Konrad Breuning

Portrait of Konrad Breuning at the Tübingen town hall

Konrad Breuning (* 1430 - 1440 ; † 27. September 1517 , executed) was a Tübingen Vogt, which this office in 1492 by Count Eberhard the Bearded was transferred.

Live and act

Konrad Breuning was first a judge, hospital nurse, subordinate and court judge in Tübingen. As Vogt of Tübingen, Breuning developed exemplary administrative activities from 1492. Through the trust of Count Eberhard im Bart, he also became a member of the court. When Count Eberhard im Bart was raised to Duke in 1495, King Maximilian raised Konrad Breuning to the nobility and received a coat of arms. When the future emperor deposed the completely incompetent Eberhard II , the successor to Eberhard im Bart, Duke Ulrich von Württemberg established an interim regiment to which Konrad Breuning belonged until he came of age . As a member of the regimental council, he played a leading role in the removal of Duke Eberhard II. After Duke Ulrich took over the government, he became a confidante of the Grand Council.

He took part in the printing of the Naucler Chronicle, which is a sign that he was closely connected to the long-standing Chancellor of the University of Tübingen .

Tübingen Treaty

He played an important role in the negotiations for the development of the Tübingen Treaty . In May 1514, there were revolts in Württemberg against the ever new tax increases with which Duke Ulrich tried to finance the many wars and his enormously lavish court keeping. In order to put down these rebellions, Ulrich needed financial support.

On June 18, 1514, the Tübingen Vogt Konrad Breuning and the Hohentübingen Burgvogt Ernst von Fürst ended an uprising in Tübingen. Breuning then advised the Duke to move the state parliament to Tübingen and thereby separate the landscape from the representatives of the farmers. On June 26, 1514, the state parliament was convened in Tübingen, and after tough negotiations at Hohentübingen Castle , the following was agreed:

The representatives of the regions undertook to pay off the enormous national debt of almost a million guilders and also assured their assistance in the fight against “ Poor Konrad ”, as the rebellious farmers in the Rems Valley were called. In return, they were given far-reaching say in land sales and declarations of war. The “landlord withholding tax” was abolished, which made it possible to leave the country freely. All residents were assured of due process in criminal trials. In addition, Tübingen became the seat of the Württemberg court. The Tübingen Treaty functioned as the Tübingen constitution for almost three hundred years and is considered the first human rights document on mainland Europe.

Arrest and execution

Breuning's negotiating skills, however, had devastating consequences for him. About a year after the Treaty of Tübingen was signed, Konrad Breuning was imprisoned for high treason at the Hohenasperg , Hohenurach and later Hohenneuffen castles and tortured for months until Duke Ulrich, then 32, had his 77-year-old political opponent publicly executed on the Stuttgart market square. It was a judicial murder that excited the whole country.

This happened because in May 1515 Duke Ulrich stabbed his stable master and friend, Hans von Hutten , from behind while hunting in the Böblingen Forest , after he had chatted behind closed doors at the court about the duke's unrequited love for the stable master's wife Had exposed ridicule. Emperor Maximilian then ordered that a council should be placed at his side as a co-regency. The Duke had to reluctantly agree to an even stronger influence of the estates over his government. Angrily, he planned to let the bourgeois bailiffs feel as soon as possible out of respectability, whom he accused of interplaying behind his back with the emperor to his disadvantage, that he alone was the master of Württemberg.

He had the Vogt of Tübingen, Konrad Breuning, and the more than seventy-year-old Vogt of Cannstatt, Konrad Vaut , arrested on November 20, 1516 and held captive on the Hohenasperg. Sebastian Breuning , the Vogt of Weinsberg and brother of the Tübinger, and Hans Stickel , the mayor of Stuttgart , soon joined the two arrested people on the Asperg . They were accused of high treason, because they were said to have turned to the emperor after Ulrich's bloody act; Konrad Vaut was also facing charges of lese majesty. The defendants denied the allegations, but on the instructions of Dr. Ambrosius Volland , who was the duke's adviser and confidante, the men were severely tortured until they made a confession. No witnesses for or against the prosecution were sought. According to the extorted confessions, the main hearing was set for December 10, 1516 in the courtroom of the manor house on the Stuttgart market.

There the hearing took place again under the chairmanship of Dr. Ambrosius Volland instead. All four of the defendants had revoked their extorted confessions under torture, but their convictions had been determined beforehand. Witnesses were again not heard. After a brief hearing, the three bailiffs were sentenced to death, only Hans Stickel escaped with his life. Just one day after the verdict, the poor sinners bell rang at the market. In hairy shirts, Konrad Vaut and Sebastian Breuning were led between a trellis of mercenaries with swords and spears under loud drum rolls in the market to the execution block. Konrad Breuning was tortured for another year before he was executed.

Appreciation

Breuning is considered to be one of the most important figures, both personally and politically, under the honor of the old Württemberg, the civil servants and politicians who ruled the countryside, who came from the country's rich bourgeois upper class. In Tübingen, the Breuning bell in the Tübingen collegiate church , the Breuning Foundation and Breuningstrasse remind of Konrad Breuning and his family.

literature

• Sigrid Hirbodian: Konrad Breuning and the importance of the urban leadership elite for Württemberg . In: Götz Adriani and Andreas Schmauder (eds.): 1514. Power. Violence. Freedom. The Treaty of Tübingen in times of upheaval . Ostfildern 2014, ISBN 978-3-7995-0570-3 (museum edition), ISBN 978-3-7995-0550-5 (publisher edition), p. 206 ff.

Web links

• Max Miller:  Breuning, Konrad von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 608 ( digitized version ).
• August Wintterlin:  Breuning, Konrad . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 321 f.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Max Miller:  Breuning, Konrad von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 608 ( digitized version ).
2. ↑ ^{a b} Hans Widmann: Tübingen as a publishing town , Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1971, p. 34 f.
3. ↑ Page no longer available , search in web archives: Remstalbräu - The Experiment: History
4. ↑ Andrea Bachmann: Die Breuningstraße , Tagblatt-Anzeiger, 2010. ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ August Wintterlin:  Breuning, Konrad . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 321 f.
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Rose Wagner: Mosaik, special publications of the Martinszeller Verband No. 17 , Stuttgart 2002, pp. 38–43.