Joß Fritz

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Detail of the Joß-Fritz-Fountain in Untergrombach

Joß Fritz (also: Joss Fritz ; * around 1470 in Untergrombach ; † around 1525) was a German peasant leader and social rebel in Upper Swabia and initiator of the Bundschuh movements in Untergrombach, Lehen and on the Upper Rhine .

Live and act

Joß Fritz was born in Untergrombach near Bruchsal around 1470 as Jodocus, son of the serfs Michel and Magdalena Fritz. As a soldier he got to know the world and was able to read and write. After his return, he no longer wanted to accept the oppression and exploitation of the poor rural population (especially the farmers ).

In 1501 and 1502, Joß Fritz was one of the initiators of the Bundschuh movement in Untergrombach. The village belonged to the diocese of Speyer , whose bishop Ludwig von Helmstatt financed expensive buildings by increasing taxes and restricting the forest, grazing and fishing rights of his subjects. The articles of the Bundschuh movement demanded the abolition of tithes and other customs duties, the elimination of noble privileges in the use of forests and fishing grounds, and the confiscation of a large part of the monasteries. The movement soon included at least 7,400 people in the area between the Main and Neckar. The slogan of the conspirators was: “God salute you, fellow! What kind of being is yours? ”(Answer)“ We may not recover from the priests (and nobility)! ”Initially, the plan was to occupy Untergrombach and then to move to the margraviate of Baden . However, the movement was betrayed by a former mercenary from Baden (Lux Rapp) during his confession and reported to the authorities by a pastor, disregarding the secret of confession. After a meeting in Schlettstadt and an order from Emperor Maximilian I , the persecution of the movement began. Most of the peasant leaders, including Joß Fritz, managed to escape.

Joß Fritz. Woodcut by Albrecht Dürer

Joß Fritz spent the following years wandering around in the Upper Swabian region. He stayed in the area of Lake Constance in the villages of Lenzkirch and Stockach . Around 1510 he married the farmer's daughter Else Schmid in Nenzingen near Stockach. He later lived temporarily in Villingen and Horb . During this time he contacted former supporters of the Untergrombacher Bundschuh and also found new like-minded people. Around 1512 he moved to fiefdom, where he worked as a spell warden under the court lord Balthasar von Blumeneck. Soon afterwards he began to act politically, initially complaining about the moral decline of the time; later he went more and more into the political situation and the oppression of the lower classes by princes and clergy. In a secluded meadow known as the hard mat , he held meetings in which he spoke of the abolition of the authorities.

First followers

His first followers, who from then on promoted his ideas, were:

  • Hans Enderlin (Altvogt, executed in Freiburg in 1513)
  • Augustin Enderlin (farmer, executed in Schaffhausen in 1513)
  • Kilian Mayer / Kilius Meyger (farmer, executed in Basel in 1513)
  • Hans Heitz (farmer)
  • Karius Heitz (farmer)
  • Peter Stüblin (farmer)
  • Jakob Hauser / Huser (farmer, executed in Schaffhausen in 1513)
  • Thomas Müller / Muller (executed in Schaffhausen in 1513)
  • Marx Sudlin (executed in Freiburg in 1514)
  • Hans Hummel (tailor from Feuerbach near Stuttgart, executed in Freiburg in 1514)
  • Hieronymus (baker servant from Tyrol)
  • Johannes Schwarz (village pastor in fiefdom)

In addition to Joß Fritz, Stoffel von Freiburg served as a superior in the movement . Together they created a large following in the Swabian region, including among the beggar groups in this region. The movement was protected from betrayal by the fact that each member only knew a small part of his colleagues. The main people of the beggar groups were promised 2,000 guilders if at a certain point in time they caused an uproar in the margraviate of Baden and if they were willing to take the city of Rosen with 2,000 beggars.

In addition to the beggars, separate sub-captains were responsible for each region, who were promised a penny for each newly recruited member. From time to time Joß Fritz and Stoffel von Freiburg traveled through these areas and carried out inspections.

The Bundschuh flag

The mysterious Bundschuh flag from Joß Fritz was just a flag. It was considered a sign of conspiracy, he never gave it up, and it was initially only shown to a select few people. Even Jakob Huser, who was elected ensign , had to be content with a verbal description of the banner. The flag was only painted in the third attempt: In Freiburg, the painter who resided there refused, and a painter who was currently in fiefdom could not be won over. A painter was only persuaded to do this in Heilbronn (or Metz ). According to information on a local sign in Lehen, the flag contained on one side a white cross and a pair of shoes on a blue background, on the other side the coat of arms of the emperor and the pope and a crucifix on a white background with a kneeling peasant with the inscription: "Lord, stand by your divine righteousness."

The 14 articles

At meetings on the hard mat , 14 articles were fixed.

“First: should no one recognize any other lord than God, the emperor and the pope; Second, no one else to stand trial but at the end of the time he sat; the Rottweil court should be abolished, the spiritual courts should be limited to the spiritual; Thirdly, all interest that would have been earned so long that it equaled capital should be removed and the interest and debt certificates destroyed; Fourthly: in the case of interest, since one guilder of money is less than twenty guilders of capital, one should act as divine law indicates and instructs; Fifth: fishing and bird trapping, wood, forest and pasture should be free, poor and rich should be common; Sixth; every clergyman should be limited to one benefice; Seventh: the number of monasteries and founders should be limited, their superfluous goods should be taken into account and a war chest of the Confederation should be formed from them; Eighth: all unreasonable taxes and duties should be abolished; Ninth: A permanent peace is to be made in the whole of Christendom, whoever opposes it stabbed to death, but whoever really wants to get it, should be sent with cash against the Turks and unbelievers; Tenth: Whoever adheres to the covenant should be assured of his body and property; whoever opposes it will be punished; Eleventh: should a good city or festival be taken to the hands of the federal government as the center and support of the enterprise; Twelfth: each member of the covenant should contribute his own to the means of execution; Thirteenth: as soon as the groups of the covenant have united, the imperial majesty is to write the important things, and fourteenth: if the emperor's majesty does not accept them, the confederation is appealed to for alliance and assistance. "

This led to conflicts and Joß Fritz had to prove the legality of the articles based on the Bible. Then the federal oath was taken by the assembled. In 1513, Joß Fritz made another trip to Swabia and Upper Austria, after which the uprising was to break out. For this purpose, he had designated October 9 as the day of the meeting in Biengen . During his absence, however, the movement was made known to the city of Freiburg and Margrave Philipp von Baden . After learning about it in Lehen, a meeting led by Kilian Mayer decided to abandon the insurrection plans. Soon after, leading members of the movement were arrested. Joß Fritz's wife Else was also imprisoned in Freiburg.

Joß Fritz fled to Switzerland with Hieronymus . In Seewen in Solothurn he met with Mayer, Hauser, Enderlin and Hieronymus, among others. An extended meeting in Schaffhausen and an appearance at the Tagsatzung in Zurich were agreed. On the way between Seewen and Liestal, Mayer and Hauser were captured on October 19, 1513 by armed men from the city council of Basel . Joß Fritz, who had separated from the others, could not be caught despite further roadside checks. His wife Else Schmid was released from prison on October 24, 1513. In the following years it was suspected that her husband had visited her several times.

In 1517, Joß Fritz initiated another conspiracy on the Upper Rhine. The last mention of his name was in 1524 or 1525.

reception

  • The songwriter Franz Josef Degenhardt created a monument for him in his song Ballade by Joß Fritz (LP: Comes to the table under plum trees , Polydor 1973).
  • Wilhelm Eichner immortalized him in his novel We Can't Recover from the Priests. 1999, ISBN 3-8004-1389-2 .
  • Gustav Regulator immortalized him in his peasant war novel Die Saat 1936.
  • A street and a school are named after him in Untergrombach and a street in Lehen (today part of Freiburg im Breisgau).
  • In Freiburg im Breisgau , the “Jos Fritz” bookstore founded in 1975 (with an adjoining café), a center of the left-wing alternative scene since the late 1970s, refers to Joß Fritz.
  • Quirin Engasser: The cause. Novel.
  • Ludwig Ganghofer : The new being . Historical novel about the life of Joß Fritz. 1902. (New edition. 2007, ISBN 978-3-89836-638-0 ).
Joß Fritz appears in this novel around 1524 as a Swabian under the code name "Sebastian Häferle" in the Berchtesgadener Land . Before that, he had served the Bavarian Salzamt as a seaman for Reichenhall . With no tax liability , he got the passport from the Reichenhaller salt master . As a trooper he had served in the nineteenth year for seven years (calculated year by 1489 to about 1496) "each while Kriegskniff abgeguckt: how to make the Leut 'fortified how the Rotten leads and culverins done."
It says about his father: “In Grumbach, thirty people fled to the church. And the bishop's brushwood set a great fire around the church that the people had to suffocate and burn. In the end there was one farmer left, and he fled up to the tower with his three-year-old Bübl. He could choose: char or jump down. So he preferred to take the plunge with his child. The brushwood laughed and raised the spit at him. The man remained dead in the lances . As if by a miracle, nothing happened to the child. […] The same farmer, that was my father. The selbige Kindl, you people, 'I've been (Joss). "This church fire may have thus taken place around the year 1473, which is also the construction of a church or chapel of St. Michael (Untergrombach) to 1474 by master builder Hensel frog covers .
  • In 1900 the musical work Jos Fritz. (From the Peasant Wars) premiered by the Freiburg choirmaster and composer Alexander Adam , the text is by Maidy Koch . In 1908 the work was published by Julius Feuchtinger in Stuttgart. The second performance took place on November 30, 1912 in the Freiburg Festival Hall.

literature

  • Günther Franz :  Fritz, Joß. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 631 ( digitized version ).
  • Thomas Adam: Joß Fritz - the hidden fire of the revolution. (= Publications of the Historical Commission of the City of Bruchsal. Volume 20). Regional culture publishing house, Ubstadt-Weiher 2002, ISBN 3-89735-192-7 . (3rd, comprehensively revised and updated edition). Ubstadt-Weiher 2013, ISBN 978-3-89735-777-8 .
  • Wilhelm Zimmermann : The great German peasant war. Popular edition. Dietz, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-320-01261-4 , pp. 46-61.
  • Heimatverein Untergrombach: Joß Fritz and his time. Volume 4, Bruchsal, undated (1BKFH 2001/02, Geiß Timo, Daiß Timo, Vasilj Anton, Vogel Thomas, Peterschick Kai).
  • Peter Blickle , Thomas Adam (ed.): Bundschuh. Untergrombach 1502, the restless empire and the revolutionizability of Europe. Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-515-07761-8 .
  • Horst Buszello : Joß Fritz and the Bundschuh to fiefdom. In: Peter Blickle, Thomas Adam (Ed.): Bundschuh. Untergrombach 1502, the restless empire and the revolutionizability of Europe. Stuttgart 2004, pp. 80-121.
  • Dieter Breuers : Enslaved and betrayed. The peasant uprising at the beginning of the 16th century. Bastei Lübbe, 2007, ISBN 978-3-404-64225-0 .

Web links

Wikisource: The Bundschuh zu Lehen im Breisgau  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Son of the serfs Michel and Magdalena Fritz ( Memento from April 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Joß Fritz did not get to know the world as a soldier. For example, Rosenkranz says in Volume 1 on page 180 f .: "We would like to know whether he himself served in the war trade in his younger years." Jansen claims. (See also the other representation in Ganghofer's novel.)
  3. ^ Wilhelm Zimmermann: The great German peasant war. 1989, p. 43.
    The Heimatverein Untergrombach reports in its contribution to the local history of over “10,000 people, including approx. 400 women”.
  4. ↑ Around 1513 the answer was: "The poor man in the world may no longer recover!"
  5. ↑ In Ludwig Ganghofer's novel Neue Wesen it becomes: "We must recover from lords and priests."
  6. ↑ Joß Fritz - 500 years of Bundschuh. ( Memento from January 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ In Ganghofer's novel is 1512 "Elsle" by the captors hanged and his three boys who had grown up in eight years, are burned. This would be conclusive with his move to Lehen, but the oldest boy would have been born six years before the marriage, in 1504. It was Junker Baltser von Blumeneck [who committed the betrayal] . ( Memento from September 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Hans Hummel was arrested and executed in 1514
  9. ↑ Johannes Schwarz was arrested in 1514 and released again
  10. ^ Wilhelm Zimmermann: The great German peasant war. 1989, p. 51.
  11. ↑ The place and the painter of the flag are not exactly known, possibly different sources
  12. ↑ The Bundschuh flag literature: Rosenkranz, Bundschuh. Volume 2, 183f (No. 64) 187 (No. 66) 195 (No. 69); Lehen ibid. 184 (No. 64) Heilbronn 142 (No. 18);
    Ditto: Josef Blickle: Bundschuh p. 91;
    Ditto: Ulrich Steinmann : The Bundschuh flags of Joß Fritz. In: German Archives for Folklore. 6, 1960, pp. 243-284, 247-255.
  13. ↑ Original saying: "Lord, stood diner divine justice."
  14. ↑ Quoted from Zimmermann (who relies on the statements of various witnesses), p. 52.
  15. ↑ The acceptance into the Bundschuh took place to affirm the oath with five Our Fathers and five Ave Maria .
  16. ↑ In Baden he traveled to Betzenhausen , Merdingen , Mengen , Neuershausen or Munzingen , Schallstadt , Wolfenweiler and Eichstetten .
  17. ↑ According to some sources, Fritz then went to Einsiedeln. See Horst Buszello: Joß Fritz and the Bundschuh zu Lehen. 2004, p. 97 f.
  18. ↑ The protocol after release read: “Uf wednesday before simonis and each ap (osto) lorum. Else Schmidin von Lentzingen under Stockach, Jos Fritzen wib von Lehen, is left single with the old urfehd; should promise in the same oath to finish the cost in eight days. "
  19. ↑ Joß Fritz - a short biography , accessed on October 22, 2016.
  20. ↑ Joß-Fritz-School
  21. ^ Website of the jos fritz bookstore
  22. ↑ "Sebastian Häferle" comes to Berchtesgaden, a motto catches his eye on a newly built house , which reads: "With God's help, this house was built: Dominikus Weitenschwaiger, Meistersinger, citizen and woodworker in Berchtesgaden, anno domini 1524". ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.wissen-im-netz.info
  23. ^ Heidelberg University Library
  24. ↑ Walter Mossmann: 500 years ago the fiefdom Jos Fritz instigated an uprising. In: Badische Zeitung. April 6, 2013, accessed May 20, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Fritz, Joß
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fritz, Joss; Jodocus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Southwest German farmer's guide
DATE OF BIRTH around 1470
PLACE OF BIRTH uncertain: Bruchsal - Untergrombach
DATE OF DEATH around 1525