Habsburg Post (1490–1556)

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The emergence of a transnational postal network is closely linked to the history of the Habsburg emperors and the rise of the Taxis family, which have been called Thurn und Taxis since 1650 , and can only be understood if the historical background is taken into account.

requirements

Since ancient times, great empires such as Persia , Rome and China have used exchange stations for accelerated communication. In fixed stations (posts), messengers or travelers could change horses, or documents or other objects such as jewelry or gold were carried in sacks by footmen or mail riders . Organizing such relays was expensive. Roads had to be built and stations with staff and horses had to be provided.

After the end of the Roman Empire, it was a long time before there were horse changing stations in Europe again. In the 13th century it was initially hostels on the streets where travelers could rent horses with an escort to accelerate their movement. In the 15th century, courier companies were established in Rome and Venice that set up horse changing stations. During this time, some countries in Europe began to set up relay routes to carry messages and travelers. The Duchy of Milan organized the first horse relays at the end of the 14th century. In the second half of the 15th century, Louis XI. Horse changing stations in France.

The postal system under Maximilian I.

The beginnings

Homage to the secular and clerical classes (including the Pope!), Illumination by Petrus Almaire around 1515
Mention of Janetto, Johann Baptista and Franz von Taxis in the Innsbruck Rait books 1490

The first state news bulletins in German-speaking countries began in March 1490. Maximilian , the only son of Emperor Friedrich III. , was elected German king in 1486 with the help of his father and in spring 1490 had taken over the rule of Tyrol from his uncle Siegmund , who had no legitimate heirs. Maximilian made Innsbruck his main residence and from there he had the first relay with Felleisen, combined with a change of rider and horse in the Burgundian Netherlands , because his underage son Philipp was brought up in Mechelen . Two other courier lines with horse changing stations led to Rome and the French royal court, where his underage daughter Margarethe lived. The first war relay rode at short notice from August 1490. After the death of Matthias Corvinus , Maximilian applied for the Hungarian crown and failed. Thereupon he conquered the Austrian territories with Vienna and Styria , which had been lost to Hungary until 1495, in a first campaign .

Since Maximilian did not have the financial means for his own postal network, he engaged the Italian Janetto de Tassis to organize and run the relay . This came from a well-known courier family from Cornello near Bergamo . After taking over the office, Janetto brought in his brother Francesco ( Franz von Taxis ) and his nephew Johann Baptista von Taxis .

In Innsbruck, the family name was first Germanized into "Dachs", a little later converted into "Taxis" and changed to "von Taxis" in 1512 after receiving the simple letter of nobility. The Brussels family branch received the title of imperial baron in 1608, the title of imperial count in 1624 and the title of imperial prince in 1696, after a name extension in "von Thurn und Taxis" approved by the emperor. Abroad, the family continued under the name "de Tassis".

Organization and structure

Janetto commissioned the owners of hostels and ferries to keep horses ready for the royal couriers at regular intervals. For every horse change, the couriers paid the hostel owners a previously agreed price. Such a system only worked when there were enough couriers or mail travelers to change horses.

Many members of the Taxis family were postmasters and couriers in the Habsburg service from 1490. The frequent financial difficulties of their clients forced the family to develop additional sources of income. For example, the members secretly sold messages against payment, transported letters for outsiders and gave the banks between Antwerp and Rome the right to change horses for their couriers.

The regular mail delivery with riders on the Dutch postal route ended as early as 1491 because the court chamber in Innsbruck stopped making payments due to lack of funds. From 1492 to 1500, however, there were again Felleisenlinien from Innsbruck to the Reichstag, but these were looked after by local postmasters.

After Maximilian married Bianca Maria Sforza , a niece of Ludovico Sforza , in 1494 , the Duke of Milan took over the costs of the relay from Milan to the empire until 1500. After his release from guardianship in August 1494, Philip, the new Duke of Burgundy, also contributed to the running of the Dutch postal route.

Foundation of a Burgundian-Dutch headquarters under Franz von Taxis

Franz von Taxis, contemporary painting

Philip married the Spanish Infanta Juana on October 20, 1496 . His first son Karl was born in Ghent on February 24, 1500 . Since the Spanish heir to the throne had died, Philip intensified his efforts over the next few years to secure his son's claim to inheritance in Spain and France. To do this, he needed a cross-border courier service. For this reason he appointed Franz de Tassis as the Burgundian postmaster on March 1, 1501.

After the death of Queen Isabella of Castile in November 1504, Philip became King of Castile as a representative of his insane wife. For the political coordination with Maximilian, the French king, Ferdinand of Aragon and Castile, Philip needed more news relay.

In January 1505 Philip signed a postal contract with Franz de Tassis in Brussels. It stipulated that Philipp would pay for the relay lines up to Maximilian's whereabouts. Franz was also primarily responsible for setting up the new routes. As a postmaster, he received an annual flat rate, no individual bills were required. There was a dispute with King Ferdinand of Aragon, who ruled in Spain, about the claim to inheritance of Philip's children . Philip could not take power in Castile until the end of April 1506 and died in September of the same year. The postal contract retained its validity, but not the annual flat rate and the postal network.

The time until Maximilian's death

After Philip's death, Maximilian alone determined the lines. His daughter Margarethe, who had appointed Maximilian as Dutch governor, repeatedly refused to make payments despite the reduced lump sum. From 1507 Maximilian relocated his military activities to Italy. The main destination was Venice. After an imperial coronation by the Pope had failed, Maximilian was proclaimed "Emperor Elect" in Trento in 1508 . The imperial nobility and the Pope confirmed this "coronation".

Janetto had sided with the city-state in the war against Venice in 1508, therefore fell out of favor with the emperor and was imprisoned in 1509.

In 1512 Franz and his brothers, including the imprisoned Janetto, as well as Johann Baptista and his brothers Maffeo and Simon, received the simple letter of nobility. Even Gabriel in Innsbruck was allowed to adorn himself with a “from”. Two years later, the taxi couriers Bartholomäus , Serafin , Hieronymus and Christoph , as well as his son Anton, received the "von". When awarding titles of nobility, the Habsburgs also later behaved generously towards taxis. Nevertheless, they did not reach the next level of nobility, the imperial barons' status, until 1608. In 1513, the Innsbruck court chamber accused Gabriel von Taxis of the forbidden foreign transport of letters and Johann Baptista von Taxis of incorrect accounting. The subsequent investigation was put down by Maximilian in 1515. Franz also organized further with Johann Baptista and the Innsbruck postmaster Gabriel the messaging and the courier service of Maximilian. The financial difficulties did not end until after the death of Ferdinand of Aragon in 1516.

Changes under Charles as King of Spain

Maximilian's grandson Karl was proclaimed King of Spain in Brussels at the age of sixteen. He immediately took over the command of the Burgundian post and had new lines set up to France, Spain and via Innsbruck to Rome and Naples. The postal contract with Franz and Johann Baptista von Taxis also regulated payment.

After the death of Franz von Taxis in 1517, Charles again signed a postal contract with Johann Baptista v. Taxis from. The flat rate was reduced because the relay from Brussels to Rome and Naples was canceled.

The postal system under Charles V

The imperial postal routes have not yet been opened for private correspondence

In January 1519, Emperor Maximilian died. On June 28, 1519, the electors in Frankfurt unanimously elected his grandson Karl in absentia as German-Roman king. In 1520, Karl was crowned king in Aachen and, like Maximilian before him, was proclaimed “Emperor Chosen”. The Burgundian-Spanish Post has now become an Imperial Spanish Post. This post was organized on a decentralized basis. The main headquarters was headed from 1517 by Johann Baptista von Taxis in Brussels. In addition, from 1518 there was an independent post office in Madrid under Maffeo de Tassis and a Spanish post office in Rome under Simon von Taxis . This was followed by a post office in Venice from 1521 under David von Taxis and from 1527 the post offices in Rome and Milan in personal union under Simon von Taxis. From 1543 further imperial post offices were added in Antwerp (Anton von Taxis) and Augsburg (Seraphin I von Taxis). It was a transnational transmission of messages that only served Habsburg interests and could not be used by the public. On November 6th, 1520, Johann Baptista received a letter from Charles V from Cologne, where a ban on outside transport was issued.

The opening for private correspondence

After a long stay in Spain from May 1522 to August 1529 and an intermediate stay in Italy (coronation 1530), Charles V returned to the German Empire and from 1531 to the Netherlands. Now the post offices in the Netherlands have also been manned with local postholders and their legal position has been improved. In place of a ban, there was the tolerance of the carriage of letters outside the company. This was increasingly used on the Dutch route.

The establishment of the first territorial post as an independent court post

Karl's brother Ferdinand , who was born on March 10, 1503, was raised in Spain. He did not come to Brabant until 1518, married the Hungarian king's daughter Anna in 1521 and took over the administration of the five Austro-Habsburg duchies and the state of Württemberg in 1522. In 1523 he founded his own territorial post office and made Gabriel von Taxis from Innsbruck his first postal coordinator. He called this territorial post "Hofpost", and this is how the first regional post office in the German Empire was established. In a postal instruction, the section of the Dutch line between Trient, Bozen, Innsbruck, Augsburg, Stuttgart and Rheinhausen was also operated as a court postal line. The different uses were contractually regulated by cost sharing. Branch lines went to Vienna, to Freiburg im Breisgau and to the main residence in Ensisheim in Alsace . In these stations, there were long-term postkeepers for the first time.

Ferdinand became King of Bohemia and Hungary in 1526. After his brother Karl was crowned emperor by the pope in 1530, the electors elected him German king in 1531. His court mail served only dynastic purposes and not the general public.

The ban on private mail transport in 1545

For the time being, the growing public interest in correspondence was only satisfied by the municipal messenger services, market ships and the very widespread butcher's mail .

From 1540 the imperial taxis headquarters in Brussels increased their efforts to win additional private customers for the Dutch postal route. Emperor Karl had recognized that it was easier to track down spies if foreign letters were checked by the Taxis Post.

On December 21, 1540, the post offices in Bobenheim , Diedelsheim and Rheinhausen were transferred to the brothers Seraphin I and Bartholomäus von Taxis and opened for private correspondence. On June 4, 1543, the Emperor Seraphin confirmed the award and extended it to the post offices of Augsburg and Roßhaupten near Scheppach .

On December 31, 1543 Anton von Taxis became postmaster in Antwerp. This was followed by an imperial decree on May 8, 1545, which forbade private individuals and merchants in the Netherlands to send letters and parcels abroad by changing horses for their own account. This gave the Taxis family a monopoly on the international private transport of letters from the Netherlands.

The religious conflicts in the German Empire led to the Schmalkaldic War (1545–1550) and a prince uprising , which was only settled in the Augsburg Religious Peace of 1555.

Denominational disputes

In 1546 the Protestant council of Augsburg went into opposition to the emperor. The city fortifications were expanded and the post office in front of the city gate was torn down. After Augsburg had submitted to the emperor again, the Füssen postmaster Innocent v. Taxis managed the imperial post office in Augsburg between 1547 and 1550 and made sure that the city rebuilt the destroyed post house. The Imperial Spanish post office in Augsburg was again administered by Seraphin I from 1550.

At the beginning of 1551, Brussels opened a regular relay post once a week in both directions between Antwerp, Brussels and Augsburg. This was the first regular mail line in which certain departure and arrival dates were adhered to and the beginning of an organized correspondence that continues to this day.

After Seraphin's death in 1556, his brother Bartholomew's two sons were to succeed him. However, Georg waived in favor of his underage brother Seraphin II . on the office. The post office was leased to court postmaster Christoph von Taxis for six years until Seraphin came of age .

On August 8, 1556, Charles V resigned as emperor. He left it to his brother Ferdinand to determine the time and place of the succession.

Further development:

Literature (selection)

  • Uli Braun, in: Archive for German Postal History. 2/1990, pp. 6-9 on the Memminger Chronicle
  • Wolfgang Behringer : Thurn and Taxis. Munich 1990, ISBN 3-492-03336-9
  • Wolfgang Behringer: In the sign of Mercury. Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-525-35187-9
  • Martin Dallmeier: Sources on the history of the European postal system. Kallmünz 1977, 2 volumes
  • Eduard Effenberger: History of the Austrian Post. Vienna 1913
  • Eduard Effenberger: From old postal files. Vienna 1918
  • Christine Kainz, in: Archive for German Postal History. 1/79, pp. 111-134
  • Ludwig Kalmus: World History of the Post. Vienna 1937
  • Ernst Kießkalt: The creation of the post. Bamberg 1930
  • Otto Lankes: The post office in Augsburg…. Dissertation, Munich 1914
  • Eduard Leitner, in: Archive for German Postal History. 2/80, pp. 32-53
  • Fritz Ohmann: The beginnings of the postal system and the taxis. Leipzig 1909
  • Horst Rabe: Germany 1500–1600. Munich 1989
  • Joseph Rübsam: Johann Baptista von Taxis. Freiburg 1889
  • Ernst-Otto Simon: The postal course from Rheinhausen to Brussels over the centuries , in: Archive for German Postal History 1/1990, pp. 14–41
  • Hermann Wiesflecker: Maximilian I. Munich / Vienna 1991

Web links

See also