Hans Lange (legendary figure)
The farmer Hans Lange is a legendary figure with whom the youth of the Pomeranian Duke Bogislaw X. (* 1454; † 1523) was embellished.
legend
The life of Duke Bogislaw X the Great , under whose reign from 1478 all of Pomerania was reunited under one ruler, is the subject of numerous imaginative stories. He is said to have grown up together with his younger brother Kasimir with his mother, Duchess Sophia , in Rügenwalde , who both seriously neglected. A ducal farmer, Hans Lange from Lanzig , took care of the young Bogislaw and equipped him appropriately.
This story was first passed on by the Pomeranian historian Thomas Kantzow (* 1505; † 1542), who reported it as a fact.
In the version by Jodocus Donatus Hubertus Temme in the folk tales of Pomerania and Rügen (1840), the legend reads as follows:
“She [Duchess Sophia] also had her two youngest princes Casimir and Bogislav with her, but she did not care about them, and she was even deadly hostile to them for the sake of her father the Duke. She let them go to school in Rügenwalde with the bourgeois children and did not even give them the most basic clothes, so that the poor little gentlemen, like the poorest pupils, went with their clothes torn, and their toes stuck out of their shoes, and everyone did not think otherwise, than that she would have liked to have seen them even perish. "
“At that time, a farmer called Hans Lange lived not far from Rügenwalde in the village of Lantzke or Lanzig, who was intelligent and quite wealthy by his nature. He often came to Rügenwalde in the city, and when he saw the young dukes so ragged and often hungry, he pityed him, and he felt particularly attracted to Duke Bogislav, as the most beautiful and joyful. That is why he once said to him in his Pomeranian: Duke Bogislav, how do you act as if you do not belong anywhere at home! Don't you want to know that you are a prince? Does your mother not want to give you anything because you have such bad clothes and shoes? Duke Bogislav replied proudly: What is it that matters to him? if he, the duke, had nothing, he, the peasant, would not give him anything! But then the farmer said: Yes, Bogislav, I care. You should be my master; if you then had none, because I probably wanted to give you clothes that year. Don't be so mocked that a peasant will talk to you; maybe I can tell you something that won't be your shame. Did Duke Bogislav ask what he could say? And the peasant answered: What if I were your peasant and if I gave you my interest every year so that you could buy yourself clothes, wouldn't you like that? Then said Duke Bogislav! Yes, but how could that happen? And said the farmer: Go to your wife's mother and ask her to give you Hans Lange at Lantzke to your farmer, so that he will give you his rent and interest so that you can buy your necessities from it. Duke Bogislav liked that, but he didn't dare to get it from his mother. The farmer advised him, however, that he should only ask Hans Massow, the master of the court, for it, he could get it for him. The Duke did that, and Hans Massow got him from the Duchess Hans Langen for his farmer. "
Historical background
According to the judgment of the historian Martin Wehrmann , the story does not stand up to critical historical research. Rather, the young Bogislaw was sent to the Polish royal court for education in 1466. When he took office in 1476, he acted in full harmony with his mother. Only later did a protracted dispute about property claims arise between the two, which is likely to have been the basis of the later legend.
According to Fritz Zickermann, the name Hans Lange is linked to the name of the Polish scholar Jan Dlugosz , in German Hans Lange. He was the tutor of the sons of the Polish king, possibly also of Bogislaw, who was staying at the Polish royal court.
In contrast, the local researcher Karl Rosenow assumed that the tradition was historically correct. He relied on an alleged document according to which Duke Bogislaw X. had given Hans Lange a free school post .
Artistic processing
The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Paul Heyse processed the legend in his play in four acts "Hans Lange" (1864), the Dramburg-born writer Johannes Höffner in his novel "Die Treue von Pommern" (1912).
literature
- Fritz Zickermann: About the figure of Hans Lange . In: Pomeranian letter . No. 9/1952, pp. 9-10. Reprinted in: Die Pommersche Zeitung. No. 14/2011, p. 16.
- Fritz Zickermann: Did Hans Lange really live? . In: Our Pomerania. 1964, pp. 31-33. Reprinted in: Manfred Vollack (Ed.): Der Kreis Schlawe. A Pomeranian homeland book. Volume 1. Husum Printing and Publishing Company, Husum 1986, ISBN 3-88042-239-7 , pp. 502-503.
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ Jodocus Donatus Hubertus Temme : The folk tales of Pomerania and Rügen . Nicolaische Buchhandlung, Berlin 1840, pp. 76–79.
- ↑ Martin Wehrmann : History of Pomerania. Volume 1. 2nd edition. Verlag Friedrich Andreas Perthes, Gotha 1919, pp. 225-226. (Reprint: Augsburg 1992, ISBN 3-89350-112-6 )