Hans Keesebrod

Marktbreit town hall, started by Hans Keesebrod in 1579.

Town hall Obernbreit, built by Hans Keesebrod 1609–1610.

Hans Keesebrod the Elder Ä. (also Hans Kesenbrod et al .; * 1537 in Unterschwaningen ; † July 16, 1616 in Segnitz ) was a German builder, reformer, margrave mayor and elected mayor. As a master builder, he created some of the most important secular buildings of the Franconian Renaissance . As a margrave appointed mayor and for many years elected mayor in Segnitz, he had supra-local significance as a reformer . In addition, he is one of the very few "normal citizens" of the early modern era , whose life one can still get a fairly precise picture of today, although he did not belong to the nobility or the clergy .

biography

Youth and years of traveling

According to contemporary reports, Hans Keesebrod, “honored by emperors and kings”, must have been of great physical strength. He fought masterfully with the two-handed or two-handed sword, the heavy long sword that he also wielded in his coat of arms , a stylized lion over three mountains who holds a sword in both “hands”. Even as a youth, when he saw Emperor Karl V riding near Ingolstadt , he was enthusiastic about fencing.

Because of “all kinds of chivalrous deeds for emperors, kings, princes and lords”, Emperor Maximilian II appointed the thirty-five year old fencing master in 1572 (“master of the two-handed”). Keesebrod probably belonged at least for a time to the Markus Brothers, who showed the fencing skills they had acquired over many years at the fair in Frankfurt every year. After years of wandering, the Lutheran Keesebrod acquired citizenship in the Catholic city of Ochsenfurt around 1565 , where he paid taxes for a house and a vineyard and where a son was born to him in 1574. An early work dates from this period, the Ochsenfurt market fountain (1573).

In the same year was with Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn the man prince bishop of Würzburg became that should extinguish every spark of the new faith in his field during his long reign. Even before Echter expelled all those of different faiths from the diocese of Würzburg , Keesebrod settled in what was safe for him, Lutheran, Ansbach rulership. Keesebrod married a wealthy widow in Segnitz who brought rich property into the marriage. The couple entered the marriage with a detailed inheritance contract that is in the Würzburg State Archives .

Builder of the princes and margraves

From 1579 he managed the construction of the market-wide town hall for Georg Ludwig von Seinsheim . The massive, moated castle-like building on Breitbach is one of the most beautiful secular buildings of the German late Renaissance. The stylistically related Seinsheimsche Schloss in Marktbreit (started in 1585 as a residence for von Seinsheim's wife) as well as the cemetery hall and the Winzerhofhaus from 1603, the latter a copy of the Segnitz town hall built by him in 1588, give evidence of his solid craftsmanship in Marktbreit.

The Ansbach Oberschultheißenamt in Obernbreit (today the town hall) , which was built from 1609 on the foundations of an old Jakobskirche , is considered a late work . Keesebrod's formative influence ensured that the Renaissance style dominated the Maindreieck area until the Thirty Years' War - longer than almost anywhere else in Europe. Thus, in 1618 in Frickenhausen (Ochsenfurter Tor), Keesebrod's east gable of the Obernbreiter Schultheißenamt was copied in great detail. His stonemason's mark can also be found in Sulzfeld (1602) and Marktsteft (around 1600) .

In Segnitz, where he built a magnificent house in 1593, he renovated almost the entire place. Town houses and the town hall built by him in 1588 still bear witness to this heyday in Segnitz, the buildings of which the writer Italo Svevo (di Aron, known as Ettore Schmitz) and his brothers, who went to school in Segnitz almost 300 years later, described as "coquettish" .

Keesebrod worked well into old age. In 1607 he donated and designed the Segnitz cemetery portal. Numerous grave monuments decorated with frescoes , some of which were reused until the 19th century, with his stonemason's mark are preserved in the cemetery hall. In 1608 he built the even more splendid Ansbach mayor's office opposite the town hall. The main road leading through the village still consists mainly of the buildings he created.

Confidante of the margrave and the citizens

His reputation rose to such an extent that he could afford not only to decorate his own house with a building yard in Segnitz with a castle-like, multi-colored block painting, but also to add an upper storey cantilevered over public land and a bay window . A 'black building' that initially caused trouble, because such extravagances were actually only allowed by the nobility and clergy.

But this did not harm him: in 1594 the Margrave of Ansbach appointed him mayor . In the following 22 years of his tenure, the poor town, in which a few years earlier a contemporary witness had described “only poor huts and not even three good thatched roofs”, became a prosperous place.

But Keesebrod also earned the trust of the citizens: a few years later, the Segnitzer elected him mayor . In a report from the year of his death in 1616, it says that the more than sixty-year-old Keesebrod walked to Rothenburg and Ansbach in the snow, in all weathers and even in high water , in order to present the citizens' petitions of the Segnitzer to the responsible margravial and church offices.

Under Keesebrod, the Segnitz statutes regulated the rights and duties of citizens. This collection of laws, which is kept in the Nuremberg State Archives , guaranteed the citizens of Segnitz exceptional freedom for the time. In 1601 Keesebrod introduced the Reformation in his home town and later rebuilt the church; his stonemason's mark is emblazoned on a sandstone cross on the gable: a rare honor, only given posthumously by the citizens, that is not known from any other master builder in the region.

A son, Johann Kesenbrod, (* 1574 in Ochsenfurt , † 1636 in Lichtel near Oberrimbach ) studied in Jena , became a scholar in Rothenburg od Tauber ("Johannes Tyrartus"), among other things as vice-principal of the Latin School and left historically significant writings, including a biography of his Father.

Note on the name: The father wrote his name himself Hans Keesebrod . The spelling Hans Kesenbrod , which can also be found, is based on reading errors or confusion: Keesebrod's son Johann sometimes wrote his last name Keesenbrod or Kesenbrod .

literature

• Hans Michael Hensel: Master of the long sword and magnificent buildings. Hans Keesebrod the Elder Ä. shaped an entire region. In: John Lesney [Ed.]: Feuilleton No. 7. The return of beautiful writing. Zenos Verlag, Segnitz bei Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-931018-83-0 , p. 85 ff.
• Johann Kesenbrod the Elder J .: Segnitzer statutes book, written down 1612–1616, with a biography of Hans Keesebrod. State Archives Nuremberg, signature AOA No. 3173.
• Hanns Bauer: Hans Keesebrod d. Ä. 1537-1616. In: Fritz Mägerlein [Ed.]: Im Bannkreis des Schwanberg 1971. Kitzingen 1970, p. 75 ff.
• Hanns Bauer: Johann Kesenbrod d. J. 1574-1636. A time image from the Thirty Years War. In: Die Linde [supplement to the Fränkischer Anzeiger ], 53rd year, issues 4, 5 and 6. Rothenburg od T. 1971.

Individual evidence

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