Heinrich Winkelhofer

Heinrich Winkelhofer (born September 2, 1478 in Kempten , † November 15, 1526 in Hirsau near Calw ), also known under the name Winckelhofer , was a politically active German legal scholar. From 1506 to 1513 he was one of the three judges of the Swabian Federation . He became rector of the University of Tübingen for the term of office from May 1509 to April 1510, and from 1509 to 1522 at the latest, he was also a salaried law professor at the Tübingen Faculty of Law. After that he was Chancellor of Württemberg in the service of the Austrian government until his death in 1526 .

Life

Heinrich Winkelhofer came from a patrician family with a coat of arms , which had its seat in Ehingen in the then Upper Austrian area , and was born in 1478 as the son of the town clerk of the same name in Kempten and Schwäbisch Hall and his wife Veronika Bomer. He received his university education from 1494 in Tübingen . On January 12, 1496 he received his bachelor's degree at the artist faculty and on August 16, 1497 his master's degree. He completed his subsequent law studies in Tübingen around 1506, because only after this time did he hold the title of doctor in ecclesiastical and secular law ( doctor utriusque iuris ). He was an assessor at the Württemberg court in 1506 and 1509 and one of the three judges of the Swabian Confederation from 1506–1513 . He was also a member of the council of Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria between 1508 and 1512 . For the one-year term of office from May 1, 1509 to April 30, 1510 he was elected rector of the University of Tübingen . From this time at least until 1522 he was one of the salaried law professors at this university.

Winkelhofer was involved in the attempt of the ruling class in the Württemberg landscape to consolidate their position of power over Duke Ulrich von Württemberg, which was enshrined in the Tübingen Treaty of 1514 . With seven other members of the landscape he represented Tübingen in the embassy that the state parliament had sent on September 15, 1516 with the program for a Württemberg regimental council to the emperor in Augsburg. She had gone back with the recommendation to accept the demands of Emperor Maximilian I regarding Duke Ulrich's six-year resignation from the government. This recommendation led to the disempowerment of the Austrian-minded party in the state parliament through the execution of some of its leaders. Winkelhofer, however, remained unmolested in Tübingen. When the army of the Swabian Federation appeared in front of Tübingen in April 1519, Winkelhofer was involved as Bavarian councilor in the handover negotiations between the city and the troop commander, Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria.

After the Habsburgs took over Württemberg in 1520, Winkelhofer started a political career from 1520–1522 by providing legal advice to the prelates. At the Diet of Worms in 1521, Winkelhofer met as a representative of the prelates in an intercurial small committee, which was also responsible for the assessment of the registration fees of the individual imperial estates, as well as in a large committee . Here he made more intensive contacts with the Habsburgs. In early June 1522 at the latest, he was appointed Chancellor in Württemberg by Archduke Ferdinand, who later became Emperor , at the suggestion of the Württemberg countryside . He was able to reserve the possibility of returning to his teaching post in Tübingen, which was extended for life on February 28, 1522.

Just one month later, in July 1522, Ferdinand had him participate in Vienna as one of eleven councilors on death sentences against two nobles in the Neustadt court . During his negotiations in 1525 with the landscape committees as well as special advisory committees made up of prelates and the landscape about the financing of the war burdens in the peasant war , Winkelhofer was forced to act against the interests of his former clientele, the prelates.

He died on November 15, 1526 when he met his stepson Abbot Johann III. von Hirsau visited, a son from the first marriage of his wife Agnes Heller from a wealthy Tübingen family. The Hirsau grave slab was acquired and restored by the city of Ehingen for its parish church in 1881 . Winkelhofer's marriage to Agnes Heller remained childless.

literature

• Karl Konrad Finke: Heinrich Winkelhofer (around 1481 to 1526) . In: The professors of the Tübingen Faculty of Law (1477–1535) (= Tübingen professor catalog , vol. 1,2). Edited by Karl Konrad Finke. Jan Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2011, ISBN 978-3-7995-5452-7 , pp. 384-392.
• Karl Konrad Finke: From Chancellor to Chancellor - First Württemberg Chancellor until 1520. In: Schwäbische Heimat, vol. 63, 2012, pp. 302–308, here pp. 307f. (with additions to taking office as Chancellor earlier than previously assumed).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Klaus Graf : The monuments and forgeries of the Ehingen Winkelhofer family . In: Archivalia of October 11, 2015 .