Kaspar Frey

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the lawyer of the same name, see Kaspar Frey (lawyer) .

Kaspar Frey (* around 1460/70 in Baden im Aargau; † around 1526/27 in Zurich ) was a Swiss chronicler and administrative clerk in the service of the cities of Baden in Aargau and Zurich as well as the Abbey of St. Gallen .

Life

Kaspar Frey was born in Baden in Aargau around 1460/70. He came from a long-established family of butchers who belonged to the city's ruling class and who had sent members to the city council several times in the 15th and 16th centuries. From 1487 until his death in 1497, his father Hans occupied the office of Baden mayor with interruptions . Through his mother, who came from the Zehender family in Bruges, Kaspar Frey was distantly related to the long-time Zurich city clerk Ludwig Ammann . Probably around 1486/87 Frey married Gertrud, the daughter of the Baden innkeeper Rüdiger Bind vom Falken. The marriage probably remained childless.

Studies and training (1481–1494)

Kaspar Frey studied at the University of Basel in 1481/82 and in Paris in 1483/84 , where he completed his studies with a bachelor's degree. Possibly at the University of Paris or at another university, he then also obtained the degree of a Magister Artium . Back in his hometown of Baden, he served there between 1487 and 1492 as a member of the city court and in 1487/88 as the clerk who was responsible for collecting city fines. By 1494 he had completed training as a notary , presumably with Ulrich Zasius , the town clerk at the time , with whom he had a close friendship throughout his life.

Town clerk and mayor of Baden (1494–1499)

In the spring of 1494 Frey succeeded Zasius. Under his aegis, the Baden city chancellery was modernized, in particular through a greater differentiation of the city registers. In the summer of 1498 the Baden council elected him mayor.

Swabian War (1499)

During the Swabian War in 1499, Kaspar Frey, as Supreme Captain, was in command of the city's troops. During this time, he accompanied the meeting taking place in Baden as a recorder and clerk. As early as May or early June 1499, while the war was still going on, Frey resigned from the mayor's office and switched to the services of the Abbot of St. Gallen, Gotthard Giel von Glattburg , whom he served as a diplomat on several statutes from July to September 1499 Peace negotiations in Schaffhausen and Basel were available.

Fiefdom and Reichsvogt in the service of the Abbey of St. Gallen (1499–1514)

From October 1499 to November 1504 Frey occupied the position of a liege bailiff of the St. Gallen Abbey, a kind of head of the feudal administration. In the meantime he also acted as deputy to the court master . At the end of November 1504 he was appointed by Abbot Franz Gaisberg as abbot bailiff for the judicial districts of Rorschach , Steinach , Goldach and Mörschwil with his official seat in Rorschach on Lake Constance. From 1506 he was a member of the abbot's council, from 1510 he represented the abbey on several councils. In the spring of 1507 Frey took as captain of a St. Galler association on the side of the French King Louis XII. participated in his campaign against the northern Italian imperial city of Genoa .

Town clerk in Zurich (1515 / 16–1526)

In the autumn of 1515, Kaspar Frey was elected city clerk of Zurich, an office that he took up at the beginning of 1516 and held until the spring of 1526. He had a positive view of the Zurich Reformation under Ulrich Zwingli , which had been developing since 1519 . The city chancellery, headed by Kaspar Frey, represented an important interface between the Zurich council and Zwingli. The latter frequently made use of the city clerk's services. Frey and Zwingli were friends with each other in private and shared a common interest in humanistic studies. Frey was a recognized member of the humanistic reading and discussion group that had been formed around Zwingli since 1519. Inside and outside this circle he counted humanists such as Heinrich Glarean , Joachim von Watt (Vadian) and Beatus Rhenanus among his friends. In the spring of 1526, Frey resigned from his office because of signs of frailty. He was elected to the Zurich Council soon after, but was only able to enjoy this position for a few months. Kaspar Frey died in Zurich between September 26, 1526 and June 24, 1527.

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Chronicle

Swabian War Chronicle (1499/1500)

Structure and content

Kaspar Frey's main work is a completely independent chronicle of the Swabian War of 1499 written in German prose , which he probably wrote down in St. Gallen between September 1499 and April 1500 . It is one of the earliest known historical works that deal with this confrontation. The text deals with the war in great detail from its beginnings at the turn of the year 1498/99 to the peace in Basel on September 22, 1499. In addition to the vivid description of military events, the chronicle offers a broad political and diplomatic history of the war, with a knowledgeable assessment of the role of the French King Louis XII. , the Duke of Milan Ludovico Sforza , called "il Moro", and the Roman King and Archduke of Habsburg Austria Maximilian I. Here, Frey is characterized above all by an extremely negative attitude towards Ludwig XII. from, in 1499 after all an important ally of the Confederates, while the war opponent Maximilian is portrayed relatively positively.

The main intention of the chronicle is a moral didactic explicitly directed against the war, which aims to teach the reader and to convey positive action guidelines for the future through the example of history. The representation is based on a strictly causal understanding of history, which emphasizes the independent action of each individual and its consequences. Frey sees the cause of the war in a causal connection with the long-standing abuse of the Swabians and Austrians against the Confederates, whereby he also identifies the former as the only culprits in the war and thus also reveals the primary target group of his moral didax. Frey probably planned to have his work printed, but for unknown reasons it never came.

The presentation is based in part on the chronicler's own experience and eyewitness reports. The descriptions of everyday war life in the positions on the Upper Rhine near Koblenz opposite Waldshut and the peace negotiations in Schaffhausen and Basel , in which Frey himself took part as a St. Gallen diplomat, are particularly valuable . In addition, Frey processed numerous documents, especially military and diplomatic correspondence (missives), but also documentary material. In individual cases he had been involved in the production of these documents himself, for example as the writer of the meetings held in Baden during the war. The Zurich town clerk Ludwig Ammann probably gave him access to the Zurich chancellery archive, from which many of the materials used in the chronicle come. Three documents are reproduced in full in the text: the order of war of the Swabian Confederation captured by the Confederates , the mandate of King Maximilian I against the Confederates of April 22, 1499, and the Treaty of Basel, which was distributed as a single-sheet print.

Reception and transmission

The chronicle was widely received by federal historiography of the 16th century. Probably as early as the spring of 1500, at a time when Frey's chronicle himself was possibly still being written, Niklaus Schradin , clerk of the Abbey of St. Gallen and Kaspar Frey's temporary work colleague, converted parts of the prose story into verses, which he wrote in his on September 1st Processed the rhyme chronicle of the Swabian War printed in Sursee in 1500. The depiction of the war found its way into Lucerne historiography through Schradin, above all the Swiss Chronicle of Petermann Etterlin (1507) and the Lucerne Chronicle of Diebold Schilling (1513). Probably through Ludwig Ammann , who could have made himself available to Frey as a proofreader for a planned print publication, the chronicle came to Zurich, where it was used by the unknown author (possibly Heinrich Utinger ) of the so-called “Zürcher Schwabenkriegschronik” around 1501/03 . This work, which contains large parts of Frey's text almost verbatim, was used around 1508/16 by the Zurich cleric and chronicler Heinrich Brennwald as the authoritative model for the depiction of the Swabian War in his large Swiss chronicle. However, Brennwald also knew Kaspar Frey's chronicle, which he used to supplement and correct individual descriptions.

The chronicle reached Bern from Zurich around 1520/30 , where the city chronicler Valerius Anshelm evaluated it together with Brennwald's text for the production of his Bern chronicle. Anshelm also adopted Frey's text literally in his own work. The chronicle probably remained in the possession of Anshelms after his death around 1546/47, where it was not rediscovered until the 1550s or the beginning of the 1560s by the Bern dean and historian Johannes Haller . Regarded by him as a genuinely Bernese chronicle, he sent a copy of the text to Zurich to Samuel Pellikan , son of the theologian and Hebrew Konrad Pellikan , who belonged to a group of scholars and historians around the polymath and antist Heinrich Bullinger and Johannes Stumpf . Pellikan commissioned a copy of the chronicle around 1560/64, which today is the only surviving record of Kaspar Frey's work. It is in a collective manuscript created by Samuel Pellikan with several other chronical texts (today's location: Thurgauische Kantonsbibliothek Frauenfeld, Y 149, no. 1, fol. 22r – 115v).

meaning

The consistently original text of the Swabian War Chronicle represents an important work in Swiss contemporary chronicle around 1500. It represents a kind of "original text" for the depiction of the Swabian War in the historiographical traditions of Zurich , Bern and Lucerne and thus had an impact above all in Switzerland and in Swiss historical research paints the picture of the debates from 1499 from the 16th century to the modern age. Without the historiographical processing of the events by the war participant Kaspar Frey, both the knowledge of his contemporaries and modern research on certain aspects of the war would have been considerably less.

Chronicle of the war in Milan (around 1503–1510 / 11)

As a continuation of the Swabian War depiction, Kaspar Frey wrote a chronicle of the wars in Milan in several stages up to around 1510/11 , in which the years between 1499 and 1509 are dealt with, with a special look at the role of the Confederates in the battles between France, the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples in Northern Italy and the efforts to bring King Maximilian I to Rome. The text was based on sources comparable to those of the story of the Swabian War. Of particular importance is the depiction of the Bellinzona conflict between 1501 and 1503 as well as the French campaign against Genoa in 1507, in which Frey personally participated as captain of a St. Gallen contingent and about the course of which he provides detailed information. In this continuation of the chronicle, Frey's negative attitude and criticism of Ludwig XII. once again sharpened in appearance.

Only one copy of the Mailänderkriegschronik has survived, as a copy in the same collective manuscript in which the Swabian War Chronicle is included (Thurgauische Kantonsbibliothek Frauenfeld, Y 149, No. 6, fol. 312r – 343r; No. 8, fol. 379r– 423r). Both chronicles were summarized by Kaspar Frey in a "chronicle book". In this form, both texts were sent to Heinrich Brennwald as well as Valerius Anshelm , who both also received the Milan War Chronicle and processed it in their own works.

Translation activity

Around 1511/12 Kaspar Frey made a German prose translation of a Latin work by the well-known Strasbourg humanist Sebastian Brant on the history of the holy city of Jerusalem, which had already appeared in print in 1495 . Brant's text, which succinctly takes sides with the Roman-German Empire and especially King Maximilian I , evidently corresponded to Frey's own political position. Although the translation was completed on June 17, 1512 after the preface had been dated, it took until 1518 for the Strasbourg printer Johann Knobloch to go to print as Frey wanted .

literature

• Andre Gutmann: The Swabian War Chronicle of Kaspar Frey and its position in the federal historiography of the 16th century (publications of the Commission for historical regional studies in Baden-Württemberg, series B: Research, vol. 176, parts 1 and 2), Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-17-020982-4 [with the complete edition of the Schwabenkriegschronik].
• Andre Gutmann: bloodshed, destruction and unbridled hatred. How a war brought an official to historiography . In: writing history. A source manual for historiography (1350–1750) . Edited by Susanne Rau and Birgit Studt with the assistance of Stefan Benz, Andreas Bihrer, Jan Marco Sawilla and Benjamin Steiner, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-05-004569-6 , pp. 185–195.
• Andre Gutmann: Baden - St. Gallen - Zurich: the changeable career of the chronicler Kaspar Frey . In: Argovia. Annual journal of the Historical Society of the Canton of Aargau , 120 (2008), pp. 94–130. (available online: http://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=arg-001:2008:120::94 )
• Andre Gutmann: Free, Kaspar . In: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz , Vol. 4, Basel 2005, p. 712.

Web links

• Andre Gutmann: Free, Kaspar. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .