Hermann Tast

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Hermann Tast

Hermann Tast (also Harmen ; * around 1490 in Husum ; † May 11, 1551 there ) was a German reformer in Husum.

Life

Little is known about Hermann Tast's origins and his life before 1527. It is possible that he is the son of a Hermann Tast who is attested in Husum in 1495. He probably attended the school of the Husum Franciscan monastery . From March to October 1511 Tast studied theology at the University of Wittenberg . It is unknown whether and where he continued his studies. For 1514 it is recorded in the Husum church accounts that a Hermann Tast from Husum received a loan from the church treasury. From this it was concluded that Tast was active as a clergyman in Husum at the latest at this time. However, there is no evidence that he was actually vicar at the Michaelis altar of the Marienkirche in Husum , as Carsten Erich Carstens assumed. Since he is attested as the owner of one of the most lucrative vicarages in 1534 and 1542, it can be taken as evidence that he already held this position before the Reformation.

Exactly when Tast came into contact with Lutheran teaching is unknown. Since his study stay in Wittenberg was long before Luther's theses were posted , he probably got to know Lutheran teaching through writings that had been brought to him by students from North Frisia who had studied in Wittenberg since 1517 and got to know Martin Luther personally. Among them was Franz Hamer (1496–1553), who was born in Husum, since 1519.

In the mid-1520s, Lutheran preaching began in Husum. The sermons took place in the private house of the respected Husum merchant Matthias Knutzen , later allegedly due to lack of space in the large square under a linden tree next to the church in the cemetery at that time. The dating of this first Protestant sermon in Husum to 1522 comes from Anton Heimreich and is not documented. The widespread representation that Tast preached Lutheran in Garding as early as 1524 is also not documented in real-time. That Tast gave the first Reformation sermon in Flensburg in 1526 - allegedly also in the open air - was first claimed by Georg Claeden in his Monumenta Flensburgensia 1766, probably due to a confusion with the real first evangelical preacher in Flensburg, Gerd Slewert .

The sources, the Tetenbüller pastor Johannes Pistorius and Peter Sax , do not name Tast as the first Lutheran preacher in Husum, but rather “ Magister Theodoricus Pistorius [...] was the first to expose the priestly tyranny”. Pistorius, who Latinized his name from Dietrich Becker , probably came from Metelen and had studied in Wittenberg from 1515. In 1525, King Friedrich gave him a letter of protection as a Protestant preacher. Johannes Pistorius was his son, Albert Meyer his son-in-law. Not much more is known about him.

In 1527 the area of ​​Husum became the first large town in Schleswig-Holstein to become Protestant. It is only at this point in time that reliable messages from Tast begin. He became the main preacher of the Marienkirche in Husum, not least because Matthias Knutzen used himself for him with King Friedrich I and his son, Duke Christian . This suggests that he had preached Lutheran before, even if, as Albert Panten assumes, he was not the first Evangelical preacher. Pistorius became archdeacon and Franz Hamer deacon. All other clergymen were released. Hamer was the first cleric in Husum to marry. Tast himself only married his housekeeper Gardrut in 1530, with whom he had five children.

As the main pastor, Tast was responsible for the implementation of the Reformation in Husum. The monastery was turned into a poor house . Together with Matthias Knutzen, Tast founded the Latin school that would later bear his name. It is one of the oldest schools in Schleswig-Holstein . In 1528, Tast accompanied Johann Rantzau and Detlev von Reventlow to Nordstrand on behalf of the king to visit the first Protestant congregations there. In 1529 Tast took part in the religious talk called Flensburg Disputation , which took place in Flensburg between Johannes Bugenhagen and Melchior Hoffmann , chaired by the Danish Crown Prince Christian . Tast refuted there that Hoffmann's symbolic interpretation of the Lord 's Supper corresponded to Luther's doctrine of the Lord 's Supper. Pistorius accompanied Tast to Flensburg in 1529 and died in 1533 at the latest.

In 1537 Tast took part as one of only eight Lutheran preachers from the Duchy of Schleswig at the Synod in Odense and Hadersleben , where the introduction of the Reformation in Denmark was discussed. While the church order written by Johannes Bugenhagen was adopted in Denmark, the duchies refused. In 1538 Tast was one of four visitators in the Duchy of Schleswig responsible for the Nordstrand office and in 1540 provost for Husum and Eiderstedt with the title of superintendent . In 1542, on royal instructions, he participated in the translation of the Danish church ordinance, written in Latin, into Lower Saxony , which was then adopted in Schleswig-Holstein. With the adoption of the church order, the church system was reorganized. Superintendent was now only the Bishop of Schleswig .

The division of land between King Christian III. and his brothers in 1544 led to the fact that Tast lost the provost office for Nordstrand, because Nordstrand fell to Hans von Schleswig-Holstein-Hadersleben . Tast remained responsible for Eiderstedt and Husum. In 1548 he also lost the spiritual supervision of Eiderstedt, which his sovereign Adolf I of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf placed under his court preacher.

Epitaph for Hermann Tast (left) and Petrus Bockelmann (right) in the Marienkirche (Husum)

In 1548, the first Protestant Bishop of Schleswig from Kleve, Tilemann von Hussen, appointed his compatriot Johann von Linden deacon in Husum. Linden claimed to have been displaced from his homeland as a Lutheran, but represented Anabaptist views that divided the church. Tast complained to the consistory in Schleswig, but the bishop prevented a trial. Linden moved to the parish of Tetenbüll in early 1551 . Tast died a little later. His successor as pastor in Husum was the Braunschweig-born Luther student Petrus Bockelmann in 1552 .

family

Tast had five children with his wife Gardrut, two of whom are known to be sons:

  • Hermann Tast (* ~ 1530; † June 29, 1610) studied 1550–1552 with Johannes Pistorius and the son of Franz Hamer in Wittensee, became pastor in Bupsee on the north beach and vice-provost of the island.
  • Johannes Tast (* ~ 1532; † June 27, 1586) was city secretary in Riga . King Stephan Báthory of Poland-Lithuania , who had conquered Riga in 1581, tried to introduce the Gregorian calendar there with the help of Jesuits . The Protestant citizens resisted the reform, which was perceived as catholicization, in the calendar unrest in Riga . Tast, who had successfully negotiated several times with Báthory and had been ennobled by him before 1580, tried to convey what the city council interpreted as treason. Arrested in the castle for more than a year for his protection, he was captured after trying to escape, tortured and executed on June 27, 1586.

reception

Since there are no reliable sources about Tast's life before 1527, it is difficult to reconstruct Tast's importance for the implementation of the Reformation in the Duchy of Schleswig . He left only a single work of writing, a treatise on church discipline , which the Protestant ministry in Bremen praised in 1555 as utilis et necessaria (useful and necessary). There is also no obituary for him. David Chyträus and Johannes Petreus were the first historians to mention him at the end of the 16th century. Petreus was the first to describe him as a Husum reformer. More than a hundred years after Tast's death, Anton Heimreich wrote in his church history that Tast had preached evangelically in Husum as early as 1522. This led to the creation of a legend that made Tast the “key figure” of the Reformation in Schleswig-Holstein. Only Albert Panten and Dieter Lohmeier put this view into perspective. In doing so, Panten probably shot a little over the target in his effort to do Pistorius justice. It should be noted that Tast was the only local among the first Protestant provosts in the Duchy of Schleswig, while Duke Christian brought in Slewert, Eberhard Weidensee and Johann Wenth from abroad.

In honor of the reformer, the Husum School of Academics has been known as the Hermann Tast School since 1924 . In Flensburg there is a figurative representation of Hermann Tast in the St. Jürgen Church, probably carved between 1903 and 1907 , in memory of Hermann Tast .

literature

Web links

Commons : Hermann Tast  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lovisa (lit.), p. 48
  2. ↑ a b Lohmeier: Tast, Hermann , p. 373.
  3. ↑ The enrollment directory of the University of Wittenberg lists a “Hermannus Jast” or “Tast” from Husum, who will probably be identical with the later Reformer.
  4. ^ Carstens: Tast, Hermann . In: ADB (Lit.)
  5. ^ Writings of the Society for Flensburg City History (ed.): Flensburg in history and present . Flensburg 1972, pp. 210 and 413.
  6. ^ Lohmeier: Tast, Hermann , p. 374.
  7. ↑ Peter Sax quoted from Wolf Werner Rausch: Reformation on http://www.geschichte-sh.de
  8. ↑ Lovisa (Lit.), pp. 72-74.
  9. ↑ Lovisa (lit.), p. 75
  10. ↑ Lovisa (lit.), p. 60
  11. ↑ Lovisa (Lit.), p. 72. Pistorius' exact year of death is not known. Johannes Pistorius, who was still a toddler at the time, mentions English sweat as the cause of death in his memoirs , an epidemic that raged in 1529/30. Hamer did not take up the position as archdeacon until 1533.
  12. ↑ Lovisa (lit.), p. 61
  13. ↑ Lovisa (lit.), pp. 63f. Linden was removed from office in 1557. His successor was Johannes Pistorius.
  14. ↑ Johann Melchior Krafft : A two-hundred-year-old Husum church and school history . Husum 1723, pp. 119-122
  15. ↑ Lovisa (lit.), p. 65
  16. ^ Günter Weitling quoted from Lovisa (Lit.), p. 67
  17. ↑ Lovisa (lit.), p. 75
  18. ↑ Church Council St. Jürgen (Ed.): 100 Years of St. Jürgen Church, Church Leader , 2000; obviously corresponds to: our church, the St. Jürgen church
personal data
SURNAME Tast, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Reformer from Husum
DATE OF BIRTH 1490
PLACE OF BIRTH Husum
DATE OF DEATH May 11, 1551
Place of death Husum