Ital Reding the Elder

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Ital Reding the Elder (* around 1370 presumably in Sattel ; † February 6, 1447 in Arth ) was Schwyzer Landammann , military leader of the Schwyz troops in the Old Zurich War and is considered to be the main responsible for the " bloody deed of Greifensee " on May 28, 1444.

Life

Ital Reding came from a respected Schwyz family. Like his father Hektor Reding , he also took over the office of Schwyzer Landammann and was in this position for thirty years (from 1411–1428 and 1432–1445) in front of the state of Schwyz. From 1411 he was repeatedly the delegate of the Schwyz Diet and various mediating roles in federal affairs. He took part in the Council of Constance as a federal envoy. Reding succeeded in obtaining various advantages for the state of Schwyz from King Sigismund . In this way he was able to considerably expand the domain of the old state of Schwyz. In 1415 he obtained blood jurisdiction from Sigismund in Schwyz, Einsiedeln , March SZ and in the Küssnacht district . In 1424 he acquired the umbrella privilege over the Einsiedeln monastery without the knowledge of the abbot .

Murder of Greifensee 1444 - illustration from the Tschachtlan Chronicle, 1470

In the dispute over the inheritance of Count Friedrich VII of Toggenburg , he had a more skilful hand than his Zurich counterpart Mayor Rudolf Stüssi , who also tried to expand his territory. When the Count of Toggenburg died childless in 1436, Schwyz and Glarus were able to take over his inheritance. Zurich reacted to this in 1438 with a grain ban against Schwyz and Glarus. Since a federal mediation failed, Schwyz - like everyone in Central Switzerland for decades - had to stock up more in Aargau and Alsace. But Reding received a reason to blacken Zurich in the Reich and to attack militarily. In the battle on the Etzel (May 1439) he inflicted a defeat on the people of Zurich. That was the beginning of the Old Zurich War, which would last until 1450. In 1440 Reding conquered the Zurich countryside with the support of the rest of the Confederate troops, so that Stüssi had to admit defeat and lifted the food ban. In return, the Schwyz gave back a large part of the occupied territories.

The peace did not last long. When Zurich met the German King Friedrich III. agreed and formed an alliance with the Habsburgs , the conflict escalated again. Federal troops again advanced into the Zurich area, and Zurich was again defeated. After unsuccessful peace negotiations in Baden , the central Swiss army under Ital Reding invaded the Zurich hinterland again. On May 1, 1444, they reached the town of Greifensee and began the siege. The Zurich occupation, led by Captain Wildhans von Breitenlandenberg, had to capitulate on May 27, 1444 . On May 28, 1444, 62 men were executed by the victorious Central Swiss on the "Blutmatte" in Nänikon in a rapid process . The massacre, unprecedented in conflicts between the Swiss Confederation, went down in history as the " Greifensee murder ". Whether the bloody act of Greifensee is related to Reding's resignation from his office as Schwyzer Landammann in 1445 remains to be speculated. In 1446, Reding appeared again as Alt-Ammann when he sealed the federal complaint against Austria at the court of arbitration in Kaiserstuhl . Reding died in 1447. In the same year his son Ital Reding the Younger was appointed Schwyzer Ammann and remained so until 1464.

Ital Reding in Chronicles and Poetry

The role Reding played in the Greifensee slaughter was already controversial in contemporary sources. The Schwyz chronicler Hans Fründ , who left a detailed description of the siege, devoted only a few lines to the execution and did not mention Reding at all. In the chronicle of Gerold Edlibach from Zurich , Reding is assigned a decisive role. He said that he had given the order to execute everyone, except for Ueli Kupferschmid, who was born in Schwyz, with the sword. Also in the nichtzürcherischen Federal Chronicle of Werner Schodoler (originated in the early 16th century) is quite Reding awarded a tough stance. In Diebold Schilling's Lucerne illustrated chronicle , Reding claims that he will carry out the execution himself if the executioner fails to do it. Theodor von Liebenau was able to prove in two letters from eyewitnesses that the execution was by no means Reding's sole decision, but was decided by all representatives of all the places involved.

The events of Greifensee were repeatedly processed literarily. In the historical novel "Der Freihof von Aarau" (1823) Heinrich Zschokke describes the events and connections of the destruction of Greifensee from the point of view of his protagonist, the knight Marquard von Baldegg. Zschokke lets Reding appear as a merciless avenger, the devil made Itelhans [Ital Reding] thirsty for poor people's blood! Gottfried Keller woven the Greifensee murder into his story Der Landvogt von Greifensee (1878), dedicated to Salomon Landolt , and mentions the rigid ruthlessness of the majority and their leader Itel Reding . Ital Reding's fate turned Albrecht Emch in his small theater play " Ital Reding, the iron head of Greifensee or the murder of Greifensee is."

literature

  • Georg von Wyß :  Reding, Ital . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 27, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1888, pp. 531-534.
  • Emil Dürr : Itel Reding the elder. Fifty years of federal history . In: Basler Jahrbuch (1912), pp. 260–292.
  • Urs Huber: Ital Reding the Elderly and His Time, approx. 1370-1447. The Greifensee murder . Freiburg i. Ue. 1975.
  • Bernhard Stettler: The Confederation in the 15th Century. The search for a common denominator . Zurich 2004.
Chronicles
  • Christian Immanuel Kind (ed.): The Chronicle of Hans Fründ, Landschreiber zu Schwytz . Chur 1875.
  • Johann Martin Usteri (Ed.): Gerold Edlibach's Chronik . Zurich 1847
  • Alfred A. Schmid et al. (Ed.): The Federal Chronicle of Wernher Schodoler around 1510 to 1535 . Lucerne 1980–1983.
  • Alfred A. Schmid et al. (Ed.): The Swiss picture chronicle of Lucerne's Diebold Schilling 1513 . Lucerne 1981.
  • Johann Rudolf Wyss et al. (Ed.): Bendicht Tschachtlans Berner Chronik from the year 1421 to the year 1466 . Bern 1824.
Literary processing

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Detailed descriptions of the siege of Greifensee from May 1 to June 1, 1444 come from Hans Fründ, chronicler and land clerk of Schwyz and Gerold Edlibach, chronicler, Zurich councilor and from 1504 to 1506 Governor of Greifensee.
  2. ↑ Stettler (2004), p. 158.
  3. ↑ Fründ (1875), p. 191 f.
  4. ↑ Edlibach (1847), p. 48. Edlibach later crossed out the name Reding and replaced it with man from sweat .
  5. ↑ Schilling (1981), p. 74 f.
  6. ^ Theodor von Liebenau: Two letters about the surrender of the Greifensee Fortress in 1444 . In: Anzeiger für Schweizerische Geschichte . 1/4 (1870) pp. 302-304.
  7. ↑ Zschokke (1854), p. 156.
  8. ↑ Keller (1978), p. 229.
personal data
SURNAME Reding, Ital the Elder
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reding, Itel; Reding, Itelhans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Schwyzer Landammann, as military leader in the Old Zurich War, chiefly responsible for the "Greifensee murder"
DATE OF BIRTH around 1370
PLACE OF BIRTH saddle
DATE OF DEATH February 6, 1447
Place of death Arth