Hans Heberle

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Hans Heberle (* 1597 in Neenstetten ; † 1677 ) was a Swabian shoemaker, farmer and chronicler of the Thirty Years' War . His autobiographical "Zeytregister" is considered an important " ego document " of the 17th century in historical studies .

Life

Hans Heberle was born in the spring of 1597 as the son of a shoemaker in Neenstetten on the southern edge of the Swabian Alb , north of the city of Ulm . His mother died when he was four years old. He had two biological siblings, three maternal step-siblings and nine paternal step-siblings from another marriage of the father.

He went to school, probably the only child in the family, and was able to read and write. At the age of 14 he began an apprenticeship as a shoemaker in his father's workshop and later went on a hike , which he extended to the area between the Franconian Alb and the Swabian Alb. In the summer of 1622 he returned to his homeland. Before he got married, Heberle acquired a mercenary estate (with a house, farmyard , barn, garden, herb garden and a quarter of a community field) in Weidenstetten , a village 15 kilometers north of Ulm, where he started a small farm as a "sideline farmer" in addition to his shoemaking trade led. During this time, he had to do military service in the state committee several times.

He married in October 1627. His marriage to his wife Anna gave birth to ten children, seven of whom died immediately after birth. In the summer of 1634 the couple still had five children. Other children died in childhood during the Thirty Years' War. Two smaller siblings, including three-year-old son Thomas, died in Ulm in 1634, as did Heberle's stepmother, his brother and three sisters of the plague . The seven-year-old daughter Chatreina and the son Johannes died in autumn 1635, probably of starvation during the great famine, while Heberle even traveled as far as Augsburg to get cheap bread for the family.

When his father died of the plague epidemic in April 1635, Hans Heberle took over the family business in Neenstetten. Of his ten children, only two survived. One of his daughters, who had seen the end of the Thirty Years' War, died in childbed . Heberle, who “had achieved modest prosperity with his handicrafts and small-scale farming”, died in 1677 at the age of almost 80 years.

Heberle's "Zeytregister"

After he had become an eyewitness to the Great Cometary Apparition at the end of November 1618 , Heberle, driven by dark premonitions, began at the age of 21 to write a chronicle, which initially only consisted of individual notes. Heberle was encouraged in his intention to write down his experiences as well as the important events of his time by the famous "Comet sermon" that the Ulm Superintendent Konrad Dieterich had given on the second Sunday of Advent in 1618.

From 1634 onwards, Heberle began to copy the chronicle and continued it regularly. The last entry dates from 1672. Heberle's chronicle, a mixture of events and their consequences, arose from Heberle's own views and contemporary witnesses, from conversations with travelers and from information conveyed in leaflets and pamphlets . He brought together a variety of local, regional and news from the Empire . He combined personal experience with the description of war events. His own background in life stems from his broad interest in the weather , natural phenomena, harvest and prices, which are reflected in the chronicle. Heberle also reported on the currency devaluation that began in the first years of the Thirty Years War. Heberle's chronicle is pervaded by religiosity, trust in God, but also by humor . Heberle himself was a staunch Protestant .

Heberle intensively documented his numerous escapes in his "Zeytregister", especially into the protective walls of the city of Ulm, to which the rural population was repeatedly forced from Christmas 1631 by the approach of foreign troops. He personally experienced the Thirty Years' War from 1634, when he had to flee for the first time after the Battle of Nördlingen . Heberle numbered his escapes, which he began when the number of his escapes was still single digits. By 1634 the family had already had to flee five times. In August 1634 the Heberles fled again from the Swedish troops to Ulm and returned to Weidenstetten in September 1634, where their only four-week-old son Bartholme died. In the winter of 1643, Heberle and his family had to leave the city of Ulm after the council of the imperial city of Ulm had ordered the rural population to return home under threat of fines because the city was completely overcrowded. In the summer of 1646 Heberle noted his 23rd escape. By late autumn 1648, it was his 29th or 30th documented escape, Heberle had fled more than 30 times from plundering, murdering and marauding gangs of different warring factions in the city of Ulm as well as in neighboring villages or in the forests. He experienced the peace treaty in 1648 in the city of Ulm.

Heberle's "Zeytregister" represents a "rare example" of private records from Heberle's social class of the artisan and peasant class . It is considered to be the "unique legacy of a peasant writer of the 17th century". Heberle's chronicle "is one of the most famous ego documents of the 17th century", as it is one of the few depictions of the Thirty Years' War from a village perspective.

The Ulm historian Gerd Zillhardt selected Heberle's chronicle as the subject of his dissertation The Thirty Years' War in a contemporary presentation , published by the Ulm City Archives in 1975 , in which, in addition to the entire text of the chronicle, he presented a description of the political, economic, military, intellectual and cultural circumstances in Ulm and Environment as well as the life and circumstances of Heberle.

The Heberle Chronicle also served as the source for a two-part series in the ZDF documentary series " Terra X ", which depicts the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). Hans Heberle from what is now the Alb-Donau district is one of the historical protagonists of the documentary, along with the mercenary Peter Hagendorf , the Jesuit father Caspar Wiltheim , the soldier's wife Elisabeth Gemmeroth († 1636) and the Schwabach miller Anna Wolf, among the historical protagonists of the documentation, which deals with the war from the perspective reported by contemporary witnesses. Hans Heberle is played by actor Brian Völkner in the TV documentary .

literature

  • Gerd Zillhardt: The Thirty Years War in a contemporary representation: Hans Heberle's 'Zeytregister' (1618–1672). Records from the Ulm territory; a contribution to historiography and the understanding of history among the lower classes . Research on the history of the city of Ulm. Volume 13. (also University of Tübingen, dissertation 1975). Kohlhammer Verlag . Stuttgart 1975.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Michael Schnell: Ulm in the Thirty Years' War: Hans Heberle and Joseph Furttenbach between war, hunger and plague . Retrieved March 10, 2019
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h The chronicle of Hans Heberle from Ulm . In: Schwäbische Zeitung of August 9, 2018. Accessed March 10, 2019.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Frauke Adrians: "That should have pity on a stone". The Thirty Years' War as experienced by the civilian population . In: Thirty Years War . From politics and contemporary history. Year 2018. Ed .: Federal Agency for Civic Education . Retrieved March 10, 2019.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h Henning Petershagen: History: Ulm witnesses of the 30-year war misery . In: Südwestpresse from September 22, 2018. Accessed March 10, 2019.
  5. ^ A b c Ruth E. Moormann : Everyday life in war and peace . DOCUMENTATION | Exhibitions: 1648 - War and Peace in Europe. Vol. I: Politics, Religion, Law and Society. Research Center Westphalian Peace. Retrieved March 10, 2019.
  6. ↑ a b c d A Swabian shoemaker and farmer who survived the Thirty Years War - Hans Heberle (1597-1677) . Heberle's Zeytregister as a text document. Official website of German history in documents and pictures . Retrieved March 10, 2019.
  7. ↑ a b c Christian Pantle: Show the war for the first time from the point of view of the common people . Interview. Official website of the ZDF . Retrieved March 10, 2019.
  8. ↑ Stefan Laux: Write down "Something big". Commentary on the source of the "Zeytregister" by the Ulm chronicler Hans Heberle (1597-1677) . In: zeitenblicke 1 (2002), no.2. Retrieved on March 10, 2019.
  9. ↑ Andreas Märzhäuser: The 'illiterate' I as a historiographer of the catastrophe: On the construction of history in Hans Heberle's "Zeytregister" (1618-1672) . In: zeitenblicke 1 (2002), no.2. Retrieved on March 10, 2019.
  10. ↑ The Thirty Years War (2/2) . Official website of the ZDF . Retrieved March 10, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Heberle, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swabian shoemaker, farmer and chronicler of the Thirty Years' War
DATE OF BIRTH 1597
PLACE OF BIRTH Neenstetten
DATE OF DEATH 1677