Johann Georg Styrzel

Johann Georg Styrzel 1661 at the age of 70

The coat of arms of Johann Georg Styrzel in the Franciscan Church in Rothenburg

Johann Georg Styrzel (also Iohannes Georgius Styrtzel , Styrzelius , Stürzel ) (born April 12, 1591 in Augsburg , † April 17, 1668 in Rothenburg ob der Tauber ) was a German philologist and lawyer who, as judge, councilor and mayor, was in charge of the The imperial city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber had a say for four decades. He was also known as a literary scholar who was interested in contemporary German literature and Latin poetry and was in lively exchange with many of his contemporaries throughout Germany.

Origin and education

Johann Georg Styrzel came from a learned Swabian civil servant family and was baptized Protestant in Augsburg in 1591. His father Johannes Styrzel (1545–1608) was a doctor of law and from 1578 council clerk in Augsburg. Of his eleven siblings, two brothers and two sisters reached adulthood. He probably attended St. Anna High School in Augsburg, where he learned the Latin and Greek languages, without which his university studies and his later literary activities would not have been possible. In 1609, one year after the death of his father, he began studying in Jena with his younger brother Johann Philipp . He studied philosophy, philology, law and history. From the plague-prone Jena, he moved to Tübingen in 1611 , where he continued his law studies, which he completed from 1613-1616 at the University of Altdorf . After studying for a total of seven years, he returned to Augsburg in 1616. In the following years he gained professional experience with his older brother Matthäus Styrzel, who was also a doctor of law and from 1617 served as a counselor in Ulm.

Work in Rothenburg

Residential building at Herrngasse 18 (Von Staud's house)

In 1624, at the age of almost 33, he married in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Franconia, the 28-year-old widowed Margaretha Guckenberger, whose father was a member of the city council and who had been married to the external councilor and carer Martin Mylegg since 1619. In the same year he acquired the citizenship of Rothenburg and the large house No. 18 in Herrengasse (later called the "Staudt'sche House"). At the same time he was appointed to the city's external council and was elected external mayor. Just one year later he got a legal position as an assessor in the farmers' court. In 1628 he became a member of the Inner Council, ie of the governing body. In 1633 he was elected as imperial judge and thus in the most important legal office of the imperial city of Rothenburg. He was governing mayor (consul regens) a total of 15 times, each for half a year, the first time in 1635.

In addition to his legal skills, Johann Georg Styrzel also had pronounced literary and poetic skills. He conducted a very extensive correspondence with a large part of the learned and literary world of the then Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. In thousands of letters he exchanged thoughts and information on spiritual-religious, historical-political and, above all, literary-poetic topics with other scholars. His correspondents, along with his school and college friends, who in the meantime had often risen to higher positions themselves, were great minds of his time, who mostly lived in the imperial and university cities, especially in Augsburg, Ulm, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Strasbourg and Tübingen also Marburg, Breslau, Wittenberg and many others. These included Johann Peter Lotichius , the Strasbourg professors Matthias Bernegger and Johann Heinrich Boeckler , Johann Balthasar Schupp , the brothers Johann Michael and Quirinus Moscherosch . Styrzel was closely connected to the language societies, the Frankish Fir Society , the Elbe Swan Order and the Pegnesian Flower Order, which were newly formed during the Thirty Years' War . Styrzel was also a master of the small Latin forms of poetry, the epigrams. The poems themselves were mostly occasional and casual poetry for specific occasions such as weddings, baptisms, funerals, anniversaries and celebrations of all kinds.

During the Thirty Years' War, Protestant Rothenburg and its surroundings suffered massively from the occupation and looting of imperial troops, in 1626, but especially at the end of 1631, when 60,000 men under General Tilly had taken the city. As a citizen and as a representative of the city, Styrzel was directly affected by this and described this in various letters.

His marriage to Margaretha Guckenberger lasted 34 years, but remained childless. When she died in 1658, Johann Georg Styrzel was 67 years old. Five months later he married 20-year-old Barbara Ries. This huge age difference was certainly quite unusual back then. A son was born six years later and a daughter three years later. A year later, in 1668, Johann Georg died at the age of 77. After his death, numerous obituaries in the form of funeral sermons and memorial poems were published. In it he was praised in flowery superlatives such as B. “Light of the Century” (seculi lumen), “incomparable poet” (poeta incomparabilis).

ancestry

The paternal grandfather of Johann Georg Styrzel was Matthew Styrzel, the 1541 Vogt in Holzheim at Lauingen on the Danube a crest letter of Emperor Charles V received. The fact that this is a son of the court chancellor Konrad Stürtzel von Buchheim , as claimed in a Rothenburg family book from the 18th century and taken over from more recent literature, is not proven and probably only assumed due to the similarity of names and the temporal proximity.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Coat of arms and family book of Johann Friedrich Christoph Schrag (1703–1780). Rothenburg City Archives, B 43 a + b, Pag. 1541
2. ↑ Ludwig Schnurrer, Mayor Johann Georg Styrzel (1591–1668), In: Rothenburger Profile, Verlag des Verein Alt-Rothenburg, 2002. P. 239 f.

literature

• Coat of arms and family book of Johann Friedrich Christoph Schrag (1703–1780). Rothenburg City Archives, B 43 a + b, Pag. 1541-1546.
• Ludwig Schnurrer: Mayor Johann Georg Styrzel (1591–1668). A Rothenburg life picture from the time of the Thirty Years' War . In: Rothenburger Profile: Images of Life from Six Centuries. Verlag des Verein Alt-Rothenburg (2002). Pp. 239-262.
• Heinrich Stürzl, Rosa Marschall: Family Chronicle Stürzl. Origin and distribution of the surnames Sterzl and Stürzl in southern Germany . Cardamina, Weißenthurm 2016.

Web links

Commons : Johann Georg Styrzel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Pedigree of Johann Georg Styrzel
• archive.thulb.uni-jena.de