Johann Philipp von Hohensax

Johann Philipp von Hohensax

Johann Philipp Freiherr von Hohensax (* 1550 at Forstegg Castle in Salez; † May 12, 1596 in Salez ) was a Swiss nobleman.

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Johann Philipp came from the second marriage of his father Ulrich Philipp Freiherr von Hohensax. While the children from the father's first marriage were Catholic, the children from the second marriage were of the Reformed faith.

Johann Philipp attended schools in St. Gallen and Zurich . He then continued his education in Geneva , Heidelberg , Paris and Oxford , where he studied ancient languages, medicine, history, philosophy and law. As early as 1567 he was enrolled in Geneva as a student in the suite of Count Palatine Christoph (* 1551), a son of Elector Friedrich III. , recorded. He spent the years 1568–1571 at his home university in Heidelberg and at the electoral court. Then his father sent him to Paris with the order to look for a Huguenot employer. However, the events of St. Bartholomew's Night in 1572 shattered all hopes of being able to serve the Reformation in France. From 1573 to 1574 Johann Philipp studied at Oxford and graduated with a Magister artium. Back in Heidelberg, Friedrich appointed him to the electoral council and in 1576 sent him as one of his representatives to the Reichstag in Regensburg.

After the death of Friedrich III. he had to leave the Palatinate service in 1576 because his successor, Ludwig VI. who was strict Lutheran. He therefore followed Count Johann von Nassau as an officer to the Netherlands . Between 1577 and 1588 he held political and military functions in Antwerp, Arnheim, Xanten, Venloo and Wachtendonck, most recently as governor of the province of Gelderland . He continued his historical and literary studies and assembled a large library.

In 1587 he married Adriana Franziska Countess von Brederode, who came from Holland. In 1588 he returned to Heidelberg and returned to the service of the Palatinate, after the brother of the Elector, who died in 1583, Johann Casimir , a Calvinist like Hohensax, was in charge of government. He was appointed councilor, bailiff and chief magistrate in Mosbach , where he lived from 1590 to 1593, still maintaining a close relationship of trust with the court. When his third son was baptized on April 11, 1592, the four Reformed cities of Switzerland, Zurich, Bern, Basel and Schaffhausen, and the Palatinate Elector were godfathers.

After his Catholic half-brother Johann Ulrich died in November 1592, Johann Philipp quit his service in the Electoral Palatinate in 1593 and returned to Forstegg the following year to take over the management of the family estates.

Because of the religious differences between the children from the father's two marriages, the relationship between the two branches of the family was always tense. After the death of the father there were considerable inheritance disputes between the descendants, which is why Johann Philipp von Hohensax called the city of Zurich and asked for the mediation and administration of the inheritance.

Presumably during his time in the Netherlands, the baron seems to have acquired the Codex Manesse ; in any case, the manuscript appears in his estate in Forstegg. After his death it circulated in the learned circle of friends of the Hohensax family, as can be proven by letters from the years 1596–1607. The St. Gallen lawyer Bartholomäus Schobinger kept the book for the widow for years, while the Palatinate Elector showed great interest in acquiring it. The mentions of the efforts of the Electorate of the Palatinate in the letters that have been received indicate, however, less that the baron could have illegally " borrowed " the codex from Heidelberg , but rather that the noble lords and their humanistic advisers interested in antiquity were still in Johann Philipp's Mosbacher time Zimelie had noticed. Years later, the Heidelberg family was successful and in 1607 the valuable document ended up in the Bibliotheca Palatina .

The criminal case

On May 3, 1596, members of the families met in the Löwen inn in Salez after they had previously attended a court hearing. During this meeting there was violence between Johann Philipp von Hohensax and one of his nephews, who were Catholic.

Death of the baron

Johann Philipp von Hohensax died on May 12, 1596 under circumstances that had not yet been fully explained. Before that, he had dictated a letter to the City Council of Zurich and provided it with his own postscript. In this letter he described the incident in the inn with great accuracy and asked for personal protection from the " murderer who was thinking about new acts of violence ". Nonetheless, it is said that he died " gently and quietly with devout prayer ".

Johann Philipp von Hohensax was buried in the baron's crypt in the Sennwald church.

The mummy of Johann Philipp von Hohensax in the bell tower in Sennwald

Opening of the tomb

In 1730 the crypt was opened in the course of renovation work on the church. To everyone's astonishment, the baron's body, which had been buried in a purple silk robe, was completely incorrupt. In the belief that a miracle had happened, the crypt was provided with an opening through which one could look inside. “ The miracle of Sennwald ” quickly became public and attracted numerous visitors. The mummification was due to special environmental conditions in the crypt.

In the Catholic Vorarlberg in particular, the legend of a martyr whose relics are said to have miraculous effects arose during this period. Possibly not only to protect the baron's mummy, but also to get rid of the unpopular Catholic pilgrims in the Reformed Sennwald, viewing the crypt was prohibited from 1736.

Theft of the corpse and return

On March 7, 1741, four men from Vorarlberg broke into the crypt, stole the remains of Johann Philipp and brought them to Frastanz . The men want to bury the " martyr " in consecrated ground.

After it became known that it was not the remains of a martyr but the body of a staunch supporter of the Calvinist faith, the body was transported in a coffin to Forstegg Castle , the baron's residence during his lifetime , at the end of May 1741 . There the coffin was opened and the remains examined. It was found that the corpse was missing two fingers on the left hand and the thumb on the right hand and that the robe was " somewhat torn ". On this occasion both legs of the dead man also disappeared.

Another burial

The body was presumably buried again in the crypt, a short time later - possibly out of concern for the safety of the corpse - the remains of the baron were stored in the bell chamber of the church tower. There the body remained open for a long time, later it was placed in a coffin-like box with a glass lid.

In the 1970s, a small extra room was created for the coffin during the construction of the morgue.

The autopsy

From 1979 to 1981, the mummified corpse was preserved and examined at the instigation of the then canton archaeologist Irmgard Grüninger. The investigations show that the historical tradition of this case cannot be reconciled with the forensic medical expertise: The specialists commissioned with the investigation, the paleopathologist Siegfried Scheidegger and the anthropologist Bruno Kaufmann found that Johann Philipp had an immediately fatal approx cm long skull fracture and was also strangled with a rope. It therefore remains unclear how the letter to the Zurich council came about.

On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Johann Philipp von Hohensax's death, the Werdenberg yearbook 1996 contained an article in which the previously known facts about the life and death of the baron and the odyssey of his mummy were described in detail.

Only recently was the corpse examined using special techniques by the Anthropological Research Institute in Aesch .

literature

• Alfred Inhelder: Baron Johann Philipp von Hohensax. In: Schweizer Illustrierte , Vol. 16, 1912, pp. 66–68. ( e-periodica )
• Peter Kurzmann: The alchemist at Forstegg Castle ; in Middle Ages 2010/4;
• Johann Wilhelm Stucki (1542–1607): Narratio de vita & obitu generosi ac illustris. Johan. Philippi ... from Alto Saxo , Basiliae 1597.
• Heinrich Zeller-Werdmüller:  Hohensax, Johann Philipp von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1881, p. 516.

fiction

• Adolf Muschg : Sax , Roman, 2010

Movie

• « Who was the ' Black Knight? ›Das Leben des Freiherrn Johann Philipp von Hohensax » , documentation, 30 min., Production: ZDF , book: Wolf von Lojewski , first broadcast: July 13, 2005

Individual evidence

1. ↑ How did Baron Johann Philipp von Hohensax really die? ( Memento from December 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive )