthday. In the battle of the Speyerbach , the French inflicted a loss-making defeat on the Allies. Landau fortress surrendered on the same day. 8,000 soldiers were killed; In the Allmendwald near Harthausen / Hanhofen there are still stone crosses over the graves of the fallen. Among other things, the imperial major general von Hochkirchen lost his life, who is buried in Cologne Cathedral. When Tallard was captured after the Second Battle of Höchstädt in 1704, he is said to have been greeted by Friedrich von Hessen-Kassel with the words "Revenge for Speyer!"
From the middle of the century Speyer had to maintain a troop contingent of 20 to 35 men and in the Seven Years War it had to pay 17,000 guilders. In total, the four wars of the 18th century cost the city over 100,000 guilders. Speyer was heavily in debt and the citizens were subject to a high tax burden.
The Speyer wine trade no longer revived. But tobacco manufacture was created for this. In 1719 Damian Hugo von Schönborn became Bishop of Speyer. Since the residence disputes with the city still persisted, he moved his seat to rural Bruchsal , where he had the palace built.
Impoverishment, the tax burden, the stagnating economy and the entanglement of the magistrate led to unrest among the citizens and guilds from 1752 to 1754, which, however, could be settled after many negotiations and concessions from the city council.
In the mid-1970s, the reconstruction of the cathedral was finally started, the western third of which was in ruins. The eastern undestroyed half was closed off to the west and was still used for church services. After the two west towers were demolished, the cathedral received a new baroque westwork by Franz Ignaz Michael Neumann and a new interior in 1778 .
French Revolution and Napoleon
The French Revolution in 1789 heralded the end of Speyer's imperial city history. In 1792 the city was taken from the Landau fortress by revolutionary troops. In the following years there were several short-term recaptures by the empire , but the Palatinate left of the Rhine was finally annexed on March 21, 1797; Speyer remained as the seat of a sub-prefecture (arrondissement) in the Département du Mont-Tonnerre ( Donnersberg ) until 1814 under French rule.
The capture of the city was again linked to arson , with the cathedral suffering further damage. The revolutionary troops brought with them the achievements of the new republic and abolished feudalism . The special estate rights ( manorial power , patrimonial jurisdiction ) disappeared. In the main street one has liberty tree erected, streets and squares have been renamed, founded a revolutionary club, old coat of arms and symbols of the imperial city and the kingdom away, the old criminal law was abolished, gallows and vice stone removed, dissolved the guilds and the place of the mayor entered the mayor . The justice of the peace and the municipal council ( Munizipalrat ) were determined in the first popular election . A new oath was required of the citizens : I swear to be loyal to the people, to the principles of freedom and equality, and most solemnly renounce all the privileges that have been enjoyed so far. Speyer, March 11th 1793 in the 2nd year of the Franconian Republic . The clergy still remaining in the city were also forced to take this oath. In the first democratic elections, by far the majority of the citizens, as in Worms , voted for the old council. With the incorporation into the French Republic in 1797, the imperial city constitution was repealed and the imperial city dissolved; Speyer received a French government constitution. In addition, all church property became national property, which was initially leased to private individuals and sold from 1803. The previous tenants were often the buyers.
At the end of 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte became the first consul and sole ruler in France, and in 1804 he declared himself emperor. With that, the possibility of elections disappeared after a short time; there was only one right of nomination and the justice of the peace was appointed for ten years. The press was censored, printing plants checked, associations and assemblies had to be approved, the city's financial policy was very restricted, the city's debt burden continued to grow, and new taxes were introduced ( Octroi , which burdened trade, door and window tax). Instead, the unpopular Revolutionary Commissioner disappeared, and Napoleon tackled reforms that were also important for Speyer. The judiciary was unified and reorganized. Legal security improved considerably with the administrative separation of civil and criminal law and the introduction of the Civil Code (1804), which, unlike in the German areas on the right bank of the Rhine, remained in the Palatinate until the introduction of the Civil Code in 1900. The judiciary and administration were separated from one another at all levels, and financial administration and taxation were reformed. While the prefect of the department usually came from France, the posts of sub-prefect were mostly filled with locals, which promoted the acceptance of the reforms. Speyer was gradually expanded into an administrative center. By 1806 there were three notaries' offices, and a new layer of administrative officials was created.
Even if there was hardly any construction activity in the city during the Napoleonic era, the population grew rapidly. The population rose from 2805 in 1797 to 5000 in 1804. By 1815 it had almost reached the level of the 16th century. From 1800 onwards a growing surplus of births also became noticeable. There was also a shift in the composition of religions. By 1813 the proportion of the Catholic population reached 25%.
In 1806 the plan was to demolish the cathedral except for the west building and to convert the west building into a triumphal arch in honor of Napoleon, which the Mainz bishop Joseph Ludwig Colmar was able to prevent. The French troops used the cathedral as a cattle shed, feed and material store. In addition to the renovation of the cathedral, plans were also made to straighten some streets, but this would have lost the character of the grown city. However, due to the early end of the Napoleonic era, the plans never came to fruition. Only the Wormser Heeresstraße (today Wormser Landstraße) was straightened somewhat, which is why the ruins of the Holy Sepulcher Monastery were demolished. In 1806 the bishop's palaces were demolished; The cloister and St. Catherine's Chapel followed in 1822. Since then, the cathedral has been completely free.
The end of French rule began after Napoleon's defeat in the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. A first attack by the Allies took place in the Mannheim area on December 31, 1813 with the defeat of the Rhine crossing and the pursuit of the fleeing French in the direction of Kaiserslautern. On the same day, the French withdrew from Speyer without fighting. In doing so, they left hundreds of typhus patients behind in the Speyer hospital, which had served the injured of the retreating Napoleonic armies. In the following weeks it was used by the injured Allies who passed through Speyer. A garrison from Baden and then from Bavaria came to Speyer. With Napoleon's return from Elba in 1815 there were fighting again in which the city was again a stage. Speyer was once again in the limelight of great politics for a few hours when, on June 27, 1815, Emperor Alexander I of Russia , Emperor Franz I of Austria and Prussia's King Friedrich Wilhelm III. met at the Allied headquarters in the city.
The wars of liberation against Napoleon and the reorganization of the European world at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 brought about a change in the balance of power in the Palatinate area. From a memorandum drawn up by 50 notables from the city and canton of Speyer for the Allies, it became clear that they were aware of the advantages that French rule had brought. In it they expressed that "the most sacred principles" of the social contract, which would have formed the basis of the previous constitution of the country, would also determine future conditions: national representation, equality of rights for all, freedom of conscience and freedom of the press, equal levels of taxation , Independence of the judiciary, public proceedings in civil and criminal proceedings, jury courts and personal safety. These institutions were the basis of the constitution under which they had long lived, under which a new generation had grown up, and the youth of the country were brought up in the spirit of these principles. In doing so, the signatories made it unmistakably clear that they were unwilling to go back to the level of public relations that had already been achieved (Rhenish institution).
At first there was no change in the administration; According to the Leipzig Agreement, all civil servants were to continue their previous activities. At the Paris Ministerial Conference in 1814 it was decided to place the area on the left bank of the Rhine north of the Moselle under Prussian administration. The area south of the Moselle was to be administered jointly by Bavaria and Austria. On June 16, 1814, the k. u. k. Austrian and the royal Bavarian joint regional administration commission. The district was divided for occupation purposes; the Bavarian essentially comprised the Palatinate and the neighboring regions near Alzey, Ottweiler and Birkenfeld. This division had nothing to do with the later decision of the Congress of Vienna that the Palatinate would go to Bavaria.
After a between Bavaria and the Papal States closed Concordat Speyer was in 1817 again bishopric, and the cathedral has been repaired in the following years.
19th century: citizens and officials
As a result of the Congress of Vienna, the Palatinate area fell to the Kingdom of Bavaria as compensation for Salzburg, which had been ceded to Austria. In 1816 Speyer became the district capital of the so-called Rhine district in what followed. Competitors in this decision were Zweibrücken with 6200 inhabitants, Kaiserslautern with 3800 and Frankenthal with 3700. At that time Speyer had 6000 inhabitants and offered the best conditions due to its location and facilities with suitable buildings. In addition, there was an administrative apparatus from the French arrondissement that could be built on. The Speyer town hall was made available as a government building until 1839. The Bavarian state government left the legal relationships and institutions established by the French. This not only had advantages, but also meant that the restrictions on the city council that applied under the French initially continued to exist. The mayor, councilor, adjuncts and police commissioner were no longer appointed by the first consul, but by the land commissioner , the county government and the king. According to us, the resolutions had to be approved by the supervisory authorities. Only in 1818 and 1837 were local council elections reintroduced. The right to vote, however, was so restricted that in 1819 Speyer only had 270 eligible voters; In 1829 there were only 214, in 1838 518, in 1843 there were 534 of 10,000 inhabitants and in 1848 360.
Speyer became the seat of the Palatinate postal system, the administration of the salt monopoly, the upper customs inspection, the land commissioner for the northern Front Palatinate and the gendarmerie command for the Rhine district. The district court, however, came to Frankenthal and the highest military administration to Landau. Speyer became a garrison town again, but until 1874 with constantly changing units and with different lengths of stay; From 1844 a site command was set up.
In 1816 the evangelical consistory responsible for the Bavarian Rhine district was created in Speyer and in 1818 the reformed and evangelical churches were united. A territorial reorganization took place on the Catholic side: In the Bavarian Concordat of June 5, 1817, Speyer was established as the suffragan diocese of Bamberg. The solemn enthronement of the first bishop, Matthäus Georg von Chandelle, took place in St. Magdalena in 1822 because the cathedral was not yet usable. The re-establishment of a bishopric in Speyer aroused the suspicion of the city council, which saw the need to draw the government's attention to the earlier disputes and to ask that the property and freedom of conscience of the Protestants be left untouched. The Catholics met this distrust with caution; for example, the Corpus Christi procession was held inside the cathedral. Even from 1833 the area around the cathedral garden was kept. At the instigation of the new bishop, a seminary came to Speyer again in 1827. On January 1, 1838, the name Pfalz was introduced instead of the Rhine district.
At the end of the French occupation, Speyer was far from being rebuilt. In particular, many larger buildings were still in ruins and the cathedral was exposed to decay. Most of the city wall was still preserved, but had lost its defensive function since 1792 (decongestion) and there were large undeveloped areas within the city, which were mostly used as gardens. The Gilgen and Hasenpfuhl suburbs were even more sparsely populated and the secularized St. Magdalenenkloster was completely green. His church was the only one that served the city's Catholic community.
In March 1818 King Ludwig I ordered the renovation of the cathedral. In this context, the ruins of the cloister and the dilapidated cathedral parish house were removed. In 1822 a service could be held for the first time since 1792.
The demolition material was erected for the construction of a new barracks on the site of the current museum. The barracks also included the neighboring Teutonic Order House and the adjoining Mirbach House as well as the former Jesuit college with the former church as a riding arena.
The increase in administrative importance resulted in the expansion of the administrative apparatus with numerous authorities, which in turn brought about a significant economic upswing and an increase in the population; the number of inhabitants doubled in the first half of the 19th century and a brisk construction activity shaped the cityscape.
Very soon there were disagreements with the Bavarian state government in Munich because in 1819 goods from the Palatinate were subject to customs duties. This led to the Palatinate increasingly orienting itself towards the whole of Germany, and the German Trade and Industry Association founded by Friedrich List in the same year met with great approval. The tariffs were abolished in steps from 1824 ( Süddeutscher Zollverein ) to 1834 (Baden joined the German Zollverein ). It was not until 1843 that a Palatinate Chamber of Commerce was allowed to be founded, but it was established in Kaiserslautern.
In 1817 and 1825, Bavaria and Baden signed treaties to straighten the Rhine . Initial plans envisaged that the river should be moved away from the city, whereupon the city lodged a protest with the Bavarian state government in 1826. As a result, the straightening plans in the Speyer area were changed. On the other hand, the city could not prevent the Rheinschanze opposite Mannheim from being used as a harbor area in 1820, because it feared major economic disadvantages. This laid the nucleus for the city of Ludwigshafen am Rhein . In the 1820s there was intense reflections, a Grand Canal d'Alsace to build from Strasbourg to Speyer, the connection to the Rhone-Rhine Canal created. The project was forgotten at the end of the decade, but was taken up again after the founding of the empire. From 1830, Speyer began to expand its Rhine port in the area of the Speyerbach estuary. A part of the arm of the Rhine was used for this, which led directly below the Heidentürmchen to today's fairground.
Even with the construction of the railways, the city did not follow the ideal conception, which would have preferred to see a railway link on the left bank of the Rhine from Basel to Mainz realized, as was also favored by the French in 1829. However, Bavaria was not interested in one. Speyer was also disappointed that the railway line planned from 1836 from Saarbrücken to Mannheim was led via Schifferstadt. In 1838 it was still assumed that Speyer would be the end point of this railway. The city would even have been willing to finance the detour of the railway. Instead, Speyer initially received a branch connection, which was ceremoniously opened on June 11, 1847. The station was not built at the Rheintor, as the city wanted, but on the current location, outside the city at that time, west of the formerly sparsely populated suburb of Altspeyer.
Most of the city's population in the first half of the 19th century was poor and the city felt compelled to implement various measures to support them. This included a common land being developed in the city due to the large number of green spaces and, especially after the July Revolution of 1831, the award of renovation work . At the end of 1845 the city bought large quantities of potatoes in order to sell them cheaply; In 1846 Bread for the Poor was subsidized and in 1847 farmers were given seed potatoes. On the one hand, this aroused the resentment of the rich in the city, on the other hand, these measures were intended to soothe the resentment among the poor in the revolutionary years.
In the field of education, the city had all kinds of facilities and thus the best-developed school system in the Palatinate. In 1817 compulsory schooling was introduced, although school fees had to be paid. Until 1821, the old orphanage on Ludwigstrasse served as a school building for four Protestant and two Catholic classes with a total of 700 students and six teachers. In 1821 the city erected a new building with 12 rooms on the ruins of the Reich Chamber of Commerce. In 1829 a school for 200 girls opened in the Sankt Magdalena monastery, which was a thorn in the side of the mostly Protestant city council and a dispute over the city's funding continued until 1838.
In 1817 a Progymnasium, a grammar school and, as a preliminary stage to the university, a Lyceum , the only one in the Palatinate. They were housed together in the so-called Princely House in Postgasse and well-known professors were Ludwig Feuerbach , Friedrich Magnus Schwerd and the regional historian Johann Kaspar Zeuss . The Lyceum library was the largest in the Rhine area with 9,000 volumes. In 1839 the seminary was expanded to include an episcopal Konvikt, so that the grammar school had a significant Catholic increase. At the insistence of the bishop, history lessons had to be divided between denominations from 1855.
A girls' school was set up in 1841, the nucleus of today's Hans-Purrmann-Gymnasium.
The first associations were formed: the Harmoniegesellschaft (1816), the Musikverein (1818, from 1829 Cäcilienverein), the revived Schützengesellschaft (1820), which had existed since 1529, the Gymnastics Association (1846/1848 against great resistance from the district government), and the Song board (1847). Two bathing areas were set up for bathing in 1820: on the Rhine just above the town and on the Woogbach to the west of the Wormser Tor. The first bathing ship was set up in 1821.
In the pre-March period, the Speyer press was of national importance. The printer Jakob Christian Kolb already had a license from the French for the Gazette de Spire in 1802 , although there were already problems with censorship at that time . From 1814 Kolb, and later his son Georg Friedrich , published the Speyerer Zeitung (from 1816 Neue Speyerer Zeitung ).
Under the editing of Johann Friedrich Butenschön , the paper took a decidedly progressive position. With its liberal and democratic views, it repeatedly came into conflict with the Bavarian censorship. Friedrich Gentz , who worked closely with Austrian State Chancellor Metternich, described the NSZ as the cheekiest newspaper in Germany. The state government in Munich also took the view that the NSZ “distinguishes itself among the German newspapers with the most evil spirit and the most indecent tone” and threatened to discontinue it completely.
The French had left their legal system and more liberal views in the Palatinate than could be found on the right bank of the Rhine, which led to increasing tensions with the Bavarian king. In the first decades of the Bavarian reign, the majority of the members of the Palatinate district government were liberal. From 1830, however, they were increasingly replaced by forces from Bavaria who had been drawn on in a conservative spirit, which led to increasing tensions between the rulers and the ruled. The July Revolution of 1830 in France prompted the Bavarian government to call on the Palatinate District President Joseph von Stichaner to be more vigilant, expressly pointing out the dangerousness of the NSZ. On January 28, 1831, a decree by Ludwig I placed all political writings under censorship, which, however, had to be withdrawn again in June 1831 under pressure from the public and the liberal chamber opposition. This did not remove the pressure on the opposition press, as it was increasingly exposed to seizures, postal controls and arrests.
After the Hambach Festival in 1832, the NSZ became the journalistic engine of the liberal movement in the Palatinate and gave the liberals an important voice against the reaction policy that began in 1838. In the same year Kolb was elected to the Speyer city council, where he campaigned for the construction of the railways and the city's commercial activities.
The paper not only campaigned for the “March demands” of the liberals, but also for the unity of Germany. In particular, it polemicized sharply against the small German solution and a Prussian-German empire. Karl Friedrich Heintz, appellate judge in Zweibrücken and member of the chamber, described the situation in the Palatinate dramatically in 1846: The anger at the Bavarian government was so great that the slightest cause could lead to the loss of the province. According to the district council, the people were thoroughly politicized and there was dissatisfaction everywhere. High inflation in 1846 and 1847 caused the city to take extraordinary relief measures. In contrast to the critical situation in Baden, there is no evidence in the city files or in the press of a revolutionary mood among the Speyer population.
Since the NSZ increasingly also represented positions of cultural struggle , the diocese newspaper “ Der Christliche Pilger ” developed from 1848 as a Catholic interest group; the newspaper still exists today.
The revolution of 1848/49
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On February 28, 1848, the NSZ reported the events of the February Revolution in Paris . On March 3rd, the newspaper listed the political wishes of the Palatinate: among other things, freedom of the press, armament of the people, revision of the constitution, free municipal administration, and amnesty for political offenses. On March 7, 1848, a few hundred citizens who had gathered at the town hall agreed to an address from the Palatinate deputies to the king and elected deputies to deliver the petition. In mid-April a people's association was founded to control the elections, which over 200 residents spontaneously joined. The following months remained calm except for minor minor incidents. The Volksverein was the determining force this year and organized celebrations and events that took place peacefully. For example, on November 9, 1848, the shooting of the revolutionary Robert Blum in Vienna was commemorated in a demonstration from Domplatz to the cemetery; on January 21, 1849, the fundamental rights were solemnly proclaimed.
In the election of the Bavarian MPs to the National Assembly in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt , Kolb was elected for Speyer-Germersheim by a large majority. The election to the local council in the following May was also won by the Democrats and Kolb became mayor. Kolb also received the most votes in the constituency of Speyer-Frankenthal in the chamber elections in November. So Kolb was torn back and forth between the mayor's office, state parliament and Paulskirche. From the autumn of 1848 he viewed the work in the Paulskirche with growing skepticism.
Bavaria rejected the Paulskirche constitution in the spring of 1849. On April 28th, the Speyer city council agreed to the demand of the Volksverein to convene the state parliament to put pressure on King Max II . That was on the same day that Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Of Prussia refused the imperial crown offered to him by the Paulskirche assembly.
The next day, a people's assembly took place in the Fruchthalle in Speyer (see imperial constitution campaign ), which called on the Paulskirche to declare itself permanently. On May 2nd, a provisional national defense council was elected to defend and implement the imperial constitution, the Speyer city council declared that the imperial constitution applies throughout Germany and that non-recognition by a single government is a criminal offense. On the same evening Kolb spoke to a crowd from the balcony of the town hall and took the oath from them on the imperial constitution. The next day barricades were erected in Speyer to prevent Prussian troops from marching through to reinforce the garrison in Landau; Trees were even felled in Landauer Strasse. The people's armed forces, which were joined by soldiers stationed in Speyer, took up positions and Speyer citizens, including girls, took up arms. The citizens of Landau also barricaded their city and the soldiers had to turn back.
The provisional government of the Palatinate, to which Kolb was a member, established in Kaiserslautern on May 17, 1849, settled in Speyer on May 21, dismissed some officials of the district government, which still did not recognize the imperial constitution, and appointed Friedrich Hilgard as civil commissioner . As a symbol of the democratic movement, the black, red and gold flag was hoisted from the cathedral. The government then withdrew to Kaiserslautern. Hilgard confiscated all available public funds, dismissed other officials who were loyal to the old government and forced a loan of 10,000 guilders from wealthier citizens. The members of the district government who had not yet fled to Germersheim were arrested. At the beginning of June Kolb tried to slow down the revolutionary development, whereupon the provisional government dissolved the city council. In the new elections that followed, this was almost completely confirmed again. In these municipal council elections on June 9th, all adult male citizens of the city were eligible to vote for the first time.
The Bavarian state parliament was adjourned several times and dissolved on June 11, 1849 because of the unclear position of the Palatinate MPs. Two days later Prussian troops marched into the Palatinate; they occupied Speyer on June 16 without resistance.
As agreed, Bavarian troops followed on June 21 under Lieutenant General Karl Theodor von Thurn und Taxis , who declared a state of war on the rebellious province. The old government was reinstated. The imperial constitution campaign and the Palatinate uprising were suppressed and activities in their favor were considered high treason . The NSZ was banned, Kolb was imprisoned in Zweibrücken until January 1850 and the censorship was significantly tightened.
After the suppression of the German revolution of 1848/49, many revolutionary-minded Speyerians had to flee, although many preferred to leave the country entirely. These included Martin Reichard, Friedrich Hilgard, Ludwig Heydenreich and Heinrich Weltz. The restoration that followed was able to assert itself particularly well among the numerous civil servants in Speyer who are dependent on Bavaria. After years of official boycott, the NSZ had to stop its publication in 1853 and Kolb left Speyer. The Palatinate was still considered unruly, the reins of the government in Munich were kept particularly tight and only loosened towards the end of the century.
Structural and economic development until 1900
From 1839 to 1841 the Hirschgraben in the north of the city was filled in and the merged Catholic and Protestant cemetery was laid out to the north. On the west side of the cemetery, construction of the train station began in 1846.
The port was built from 1853 to 1856 on the decision of the city council . It was created at the mouth of the Speyerbach, which for this purpose was led in a straight line into the Rhine. Another major project in these years was the restoration of the cathedral at the instigation of King Ludwig I from 1854 to 1858.
At the end of 1849 Speyer had 10,410 inhabitants. By 1867 there were 12,728 and around 1,900 soldiers; growth slowed significantly due to increased emigration. Not only the aggravated political situation contributed to this, but also an economic crisis and inflation around the middle of the century. From 1859 Speyer lost its rank as the largest city in the Palatinate to Kaiserslautern. Immigration from the region meant that the proportion of the Catholic population rose steadily, in 1849 the proportion was 41.1%, in 1867 it was 46.7%. The city's growth was still within the former fortification ring, where the open spaces had not yet been used up.
In 1852 the Institute of Poor School Sisters was established in the Dominican convent of St. Magdalena . In addition, against great resistance from the city, a school was built there to compete with the city's primary school.
A typhus epidemic in 1854/55 led to the foundation of the Palatinate Diakonissenanstalt , for whose mother house the city provided the former reformed school building next to the Heilig-Geist-Kirche. In 1861 it was possible to move into larger rooms next to the St. Georgs tower. From 1857 there were considerations to commemorate the Reformation on the place of the Retscher, i.e. on supposedly historical ground, to build a Protestant church and collections were initiated all over the country. The planned church was ultimately built in front of the former Gilgentor between 1893 and 1904 as a memorial church for the Protestation .
From 1854 to 1856 the baroque westwork of the cathedral was demolished in order to largely replace the original Romanesque construction with the two west towers. Planner was the renowned architect of the Romanesque Revival , Heinrich Hübsch . During the restoration work, pagan-Roman tombstones were discovered, which were brought to the museum.
On November 29, 1860, the first gas lighting was on in Speyer. In 1864 the railway line from Schifferstadt to Speyer to Germersheim was extended.
In 1865 the old Augustinian monastery between Wormser Strasse and Breiter Gasse (Johannesstrasse) was demolished. In its place a common school building for the secondary school for girls, the secondary school and the trade school was built until 1867. A ship bridge was built to cross the Rhine in 1865.
Around the middle of the century there was a significant change in the city's economic life. In 1833 about half of the population still lived from agriculture. This share had fallen to 30% by 1861, in 1895 it was only 8.6%. In 1864 a cooperative advance payment association was founded to promote trade and commerce, from which the Speyerer Volksbank emerged .
After the founding of the North German Confederation and the early annexation of the southern German states by 1868, the people of Speyer elected their representative for the customs parliament . With that, however, they were not convinced of the small German solution discussed . Few could imagine a Germany without Austria . This changed with the outbreak of the Franco-German War in 1870. Due to its border near the city transit point for troops and wounded what their heavy loads for hospital costs, billeting, utilities and was urging Services aufbürdete.
In 1871 the city's population had risen to 13,227. In 1873 the Heidelberg – Speyer railway was opened via Schwetzingen. It led from the train station in a curve north around the city to the Rhine east of the cathedral (today's industrial track) and on the ship's bridge over the river.
In terms of the number of employees, the cigar industry was the most important trade in the city. Speyer was the center of a large tobacco growing area and there were numerous trading houses and businesses. Cigars were also made at home. Brick manufacture was a third important branch of industry in the city. The cotton mill was founded in 1889, the large multi-storey building of which is now a listed building and serves as a depot for the Palatinate History Museum .
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During this time Speyer developed into a stronghold of the brewing industry, which was one of the city's most important branches of industry. Up until 1890 there were 20 breweries that produced a total of 250,000 hectoliters of beer per year. However, 500 years of the city's brewing tradition came to an end in 1970 with the last Schwartz-Storchen brewery in Speyer. The Zum Storchen brewery emerged from the Sick brewery in 1859. In the 1860s, the Schwartz brewery emerged from the takeover of the older Zum Weißen Bären brewery. In 1873, due to a lack of space, it moved from Korngasse to a new location on what was then the western outskirts of the city between the railway line, Oberer and Unterer Langgasse, where a completely new, spacious factory was built. In 1887 it had an output of 35,000 hl, in 1914 it was 54,000 hl. In 1888, the Zum Storchen brewery took over the Hauser brewery and also moved from Postplatz to new factory premises in the immediate vicinity of the Schwartz'schen brewery on Oberen Langgasse (immediately west of the railway line). In 1914 Schwartz'sche merged with the Zum Storchen brewery, with an output of 99,000 hl at the time, to form Schwartz-Storchen AG, currently the largest brewery in southwest Germany, which accounted for around half of Speyer beer production. At that time there were five other breweries in Speyer, u. a. one larger (Zur Sonne) and four smaller ones (Landauer Tor, Alte Pfalz, Anker and Sternemoos). Only the Anker brewery existed until the 1960s. In 1936 the Schwartz-Storchen Brewery was one of the largest commercial employers in Speyer with 146 employees. In 1969 it was taken over by the Eichbaum Brewery and the brewery relocated to Mannheim the following year. Most recently around 90,000 hl had been produced in Speyer.
Other important Speyer businesses from this time were a factory for boot uppers, which relocated to Burgstrasse due to expansion (later the ROWO / Salamander shoe factory), the cement and asphalt factory and the celluloid factories in Rheinstrasse. The working conditions were often inhuman and degrading and the pay was bad, so that from the end of the century there were numerous strikes that dragged on until the First World War.
During the Franco-Prussian War, the 5th Chevaulegers were relocated to Alsace and it was not until 1874 that Speyer became a garrison seat again with a Bavarian pioneer unit, for which a new barracks was built on Rulandstrasse in 1888/89. The port was expanded in its present form in 1892/94. During this time, the building of a Rhine canal between Strasbourg and Speyer was discussed at the Land and Reichstag level , but this was never implemented. Instead, the shipping channel from Sondernheim to Strasbourg was deepened to 2 m. In 1883 Speyer received a central water supply. The water tower was built and a pumping station on Iggelheimer Strasse.
In 1884 the construction of the deaconess institution began. Heinrich Hilgard , who emigrated to America after the revolution, also appeared at the laying of the foundation stone, and with generous donations he made a significant contribution to the projects for the institution and the Memorial Church. The only municipal elementary school on Himmelsgasse was completely inadequate for 1,500 children. In 1893 the Rossmarktschule was finally built on Rossmarktstrasse.
Apart from the industrial companies mentioned, the structural development of the city remained within the former city walls until the 1890s. It was not until 1885 that the first new residential areas were built outside the old town on both sides of Landauer Straße. Together with the church buildings, the deaconess institute and the new barracks, the city developed clearly in a south-westerly direction. A further development axis emerged a little later to the north to the train station. The entrepreneur Franz Kirrmeier built the Villa Ecarius there for his daughter. In 1881 a new cemetery was laid out 1 km north, which served all denominations.
By the end of the century and around the turn of the century, a number of representative and administrative buildings were built: the hall in the courtyard of the town hall in 1892, the Protestant consistory in 1893 , the upper post office in 1901, the district archive in 1902, the regional court with prison (today the district court) and the Gymnasium, in 1903 the state insurance institute, the upper insurance office and the district office.
The painter Anselm Feuerbach (* 1829), the poet Martin Greif (1839–1911) and the painter Hans Purrmann (1880–1966) are among the city's most important sons from the 19th century .
The 20th century
Ending Wilhelmine era and First World War
The outgoing Wilhelmine era added further representative new buildings and significant facilities to the Speyer townscape. In 1901/2 the new grammar school (today grammar school at the Kaiserdom) was built on the former barracks area on Grosse Pfaffengasse.
In 1904 the 105 m high neo-Gothic building of the Memorial Church was inaugurated. The purchase of the land on the western outskirts took place in 1883, but the ground-breaking ceremony came only after support from Kaiser Wilhelm II. In 1890, the foundation stone was laid in 1893. Also in response to the construction of the memorial church was from 1912 to 1914, only a few meters from the Joseph church with two 91 m high towers built on the site of the former Capuchin monastery of St. Aegidien. In 1888 a church building association was set up to build the Catholic St. Joseph's Church. Together with the imperial cathedral and the old gate, these two churches dominate the cityscape of Speyer.
In 1904 the Vincentius Hospital was also founded by the Niederbronn sisters on Gießhübelbach. In addition, in 1908/10 the motherhouse St. Joseph of the independent poor school sisters was built, for whom the premises in the St. Magdalena monastery were no longer sufficient. In 1907 the episcopal ordinariate, in 1909 the rent office, in 1910 next to the grammar school and also on the former barracks the historical museum and in 1912 the district research station. Museum, grammar school, district archive, consistory and ordinariate shape the development of the Domplatz to this day. Another noteworthy building from the Wilhelmine era was the train station, which was destroyed in World War II.
From 1905 to 1909 a narrow-gauge railway was built from Speyer via Dudenhofen and Geinsheim to Neustadt . The course of the popularly known "Pfefferminzbähnel" marked out the later location of the Langensteinweg (green area).
In 1911 the school on Augustinergasse was expanded to include an elementary school and in 1912 a third elementary school, the Zeppelin School, was built. The state insurance institute moved into the old municipal primary school on Himmelsgasse .
The residential development up to the train station and the first approaches to the west of the railway line on Dudenhofer Straße date from the years of the first decade. In 1910 Speyer had 23,045 inhabitants including the military. This year the pretzel festival was held for the first time . In 1913 the city was connected to the power grid.
With the outbreak of the First World War , Speyer became a transit point for troop movements due to its proximity to the front and very soon a hospital location. The first wounded arrived on August 20, and soon 1,800 of them were lying in hospitals and requisitioned schools. By the summer of 1915, the number rose to 2,700 wounded in 12 reserve hospitals. The direct effects of the war were not felt in Speyer. However, as in the rest of the country, the population suffered from hunger as the war continued. During the war years the Pfalz-Flugzeugwerke developed into the largest operation in Speyer .
There was little evidence of the revolutionary turmoil in the rest of the Reich in Speyer. At the suggestion of Mayor Moericke, a welfare committee was founded on November 9, 1918 , made up of himself, eight Social Democrats , four National Liberals , three members of the Center Party and two representatives of the Progressive People's Party . The committee called on the citizens to “do not practice Russian Bolshevism ”, but to seek changes calmly and prudently in peaceful ways. Public and private property should remain intact. A workers 'and soldiers' council was also formed in Speyer from three social democrats, an officer and a non-commissioned officer, and an executive committee of the workers 'and soldiers' councils of the Palatinate was established at the regional council. However, both institutions hardly appeared, so that the administration remained in the hands of the military and the city. The withdrawal of the German and Austro-Hungarian troops from the western front also took place over the Speyer Rhine crossing. On November 26, 1918, the 2nd Bavarian Pioneer Battalion withdrew from the city. At the end of the war there were 463 dead from the population of Speyer.
French occupation, separatism and the economic crisis
With the end of the First World War and the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine by France, Speyer was again a garrison town of the French in 1918. On December 5, 1918, approx. 2,400 men of the 51st Inf. Regiment and the 3rd Genius Battalion moved in according to the armistice agreement. Speyer became the seat of the French civil administration and later the district delegate of the Interallied Rhineland Commission . According to the Rhineland Agreement of June 28, 1919, Speyer remained subordinate to the German supervisory authorities, but in fact the French often exercised tighter controls. On July 4, 1919, Karl Leiling was elected Lord Mayor under the new Bavarian municipal electoral law.
As early as the end of 1918, the French occupying power under General Gérard specifically supported a movement led by the chemist Eberhard Haaß, who called itself "Free Palatinate" - together with several other separatist groups in the northern Rhineland. In the early summer of 1919 the Free Palatinate attempted a coup in Speyer for an autonomous Palatinate. This failed miserably, mainly due to the resistance of the Deputy District President Friedrich von Chlingensperg auf Berg (1860-1944), who could be sure of the majority support of the Palatinate parties. After a few hours, the badly prepared campaign was over.
In the following years there were further efforts to separate the Palatinate from Bavaria.
The leader of the separatists in the Palatinate was Franz Josef Heinz (1884 to 1924) from Orbis near Kirchheimbolanden, chairman of the free peasantry and member of the Speyer district council (DVP). Between October 6 and 10, 1923, the separatists took control of the cities of Kaiserslautern, Neustadt an der Haardt and Landau, and other cities in the Palatinate followed. On November 10, 200 insurgents came by train to Speyer and occupied the town hall, the post office, the government building and the district office. On November 11th, Heinz let the separatists flag fly from the government building and the next day he proclaimed the Palatinate Republic ( Autonomous Palatinate ) in the Association of the Rhenish Republic , which was immediately recognized by the French General de Metz.
While the new government was being established, the resistance was already being organized in Bavaria. The defense center had already been set up in Heidelberg in advance. Walter Antz from Zweibrücken, responsible for the violent defense against separatists, prepared an attack on Franz Josef Heinz with a secret Palatinate task force led by the lawyer Edgar Julius Jung (1894–1934). This only succeeded at the second attempt: on the evening of January 9, 1924, around 20 men who had come across the frozen Rhine stormed the dining room of the “Wittelsbacher Hof” in Speyer. They shot Heinz and two employees Sand and Fusshöler. The separatist movement then collapsed. A memorial for two of the assassins, Wiesmann and Hellinger, who died in an exchange of fire after the attack, still stands in the Speyer cemetery today. In addition, there is a memorial plaque at the Wittelsbacher Hof that commemorates the dead.
The population of Speyer had increased by 1000 during the war to 23,323 on October 8, 1919. The stock of apartments had not increased during this time and now the space required for the occupying power was added. In order to alleviate the large housing shortage, especially for those with lower incomes, the non-profit building cooperative (GBS) was established in 1919, which was the first to build 24 single-family row houses and three five-family houses in Peter-Drach-Strasse and Blaulstrasse. This was the first time that the built-up urban area began to jump to the west side of the railway line.
Further residential buildings followed: in 1925/26 the development was built in the area of Schützenstraße and Oberkämmerer, in 1927/28 in Eugen-Jäger-, Friedrich-Ebert- and Lina-Sommer-Straße and from 1929 in the garden paths. Up until the beginning of the Second World War, GBS had around 300 apartments. On the initiative of a construction consortium founded in 1922, a settlement in the Lenhart and at the Russenweiher in the south of the city was largely self-help. Private residential construction did not develop until 1924, mainly in the area between the railway line and the barracks, on both sides of Landauer Strasse. By 1925 Speyer had 25,609 inhabitants and in 1933 there were 27,718.
The Speyer economy went through a serious crisis in the twenties, in which many companies had to close. In addition to the general economic crises, the economic difficulties were caused by the occupation and the partial separation from the German economic area. The city awarded emergency works, such as the first sewer works, improvements in the road network and, in some cases, the excavation of the second port southeast of the city. Considerations for a new port went back to the pre-war years, but construction could not begin until 1920 and be completed in 1925. The settlement of the large tobacco company Brinkmann, which stored 10,000 t of tobacco at the new port (half of the German harvest), made the job market much easier.
Soon after the war the city took up efforts to build a permanent railway bridge over the Rhine in Speyer. From 1925 the Bavarian state government campaigned for it and in 1926 the project found support from the Reich Ministry of Labor. The Reichsbahn vehemently rejected the bridge, so that the work was delayed and only started in September 1933 for a single-track railway bridge.
In February 1921 the Palatinate State Library was founded . It was supposed to improve the supply of books, but an important motive for this was that the occupied Palatinate should be spiritually supported. It first opened in May 1923 in the Hospital Foundation building on the corner of Allerheiligenstrasse and Ludwigstrasse with 25,000 volumes. By the end of the Weimar period, the book inventory had grown to over 130,000. Also in 1921, the city launched the public library, which was opened at the beginning of 1924 in the building of the state library. In 1932, due to lack of space, it moved 12,000 volumes to Heydenreichstrasse.
The tense relationship with the French occupation began to normalize from 1924/25. By mid-1929 the French garrison had been reduced to 700. Most of the troops were withdrawn entirely in October and most of the confiscated buildings were returned the following winter. In 1929 Speyer celebrated the 400th anniversary of the protest. The occupation time for the III. Zone, to which Speyer belonged, officially ended on June 30, 1930, which was celebrated in Speyer. The monument to the fallen was unveiled in the market and a few days later the French monument from 1920, an obelisk with a Gallic rooster, was dismantled and mothballed in the cemetery. The 900th anniversary of the founding of the cathedral was celebrated in 1931.
As a result of the Great Depression in 1929, unemployment in Speyer rose to 10.4% of the population by July 31, 1932; in the summer of 1933 it rose again to 12.3%. The welfare burdens (social expenditures) of the city increased from one seventh to three seventh of the city budget and could only be covered by debts. On the basis of a Reich program of September 1931, 10% of the unemployed were to be housed in self-sufficient settlements that were to be built on the outskirts of cities with generous lots. The idea was quickly taken up in Speyer and in 1932 planning and construction began for 86 settler sites between Otterstadter and Mutterstadter Strasse, the nucleus for the Speyer-Nord district .
Speyer local election results in the 1920s
| Political party | 04/18/1920 (%, mandates) | 07.12.1924 (%, mandates) | December 8, 1929 (%, mandates) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) | 27.8 | 9 | 23.2 | 7th | 29.2 | 9 |
| Bavarian People's Party (BVP) | 27.7 | 8th | 25.5 | 8th | 28.7 | 9 |
| German People's Party (DVP) | 12.8 | 4th | 14.4 | 4th | 14.9 | 5 |
| German State Party (DDP / DStP) | 14.6 | 4th | 7.1 | 2 | 2.9 | 1 |
| USPD | 17.1 | 5 | - | - | - | - |
| Communist Party of Germany (KPD) | - | - | 15.7 | 5 | 5.9 | 1 |
| National Socialist German Workers' Party - (NSDAP) | - | - | - | - | 7.5 | 2 |
| Impartial | - | - | 14.1 | 4th | - | - |
| WP | - | - | - | - | 7.0 | 2 |
| Left KP | - | - | - | - | 3.9 | 1 |
Speyer election results 1919 to 1932 for the Landtag and Reichstag in%
( NV = National Assembly, RT = Reichstag, LT = Landtag)
| choice | SPD | BVP | KPD | DVP | DDP | USPD | DNVP | NSDAP | Others |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NV 01/19/1919 | 41.8 | 29.9 | - | 7.0 | 20.1 | 1.2 | - | - | - |
| LT 02.02.1919 | 42.3 | 30.2 | - | 5.5 | 21.1 | 0.9 | - | - | - |
| RT 06/20/1920 | 24.5 | 27.5 | 4.3 | 15.1 | 13.1 | 15.5 | - | - | - |
| LT 20.06.1920 | 22.5 | 28.3 | 4.5 | 14.9 | 13.8 | 16.0 | - | - | - |
| RT 05/04/1924 | 20.3 | 22.4 | 22.9 | 14.1 | 5.6 | - | - | 6.8 | 7.9 |
| LT 04.05.1924 | 19.8 | 22.5 | 22.6 | 14.4 | 7.0 | - | - | 5.4 | 8.3 |
| RT December 07, 1924 | 24.5 | 22.6 | 15.9 | 19.5 | 7.4 | 0.6 | 1.3 | 1.3 | 6.9 |
| RT May 20, 1928 | 32.1 | 27.3 | 6.3 | 14.2 | 4.7 | - | 2.5 | 3.1 | 9.8 |
| LT May 20, 1928 | 32.1 | 27.8 | 6.3 | 13.9 | 4.5 | 0.1 | 1.9 | 3.1 | 10.3 |
| RT 14.09.1930 | 27.5 | 27.6 | 9.9 | 10.0 | 2.8 | - | 0.6 | 12.2 | 9.4 |
| LT April 24, 1932 | 22.5 | 28.1 | 11.9 | 5.1 | - | - | 1.4 | 26.4 | 4.6 |
| RT July 31, 1932 | 27.8 | 26.7 | 11.1 | 3.0 | 0.4 | - | 1.4 | 27.1 | 2.5 |
| RT 11/06/1932 | 23.2 | 25.4 | 16.0 | 3.7 | 0.9 | - | 2.7 | 25.1 | 3.0 |
In the Reichstag and regional elections in 1924, it is noticeable that the KPD in Speyer was able to record a significantly higher share of the vote with 22.9 and 22.6% respectively than in the Reich with 12.6%. The National Socialists , who took part in the Reichstag elections for the first time this year, received a similarly high level of approval in Speyer with 6.8% as in the Reich with 6.6%. However, from 1930 the NSDAP in Speyer lagged significantly behind its Reich results in the Reichstag elections: 1930 by 6%, July 1932 by a good 10% and November 1932 by 8%. The support for the SPD in Speyer was mostly about 3% higher than in the Reich over the years, but overall it followed the trend of decreasing favor with the voters. Their share in Speyer fell from 41.8% in 1919 to 23.2% in 1932 (in the Reich 20.4%). The KPD's election result in the last elections was 16%, roughly the same as in the Reich with 16.9%. The election results of the BVP remained relatively stable from 1919 to 1932 with an average of around 25% of the votes.
The Nazis behaved relatively moderately in Speyer. The district office and the state police handled the right of assembly and association, apart from election campaign times, very tightly, so that marches and demonstrations were comparatively rare. The NSDAP had a big parade on June 16 and 17, 1932 with the SA and SS in the run-up to the elections; there were various gatherings with appearances by the Gauleiter Josef Bürckel and the Gau-SA-Führer Schwitzgiebel, and a torchlight procession.
When Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Speyerer Zeitung expressed concern that one should not be surprised "if the coming governmental actions have an extraordinary character and if Hitler does not treat his political opponents squeamishly" and hoped that it would not come to a party dictatorship. The attempt by the communists to organize a general strike in Speyer that same night was thwarted by the state police. On February 1, the NSDAP celebrated Hitler's accession to power with a torchlight procession through the city, with the SA men and the members of the Stahlhelm lingering particularly long in the strongholds of the SPD and KPD, Fischmarkt and Hasenpfuhl.
National Socialist rule and World War II
In the already no longer free Reichstag election on March 5, 1933 , the NSDAP achieved 46.5% in the Palatinate; in Speyer, with 30.2% of the vote, it received the lowest share in a Palatinate city. It was similarly low only in Frankenthal and Ludwigshafen am Rhein , while it received 44% and 49% in Kaiserslautern and Pirmasens and well over 50% in Neustadt , Zweibrücken and Landau .
At the same time, there were also staunch National Socialists and Nazi activists in Speyer. The long-time second mayor, Cornelius Bechtel, excelled with harassment against the Jews as early as the spring of 1933, and city commissioner Karl Delobelle caused intimidation and terror in the city in 1933/34; All of this under the eyes of Mayor Karl Leiling, who remained in office until 1943.
As early as February 14, 1933, the first house searches of KPD members in Speyer were carried out, later also of SPD members, BVP members, trade unionists, clergy, teachers and others. At 4 o'clock in the morning on March 10, 33 communist functionaries and nine Reichsbanner leaders were taken into so-called “ protective custody ”. The next day the newspaper reported on the request by SA members of the "Ehape" ( unified price stock corporation ) to only buy in German stores. On March 28, 1933, the city authorities were instructed to boycott Jewish shops; From March 31, 1933, Jewish shops were no longer allowed to fly black, white and red flags and on April 1, 1933, almost all Jewish shops were closed due to a call for a boycott .
With the “ Provisional Act to Align the Länder with the Reich ” of March 31, 1933, all city councils were dissolved at the same time.
Speyer belonged first to the Gau Rhineland; in 1935 this was merged with the Saarland to form the Saar-Palatinate Gau . The administrative seat of the district came to Neustadt an der Weinstrasse .
On April 3, 1933, a number of streets in Speyer were renamed: Rathenaustraße in Richard-Wagner-Straße, Am Wasserturm in Adolf-Hitler-Straße, Brückenallee in Hindenburgallee. The Jewish administrative inspector Sara Lehmann was dismissed. In 1938 streets were renamed again. Today's Friedrich-Ebert-Straße, which was renamed Hellinger-Wiesmann-Straße (assassin of Heinz Orbis) in 1928, was given the name Wilhelm-Gustlof-Straße. The name Hellinger-Wiesmann-Straße was taken over by Ludwigstraße, where the Wittelsbacher Hof is located. On this occasion it was merged with Königsstraße, which was located on Königsplatz, which is why the house numbers also changed. Königsplatz itself was renamed Josef-Bürckel-Platz in 1938 after the then Gauleiter Josef Bürckel .
In these weeks, the synchronization affected not only the economy and the regional synod, but also Palatinate art, the literary association, the trade unions, the press, the dairy industry and musicians' associations. On April 11, 1933, 16 Speyer clubs were banned a. a. the poultry breeding association, the tenant association, the workers' chess club. Jehovah's Witnesses were also banned .
The new city council on April 23, 1933 included nine NSDAP, six BVP, and five SPD members. At the first meeting on April 27, Delobelle responded to Leilings' welcoming speech: “Should the SPD dare to knock an NSDAP application under the table with the center, then he would immediately block this decision in his capacity as city commissioner and agree to it the supervisory authority enforce its cancellation. Arrange your behavior accordingly. ”In August 1933 the city council consisted only of National Socialists and the NSDAP city councilor Karl Delobelle was the actual ruler in the city. In the city council meeting on August 4, he stated that the NSDAP had sole responsibility in the city.
On April 26, 1933, the 2nd Mayor Bechtel ordered that Jews were only allowed to use the municipal bathing establishments at certain times. This was heavily criticized by the Speyerer Zeitung . On 3 May 1933 the course of the direct connection of were unions arrested 18 union leaders. On May 8, 1933, the "Day of Bavarian Youth", books from the school libraries in Speyer were burned on the market square. This happened two days before the great book burning in Berlin.
In April, 5,316 unemployed were registered in Speyer. On June 22, 1933, the Speyerer Zeitung publishing house was stormed by the National Socialists and the editor-in-chief Oswald Dobbeck was taken into “protective custody”. On June 27, it was reported that two editors-in-chief, one editor, six BVP city councilors, two master carpenters, a lawyer, a tailor, a leather dealer and a union secretary were currently detained. The entire BVP city council faction had been arrested. Dobbeck was released on June 29th.
In 1934, the municipal administration continued to be brought into line. The officials and employees were put under pressure to renounce their old party affiliations or to join Nazi formations.
After the remilitarization of the Rhineland , Speyer became a garrison town again on March 9, 1936. On the occasion of the Reichstag elections on March 29, 1936, the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate announced: “The Palatinate Protestant Church [...] asks the congregations to implore God's power and grace for the Führer to make the coming great decision. signed Diehl, regional bishop. "
In contrast to the eve of the First World War, there was no enthusiasm for war in the entire Reich despite Nazi propaganda . In Speyer there was even a noticeable increase in concern. Due to its location not far from the French border, people felt they were exposed to greater dangers despite the newly built Siegfried Line. In September 1938 the NSDAP noted that Speyer officials "in misjudgment of the actual political situation and in disregard of their special duty of loyalty to the state" had brought family members into the interior of the Reich for "security reasons" (in the original in quotation marks) and thus among the national comrades " very great excitement ”.
In 1938 the Rhine bridge was completed; it shouldn't last seven years.
In the pogroms on November 9, 1938 , the Speyer synagogue on Heydenreichstrasse was also burned down. It was cleared out by SA and SS men on the night of November 9th and 10th and set on fire by Adolf Horz and another accomplice, in which the library, valuable clothes, carpets and ritual objects were stolen. The fire brigade only made sure that the flames did not spread to the neighborhood. The Jewish cemetery was also devastated that night. The ruins of the synagogue were torn down the very next day; the costs were offset against the city's debts to the Jewish community.
As the Speyerians had feared, the city was the target of the first bombing raids during the invasion of France ; the first took place on June 5, 1940. The air raids were initially only flown at night; from April 1944 only tags. A total of 650 mine and high explosive bombs, 2000 stick bombs and 30 other bombs were dropped. About 85% of the population could be accommodated in air raid shelters , of which about 2000 in 40 public air raid shelters. Speyer experienced a total of 33 bombing attacks, but it escaped the large-scale bombings that numerous other cities in Germany experienced.
The targets in the urban area were the railway line to Heidelberg , the train station, the Rhine bridge (which was not hit), the Pfalz-Flugzeugwerke, the deaconess hospital and the Martin-Greif-Platz. The total damage for Speyer was estimated at 8 to 10%, with 15 residential houses suffering total losses and 36 serious damage. The city had 53 dead and 327 injured.
According to a list dated July 20, 1943, there were a total of 1,915 prisoners of war and forced civil workers in Speyer. The largest group was made up of 1,168 Soviet citizens, followed by 307 French and 268 Poles, most of whom were housed in assembly camps and in inhumane and most primitive hygienic conditions. One of them was the Kuhweide Eastern Workers' Camp. Since less than two million of the total of 5.7 million Russian prisoners survived, it can be assumed that a large number of them also perished in Speyer.
In Speyer and the surrounding area there was an attempt to organize resistance against the Nazi regime in 1942 : First, a group of anti-fascists was formed to support the family of the imprisoned Ernst Thälmann in Hamburg, which called itself Speyerer Kameradschaft . The group also considered a violent release and conspiratorial contacts with slave laborers and prisoners of war ensued.
Central people in this group were the married couple Jakob (1891–1945) and Emma Schultheis from Speyer, as well as Wilhelm Kreutz from Berghausen, the Polish forced laborer Stanislaus Peplinski and Elise Rohr (née Tremmel) from Waldsee, the partner of the resistance fighter Johannes , who was forcibly recruited to the Penal Division 999 Goat . The group was discovered in 1944; Jakob Schultheis and Stanislaus Peplinski were executed on March 19, 1945 in the Brandenburg penitentiary. Wilhelm Kreutz and many others did not survive the Nazi regime either.
On March 22, 1945 the combat commander wanted to defend the city down to the last man against the advancing American army. In the evening, the population was asked to leave the city, which caused panic reactions. The Nazi rule collapsed. The heads of the city administration moved across the Rhine in the wake of the withdrawing German troops. The following morning, a group of women demanded that the city be surrendered without a fight, and around noon the bridge over the Rhine was blown up. The city should not be defended after all and in the night of March 23rd to March 24th, 1945, the last German troops withdrew.
In the early morning of March 24th, a white flag was hoisted on the old gate and around 7 a.m. US troops moved into Speyer. They appointed Karl Leiling from retirement as acting mayor.
Speyer since 1945
Post-war years 1945 to 1955
Until the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in 1949, Speyer was in the French zone of occupation and once again became a French garrison town and the tricolor was hoisted on the old gate. Before the end of the war, General Charles de Gaulle held a parade of troops in front of the cathedral on March 31, 1945.
In November, the French made the total delivery obligation for milk, wheat, rye, barley, oilseeds, potatoes, fruit and vegetables. On November 16, 1945, socialists, communists and democrats held the first political event after the war in the old town hall. The winter of 1945/46 was very hard for the population due to the lack of food and fuel.
Of the 469 civil servants in the city at the end of the war, 40 civil servants, 40 salaried employees and three workers left as part of the denazification process . The city commissioner Karl Delobelle, appointed by the Nazis in 1933, had died in the war. Mayor Rudolf Trampler, who was also appointed by the Nazis in 1943, was able to continue receiving his pension payments until the end of his life. In 1946 Speyer became an independent city, but was no longer the seat of government. The first free elections were held on September 15, 1946 and Paul Schäfer became honorary mayor. At that time there were already 600 refugees living in the city. As early as May 15, 1947, at the instigation of the French military government, an "École Supérieure d'Administration" began teaching in the former teacher training college on Johannesstrasse. The aim of the "Academy for Administrative Sciences" was to attract a new generation of democratic administrators along the lines of the ENA, which had just been founded . As of April 1, 1950, the Academy was constituted by the Rhineland-Palatinate state law as a university for administrative sciences and joint financing was regulated by administrative agreements with the federal government and the states. This post-university university with its important special library occupies a unique position in Germany.
From September 9, 1948, a ferry service was set up to replace the blown Rhine bridge. From January 1, 1949, the ration rates in the French zone of the bizone were aligned and on February 25, 1949, Dr. Paulus Skopp as Lord Mayor. In 1953 the new construction of the station was completed. The craftsman's fountain with the pretzel boy was built on Königsplatz. As a sign of reconciliation between Germany and France, the St. Bernard Church in Wormser Strasse was built in 1953/54 with German and French funds . Peter Altmeier , Robert Schuman , the French High Commissioner and Ambassador André François-Poncet , Konrad Adenauer and Heinrich von Brentano took part in the laying of the foundation stone on August 23, 1953 . The church was consecrated by Bishop Joseph Wendel (Speyer), Albert Stohr (Mainz), Joseph-Jean Heintz (Metz), Jean-Julien Weber (Strasbourg) and Isidor Markus Emanuel (Speyer).
In the winter of 1954/55 Speyer was hit by a flood of the Rhine. The river reached its highest water level on January 17th at 8.67 m. The city had to declare a state of emergency, demand that all men over 18 years of age be able to work to secure the Rhine dams, and the French and American military were asked for help. The cathedral garden up to the Heidentürmchen, fish market, wood market, Lauergasse, Pistoreigasse, Mörschgasse and Halbes Dach were under water; 650 houses were damaged by the flood. In 1955 a large open-air swimming pool was built in the Kipfelsau near the Rhine.
With the end of the occupation regime on May 6, 1955, the occupation troops became friendly stationing troops. Over 1,000 soldiers, almost the same number of family members and numerous military properties shaped the cityscape for another 43 years until 1997. There were two French barracks, one between the Rhine bridge and the airfield (Foreign Legion Spahis) and one in Rulandstrasse (Normand barracks, from 1973 10 . Engineer Regiment). There were other military installations in Reffental, in the corner of the B9 with Landauer Strasse and between Iggelheimer Strasse and the railway line. A district for members of the French military, the Cité de France, with a school, kindergarten, shops, post office and cinema was created between Landauer Straße and the railway line.
Years of construction 1955 to 1965
From around the mid-1950s, there was a lot of expansion activity in Speyer. On the one hand, this concerned the expansion of the settlement areas and the construction of numerous public buildings. Due to the influx of refugees and displaced persons, the economic upswing of the 1950s, 60s and 70s and the increased influx after reunification, the population of Speyer doubled from 1945 to 2008. In these decades, the city experienced its largest growth spurt in terms of area. The housing situation was extremely tense in the early 1950s due to the wave of refugees, and the city council called on citizens to voluntarily provide housing to avoid coercive measures. Not only did the refugees claim living space, the occupying power also confiscated 194 apartments and 165 single rooms for their own purposes. By 1951 there were already 3,500 displaced persons living in Speyer and by 1953 there were at times ten camps with 650 people and 1,600 people looking for accommodation.
First of all, large new building areas were built in the west, and Speyer-Nord was also expanded. With the completion of the high-rise building for the Rhineland-Palatinate State Insurance Agency in 1960, numerous office spaces in the city became apartments again. From 1949 to the end of the 1970s, an average of 400 new apartments were built each year; in 1960 there were 520. The number of apartments rose from 7,934 (1946), over 14,607 (1967) to 20,591 (1987).
Urban development in the north-west and north was largely at the expense of forest areas. These fell from 918 ha after the war to 717 ha in 1986.
In 1956 the new Rhine bridge was opened to traffic. The Catholic Edith Stein School was set up on Langensteinweg in 1957 and the state advanced school for boys on Dudenhofer Straße. In 1958 the new vocational school in Speyer-West was completed, the employment office was built in Bahnhofstraße and the first Speyer department store of the Anker company (later Kaufhof) was built in Maximilianstraße, including the former synagogue site. In 1951, the city was still considering setting up a parking lot on the site of the former synagogue. In 1959, Speyer concluded twinning agreements with the cities of Chartres and Spalding .
In 1960 the high-rise building of the State Insurance Company (LVA) Rhineland-Palatinate was completed and a new building for the University of Administrative Sciences was built in the west of the city (architect: Sep Ruf ). Roman Herzog , who later became Federal President, was Professor of Political Science and Politics from 1969 to 1973, Rector in 1971/72 and Honorary Professor in 1984 at this school. In 1961 the district office was built (district administration, today the Rhineland-Palatinate Court of Auditors ). In 1963, Speyer became the armed forces base for an engineer battalion. The barracks were built in the far north of the city with a branch in Reffental. In addition, the new town hall was inaugurated this year. The eleven refinery was located in the area of the new port. Construction of the Hans-Purrmann and Friedrich-Magnus-Schwerd high schools began in 1965
Recent history
In 1968 the first and in 1969 the second section of the bypass road was put into service; the entire bypass (federal highways 9 and 39) was completed in 1972. In 1975 the new motorway bridge (A 61) over the Rhine was put into service. In 1968 the modern sewage treatment plant also went into operation. At the end of the 1970s, the old foundation hospital building was demolished and replaced by a new building from 1980 to 1985. In 1969 the State Speyer College with dormitory was built in Speyer .
In the administrative reform of 1972, after Speyer, the only city in Rhineland-Palatinate was not incorporated. The city boundaries have not changed since 1751 (when the Dudenhofen district was ceded). With the development of the residential area "Vogelgesang" from the end of the 1970s in the south of the city, the last larger new district in the outer area was created. The development in the area thus largely reached its limits; Inner-urban areas, especially industrial and military fallow areas, gained greater importance and were subsequently developed into residential areas. A large unused area was z. B. the site of the last Speyer brewery (Storchenbrauerei) and the neighboring Kurpfalz sparkling wine cellar, on which a residential area was built in the early 1990s.
In the 1970s, the establishment of a pedestrian zone in Maximilianstrasse was discussed for a long time. In 1977 Korngasse and in 1979 Rossmarktstraße were redesigned as a purely pedestrian area. Although Maximilianstrasse was given the character of a pedestrian zone, it is still passable for residents and the city bus. Postplatz and Gilgenstrasse were also redesigned in this context. The old town was largely renovated in the 1970s (e.g. fish market, wood market).
In 1986 another monastery settled in Speyer. The generous Carmelite convent "Mary, Mother of the Church" was built on Germansberg . The renovation work was completed in 1990 and Speyer celebrated its 2000th anniversary with numerous events. On this occasion, the Bundespost issued a special postage stamp with a stylized city silhouette. In 1995 the 700 year old ferry connection to Rheinhausen was re-established after a 29 year break.
Between Dudenhofer Straße, Schützenpark and Speyerbach, the Speyer-Südwest district developed for education and public institutions. There you will find the Sankt Vincentius Hospital, the Sankt Dominikus Monastery with the Nikolaus von Weis School (Realschule plus and Gymnasium), the Hans-Purrmann-Gymnasium and the Friedrich-Magnus-Schwerd-Gymnasium, the University of Administrative Sciences , the new building of the state library with the state archive, the Speyer College, the thermal power station and the agricultural research institute.
In 1997 the French armed forces withdrew their units from Speyer. The sudden vacancy of apartments in the Cité de France led to a considerable easing of the tension on the Speyer housing market. The Normand barracks were converted and supplemented for residential purposes and the area of the barracks at the airfield was taken over by the Technik Museum Speyer . The military area on Iggelheimer Straße was converted for commercial purposes and the areas in Reffental were taken over by the Bundeswehr.
In the post-war years, there was a noticeable change in the employment structure. By 1985 the percentage of people employed in agriculture had fallen from 5 to 0.4%; in industry and crafts it fell from 48 to 42.5%, in trade and transport from 17 to 13.2%. Instead, the proportion of civil servants and employees rose from 32.1 to 53%. The last number reflects the importance of the city for administration (authorities) and education. The settlement of the companies such as Grünzweig + Hartmann, Elopak GmbH or the post office could not compensate for the loss caused by the closure of the following Speyer companies:
- Cotton spinning mill (founded in 1889), today a museum depot
- Celluloid factory Franz Kirrmeier (founded 1897) 1969.
- Confectionery factory Münch & Arnold 1969.
- the last Speyer brewery Schwartz-Storchen in 1970.
- Dairy 1973.
- Salamander shoe factory (ROVO) 1975.
- Sugar factory desire 1976.
- eleven refinery in 1984.
- Downsizing at Siemens from 2,700 in 1976 to 1,300 in 1987 and finally the company is sold
- Ashland Chemical Company (carbon black factory).
The new port was expanded for the eleven refinery and provided with a second basin. After the refinery was closed, cargo handling fell from almost 3.5 million tons in 1980 to 0.67 million tons in 1985.
Heinkel acquired the former Pfalz-Flugzeugwerke to produce the famous Heinkel scooter there, and in 1956 the plant employed 280 people. With the founding of the United Flight Technical Works (VFW) and the merger to VFW-Fokker, later Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB), it developed into a large company in the 1960s and 1970s. a. Military helicopters serviced and manufactured aircraft parts for Airbus . In connection with the restructuring in the European aircraft industry, there were also job cuts and considerations to relocate operations. The company was taken over by the workforce in 1997 and later sold to an American investor. Today the company operates as PFW Aerospace GmbH and is a subsidiary of Airbus.
Foreign state guests in Speyer:
- 29.03.1984 Juvénal Habyarimana , President of Rwanda
- June 9th, 1985 Zhao Ziyang , Prime Minister of the People's Republic of China
- 09/11/1986 Jacques Chirac , French Prime Minister
- 05/04/1987 Pope John Paul II
- 04/30/1989 Margaret Thatcher , Prime Minister of Great Britain
- August 18, 1989 Francesco Cossiga , President of Italy
- 11/10/1990 Mikhail Gorbachev , President of the Soviet Union
- 11/18/1990 George HW Bush , US President
- 06/16/1991 Brian Mulroney , Prime Minister of Canada
- October 15, 1993 Václav Havel , President of the Czech Republic
- January 23rd, 1994 Édouard Balladur , French Prime Minister
- May 9th, 1994 Boris Yeltsin , President of the Russian Federation
- 1994 Bill Clinton , US President
- 01/10/1995 John Major , Prime Minister Great Britain
- 07/05/1996 Jean-Claude Juncker , Prime Minister Luxembourg
- 15.10.1996 José María Aznar , Spanish Prime Minister
- 07/17/1997 King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain
- 03/23/1999 Prince Hitachi , brother of the Japanese emperor
literature
- Caspar Ehlers : Metropolis Germaniae. Studies on the importance of Speyer for royalty (751–1250). Göttingen 1996, ISBN 3-525-35442-8 .
- Caspar Ehlers: Spiritual central locations between liturgy, architecture, praise of God and the rulers. Limburg and Speyer. Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-525-35309-X .
- Christoph Lehmann : Chronica of the free realm city of Speyer . First edition. Rosen, Frankfurt am Main 1612.
- Christoph Lehmann: Chronica of the free imperial city Speier . Frankfurt am Main 1698.
- Carl Weiss: History of the city of Speier . Gilardone, Speyer 1876. (digitized version)
- Fritz Klotz: Speyer, a little city history . (Contributions to the history of the city of Speyer, issue 2). District group Speyer of the Historical Society of the Palatinate, 1971.
- City of Speyer (Hrsg.): History of the city of Speyer. Volume 1-3. Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-17-007522-5 .
- Ferdinand Schlickel : Speyer. From the Salians to today. 1000 years of city history . Hermann G. Klein Verlag, Speyer 2000, ISBN 3-921797-60-8 .
- Sabine Happ: City development on the Middle Rhine. The leadership groups from Speyer, Worms and Koblenz until the end of the 13th century . Böhlau-Verlag, Cologne a. a. 2002, ISBN 3-412-12901-1 .
- Hans Ammerich : Small history of the city of Speyer . G. Braun Buchverlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7650-8367-9 .
- Johannes Bruno : Fates of Speyer Jews from 1800 to 1980 (series of publications by the city of Speyer, volume 12). Speyer 2000, DNB 960687246 .
- Hans Ammerich: The diocese of Speyer and its history. Volume 1. From the beginning to the end of the Salian period (1125). Kehl am Rhein 1998, ISBN 3-927095-36-2 , p. 20.
- H. Thieme, R. Sommer, S. Wolfe: The big book of styles. Volume 5. The Romanesque. Reinhard Welz Vermittler Verlag, Mannheim 2005, ISBN 3-938622-53-9 . (Scan of the chapter on early Christianity in Speyer)
Web links
- Remembering in Speyer 1933–1945
- Archival evidence about the Speyer cathedral chapter, its library, and the codex containing the compilation 'notitia dignitatum' (Cnd)
Individual evidence
- ^ Sabine Schleichert: The city constitution of Speyer and Worms in the Hohenstaufen era. A comparison, thesis, 1992.
- ^ History of the city of Speyer. Volume 1. Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-17-007522-5 .
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from June 29, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ The identity of the dead in this type of princely grave is impossible to define, which is why the archaeologists have given the name "Untersiebenbrunngruppe". See Untersiebenbrunn .
- ^ Franz Joseph Mone : History and description of Speyer . Oswald, 1817, p. 93 ( full text in Google Book Search).
- ^ A b Wolfgang Eger : Speyer street names. A lexicon. Hermann G. Klein Verlag, Speyer 1985.
- ↑ https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/1161/4/Fesser_all.pdf , p. 132ff
- ↑ a b Diocese of Speyer
- ↑ a b Sabine Happ: Becoming a town on the Middle Rhine. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne Weimar Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-412-12901-1 .
- ^ Alfred Haverkamp: German history. Volume 2. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7632-2992-2 , p. 186.
- ↑ Friedrich Prinz: German history. Volume 1. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-7632-2991-4 , p. 323.
- ^ Ferdinand Schlickel: Speyer. From the Salians to today. Hermann G. Klein Verlag, Speyer 2000.
- ^ A b c Caspar Ehlers, Helmut Flachenecker: German royal palaces: Spiritual central locations between liturgy, architecture, praise of God and rulers: Limburg and Speyer, Max Planck Institute for History. Volume 6, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005, ISBN 3-525-35309-X .
- ^ Ferdinand Schlickel: Speyer. From the Salians to today. Hermann G. Klein Verlag, Speyer 2000, p. 14.
- ↑ The Empire of the Salians 1024–1125. Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Sigmaringen 1992, ISBN 3-7995-4140-3 .
- ^ Ferdinand Schlickel: Speyer. From the Salians to today. Hermann G. Klein Verlag, Speyer 2000, p. 17.
- ↑ Sabine Happ: City development on the Middle Rhine. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne Weimar Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-412-12901-1 , p. 120.
- ^ Günter Stein: City on the river, Speyer and the Rhine. Zechner, 1989, pp. 35/36. (Mention of Frisians and Jews as long-distance traders in the high Middle Ages), ISBN 978-3-87928-892-2 .
- ^ The great letter of freedom from Charles V ( Memento from December 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ 900 years of civil liberty ( memento from December 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) on speyer.de
- ↑ Dieter Berg: Richard the Lionheart. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2007, ISBN 978-3-534-14511-9 , pp. 194-198.
- ^ Alfred Haverkamp: German history. Volume 2. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7632-2992-2 , p. 288.
- ^ Alfred Haverkamp: German history. Volume 2. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7632-2992-2 , p. 314/318.
- ^ Alfred Haverkamp: German history. Volume 2. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7632-2992-2 , p. 253.
- ↑ Info on kloster-st-magdalena-speyer.de
- ^ Alfred Haverkamp: German history. Volume 2, Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7632-2992-2 , p. 298.
- ↑ Website of the diocese of Speyer on the chair brothers ( Memento from January 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Archival evidence about the Speyer cathedral chapter, its library, and the codex containing the Compilation 'notitia dignitatum' (Cnd) ( Memento from May 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Sabine Happ: City development on the Middle Rhine. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne Weimar Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-412-12901-1 , pp. 188-189.
- ↑ Sabine Happ: City development on the Middle Rhine. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne Weimar Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-412-12901-1 , p. 152.
- ↑ Hannah Kronenberger: The struggle for imperial immediacy in Würzburg in the 13th century - discussed on the basis of the documents from 1261 and 1265. Advanced seminar paper, 2007.
- ↑ Sabine Happ: City development on the Middle Rhine. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne Weimar Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-412-12901-1 , p. 196.
- ↑ Zeno.org: Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, Volume 18. Leipzig 1909, pp. 721–722. Speyer [2]
- ^ Ferdinand Schlickel: Speyer. From the Salians to today. Hermann G. Klein Verlag, 2000, ISBN 3-921797-60-8 .
- ↑ Horst Rabe: German history. Volume 4, Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7632-2994-9 , p. 211.
- ↑ Horst Rabe: German history. Volume 4. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7632-2994-9 , p. 214.
- ^ Goethe University Frankfurt am Main: Jüdisches Lexikon: JURISDICTION OVER JUDES
- ^ Hans Ammerich: Brief history of the city of Speyer . 1st edition. G. Braun Buchverlag, Karlsruhe 2008, ISBN 978-3-7650-8367-9 , p. 90-102 .
- ↑ alt-bramstedt.de: Butenschön, Johann Friedrich ( Memento from January 23, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ a b Bavarian historical lexicon: Speyerer Zeitung / Neue Speyerer Zeitung , the history of the Speyerer Zeitung
- ↑ http://www.wirtschaftsgeschichte-rlp.de/az/s/schwartz-storchen-ag.html
- ↑ see also Charles B. McDonald: The Last Offensive, Chapter XII, Washington: GPO, 1973, p. 263 f .: Chapter XII: The Saar-Palatinate
- History of the city of Speyer. Volume 1, Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-17-007522-5 .
- History of the city of Speyer. Volume II, Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-17-008037-7 .
- History of the city of Speyer. Volume 3, Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-17-010490-X .