Johann van den Berge

Johann van den Berge (* 14th century ; † around 1409 in Aachen ) was lay judge and mayor of the imperial city of Aachen .

Live and act

After Johann van den Berge was accepted into the aldermen's chair around 1388 , he was elected mayor of the Free Imperial City for the first time in 1391 . In 1394 the city appointed him rentmaster and in 1398 re-elected him mayor.

Afterwards van den Berge appeared several times as the City of Aachen's ambassador at important consultations. Among other things, he was in 1407, together with the mayor Konrad von dem Eichhorn and the stale mayor Johann Bertolf, head of the delegation in negotiations with the imperial councils about the planned repetition of King Ruprecht's coronation ceremonies . The official coronation in Aachen was forbidden to him in 1401 because they did not agree with the removal of his predecessor Wenzel von Luxemburg . Ruprecht's coronation took place in Cologne and without the handover of the imperial insignia. King Ruprecht then granted Aachen an imperial ban lasting several years, after which the coronation was to be repeated in Aachen in the traditional way in 1407. After long negotiations, it was finally agreed that the city of Aachen would have to pay 8,000 guilders in two installments as a contribution to the traditional coronation celebrations. On August 14, 1407, van den Berge and the incumbent mayor Hermann Dürtzant managed to renegotiate and extend the agreed installment dates.

Literature and Sources

• Luise Freiin von Coels von der Brügghen : The lay judges of the Royal See of Aachen from the earliest times until the final repeal of the imperial city constitution in 1798 . In: Journal of the Aachen History Association . tape 50 , 1928, ISSN  0065-0137 , pp. 140 (No. 137) ( online on rootsweb ).
• Luise Freiin von Coels von der Brügghen: The Aachen mayors from 1251 to 1798 . In: Journal of the Aachen History Association . tape 55 , 1933, pp. 50 ( online [PDF; 1.7 MB ; accessed on June 3, 2016]).