Herbort Duckel

Herbort Duckel (*;? † after 1431 in Stade ), was in 1407 or 1408 to 1424 Bremer councilor and 1419-1424 Mayor . After the loss of the urban territory in Friesland , he was overthrown in 1424 and had to pay damages to lenders. He fled to Stade in 1425, sued the city at the Imperial Court of Justice and used the internal power struggles to turn both the Hansa and the Kaiser against the new council. The imperial ban was imposed on Bremen and the city was excluded from the Hanseatic League. Duckel thus made a decisive contribution to the final assertion of the supremacy of the old families in Bremen from 1435 onwards.

Life

Origin, councilor and mayor

Herbort Duckel came from a family that had provided councilors for over a century: Sievert Duckel, born around 1270, married his son Herbert to Hildegunde, the daughter of Johann von Arsten . Herbert sat on the Bremen council from 1314 to 1340 ; he was also elected mayor, who represented the St. Martini community. In 1349, when the Casal brotherhood was broken up, his son Johann Duckel (* around 1300), a grandfather of Herbort Duckels, who was co-owner of the main house of this brotherhood, was expelled. Johann married his son Hinrich to the daughter of another council family, Alke von der Timer.

Their son Herbort was married to Bartke von der Hude, daughter of the councilor and mayor Detward von der Hude . Her brother was the extremely wealthy trader Hinrich von der Hude . Occasionally, it is not possible to tell in the sources whether Herbort is Herbort the younger or his uncle, the elder . In any case, in 1417 he owned a house on Langenstrasse . His brother Sywert, born in 1398, died in 1406.

Herbort Duckel, who had been a councilor in Bremen since 1407, was elected one of the mayors in 1419. This happened in a phase in which Bremen was trying to build up a vast territory on the North Sea, which was also successful in the years up to 1420. Duckel lent the city money from 1413 to 1415 to finance the campaigns against the Frisians, and he probably induced other citizens to give the council loans.

Loss of the Frisian territories and the fall of Duckels

In the years 1420 to 1426, the short-lived predominance of Bremen over the Frisians on the Lower Weser ended . Although Bremen received royal confirmation of its rule there on June 20 of that year, the Frisian chief Sibet von Rüstringen allied himself with Ocko tom Brok on October 23 . He was the most influential chief and strove for supremacy between the Ems and Weser. The aim of the allies was to drive Bremen out of the Stadland and Butjadingen . In mid-May 1424, envoys from the parties to the dispute, i.e. Bremen, Groningen and the two chiefs, as well as Hamburg , met in Lübeck , but they postponed the negotiations on May 31. Ocko and Sibet, however, invaded the Stadland with 4,000 men the next day, the Bremer Vogt Herteke Slamestorp handed Golzwarden over without resistance, Councilor Johann Frese capitulated in the Friedeburg after a few days. The municipalities of the Stadland, Rodenkirchen , Esensham and Abbehausen had to cancel Bremen. When the agreed negotiations began on July 29th, in which Archbishop Nikolaus and Count Dietrich von Oldenburg also took part, Bremen could only accept the facts that had been created. Ocko and Sibet at least destroyed the castles Golzwarden and Friedeburg, the property of the Bremen citizens in the Stadland remained untouched and the new masters guaranteed open trade routes.

Mayor Herbort Duckel, from whom the city had taken out loans from 1413 to 1415 to finance the Frisian Wars, lost his job. But he was asked to pay another 200 marks in Luebisch, probably to make up for the losses of other citizens. In addition, he was pushed out of the council, whereupon he went to Stade .

As if that weren't enough, Bremen allied itself unsuccessfully with the archbishop against Focko Ukena , chief in Leer . He was a feudal man of Ocko tom Broks, but at the end of 1424 the two of them broke up. Bremen hoped for growing influence in Friesland again, but in September 1426 the allies at Detern were defeated . The two rival chiefs paved the way for the supremacy of the Cirksena through their battles , Bremen was unable to regain the territory.

Prohibition, complaint to the emperor and imperial ban

In November 1426 Daniel Brand resigned from office, in June 1429 he secretly left the city. In Stade he met Duckel and together they went to the Reich Chamber of Commerce . There they succeeded in the face of the urban upheaval that Bremen came into the Reichsacht .

Now on November 16, 1427 the “gancze meenheit” moved in front of the town hall and forced the council to be re-elected. In fact, two new mayors and 14 councilors were elected, ten of whom had been councilors before. As in 1330, 1359 and 1366, the municipality made the choice itself, where otherwise a self-supplementing system of the old families prevailed. From now on twelve councilors and two mayors were to be elected from the entire municipality in a mixture of lot and election. On March 11, 1428, the old councilors swore on death penalty not to conspire against the new order.

On the one hand, however, this overturn called the Hanseatic League on the scene, which had been defending the old council order against any overturn since 1375. At the same time, the expulsion from the Hanseatic League, which took place on April 27, 1427, had an effect. The mandates of the Hanseatic League were burned on the market square, Bremen negotiated with the Scandinavian Union King Erik , an opponent of the Hanseatic League. In addition, Bremen's negotiators did not appear at the Hanseatic Days .

On the other hand, King Sigismund intervened, who commissioned the Archbishop of Bremen to work to restore the old situation. The bishop appeared in the town hall on October 10, 1428; the new councilors offered the old councilors to return to their offices. However, they refused because they feared unrest.

Now the mayor Duckel, who fled to Stade, filed a complaint with the Reich Chamber of Commerce. Already on May 25, 1429 it led to a provisional penalty mandate against Bremen.

However, Bremen was not yet isolated. There was an alliance with the Count of Hoya and a state peace with the Duke of Lüneburg . In 1429 it was even possible to retake Stotel Castle . But the city suffered from rapidly rising prices, especially for staple foods. On August 28, 1429 two mayors of the old council and six councilmen left the city and made contact with the archbishop in Delmenhorst . From there they went to Stade to see the former mayor Duckel. While the two mayors of the old council were admitted to court, the embassy from Bremen fell into the hands of the Hussites and was plundered, the embassy of the following year 1430 was not admitted. Instead, Bremen came under the Reichsacht . The city appealed to Pope Martin V and even to the Council of Constance against the eight. At the beginning of 1430 a member of the old and the new council, Johann Vasmer , also left for Stade, but was taken prisoner in Bremen and on June 2nd was sentenced to death for treason and oath breaking by the Vogtsgericht. The death sentence was carried out at the Paulskloster .

It was not until March 29, 1431 that the Reich Chamber of Commerce revoked the eight on the condition that they follow the Royal Fiscal Simon Amman or the old councilor and mayor Duckel before the Reich Chamber of Commerce. When Duckel died is unclear, but he was probably still in Stade in 1431. In 1433, Count Johann von Hoya brokered a compromise between the city council of Bremen, the heirs and supporters of the mayor Herbort Duckel and the dukes of Braunschweig-Lüneburg. Herbort Duckel was no longer mentioned. In 1435 the rule of the old council families was re-established under the name “ Neue Eintracht ”.

Web link

• The Duckel Family , University of Illinois website

Remarks

1. ↑ Hansische Geschichtsblätter 112-113 (1994) p. 24.
2. ↑ I'm following: Thomas Hill: The City and Its Market. Bremen's regional and foreign relations in the Middle Ages (12th to 15th centuries) , Wiesbaden: Steiner 2004, pp. 307–309.
3. ^ Bremisches Urkundenbuch, No. 453, March 29, 1431.