Karl Porz

Karl Porz , also known as Latinized spelling, (* around 1485 in Nuremberg ; † 1549 in Böblingen ) was a Reformation bailiff in Württemberg . He was a writer and advisor to several reformers and participated in the secularization of the Maulbronn monastery .

biography

He came from a Nuremberg merchant family, his father was the patrician Konrad Portz, who is also called Kunz Pretzel in council minutes . The family was originally called Pretzel, which allows conclusions to be drawn about the bakery trade, but changed its name to Portz or Porz during the father's lifetime in order to express their social advancement to councilors during the heyday of the imperial city through the name. The grave monument of the father from the workshop of Peter Vischer was in the Sebalduskirche .

Carolus attended the Latin school in Nuremberg and, as the youngest of the Porz sons, entered the Carmelite monastery in Nuremberg shortly after 1500 . There he was initially employed in the scriptorium. From 1506 he accompanied Franziskus Cellarius and other visitors on their visitation trips through northern Bavaria and Saxony. From 1513 he belonged to the group of clerics appointed by Emperor Maximilian to the University of Wittenberg , who were responsible for the Saxon Prince Friedrich III. should examine granted rights from a canonical point of view. On this occasion Portus was sure to have contact with Martin Luther , Andreas Bodenstein and other later leaders of the Reformation who were already active in Wittenberg at that time.

In June 1518 Porz resigned from the Carmelite monastery. There are no sources about the time in Wittenberg 1513/14 and his departure in 1518. In 1520 he appeared in the circle of Franciscus Irenicus at the monastery in Baden-Baden. He continues to work there as a writer, but is also called an advisor and worked as an assistant preacher.

In 1523 he moved to Schwäbisch Hall , where he appears alongside Johann Isenmann and Johannes Brenz as an assistant preacher in the churches of St. Michael and St. Katharina . In 1524 he was assistant preacher next to Johann Lachmann in St. Kilian in Heilbronn. From 1525 on, he was back in the entourage of Brenz in Hall, doing any paperwork.

From around 1533 Porz was in Ulm. There he was appointed as a reading master in the entourage of Ambrosius Blarer . From 1535 he was an employee of the new Württemberg general superintendent Erhard Schnepf . From 1538 he worked again under Blarrer in the secularization of the Maulbronn Monastery, where he was responsible for establishing the monastery property . Shortly after 1540 his traces are lost, but he seems to have continued to work in the Maulbronn area, as he died in nearby Böblingen in 1549.

For a long time Porz remained almost unmentioned or unidentified. It was not until Richard Hachenberger, in 1990, in his work on the Maulbronn Weinberg inventories, that Porz, as the writer of the inventory, was not a hitherto unknown official clerk, but a confidante of Blarers who had been around other leaders of the Reformation in previous years. Hachenberger proved that in the early writings of Brenz the portus mentioned there was not the Latin term for port, as was previously assumed, but the scribe von Brenz, who is identical with Porz. It was also Hachenberger who identified Porz as a Carmelite in Nuremberg at a young age and was able to clarify his family origins. He considers Porz, also because of his age, to be a link of the Reformation in the southwest, who as a scribe could even have written parts of the Syngramma Suevicum .

Much of his life, especially why he left the Carmelite monastery and later moved from the imperial cities to Württemberg, is unknown, as is his place of burial. A note in the Maulbronn inventories names the year of his death 1549 and the place of death Böblingen.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Sven Hauschke: The tombs of the Nuremberg Vischer workshop (1453–1544). Imhof, Petersberg 2006, p. 127.
2. ^ Günther Cordes: Franciscus Irenicus from Ettlingen. From the life of a humanist and reformer. In: Oberrheinische Studien III, 1975, pp. 353–371. Still called Porcius there.
3. ^ Martin Brecht , Gerhard Schäfer : Johannes Brenz. Early writings. Tübingen 1970, p. 240. There incorrectly interpreted as Latin portus = harbor.
4. ↑ Seminarephorat Maulbronn (Ed.): Maulbronn Monastery 1178–1978. Maulbronn 1978, p. 94, there as Porz .
5. ^ Richard Hachenberger: The Eilfinger vineyards of the Maulbronn monastery. Maulbronn 1990, pp. 12-14.
6. ↑ Porz was about 10 to 15 years older than Irenicus and Brenz and stood by them not only as a scribe, but also, according to Hachenberger, as an advisor.

Web links

• kloster-maulbronn.de