Lübeck citizens' companies

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Lübeck Citizens' Companies were Lübeck's militia from 1628 to 1806.

history

In 1628, under the influence of the events of the Thirty Years War , Lübeck's military constitution , which was largely unchanged from the Middle Ages , was reformed in order to have a modern, organized vigilante group of adequate strength in the event of a defense and for everyday requirements.

The so-called rotten of the old system were replaced by a total of 26 citizen companies in which the male citizens of the actual city area - today's old town island  - were obliged to serve. The Marien Quartier in the south-west had to provide eight of these companies , six each of the remaining districts Jakobi Quartier , Marien-Magdalenen Quartier and Johannis Quartier . At the head of every citizen company was a citizen captain , to whom a lieutenant and an ensign were subordinate as lower-ranking officers .

As a pure militia force, the citizen companies were never in uniform, even after uniforms had prevailed in standing armies in the second half of the 17th century .

In addition to the function as a citizen contingent in the case of a defense (which never occurred) and the guard duty at the city ​​gates , the citizen companies were also used to maintain internal order. During the soldiers' uprising in 1796, for example, when members of the regular Lübeck city military protested against wages that were too low because of the high prices and shortened bread rations, the punishment of the leaders was carried out under guard by a strong contingent of civil companies, as the council feared new excesses.

Theoretically, every male citizen had to be ready for service in the citizen companies; In the course of the 18th century, however, more and more citizens had withdrawn from duty, so that the citizen companies no longer even had the necessary staff for the daily guard duty.

During the battle of Lübeck in 1806, the citizen companies did not appear; with the subsequent beginning of the French occupation they ceased to exist in fact and were formally dissolved in February 1811 in the course of the incorporation of Lübeck into the French Empire . After regaining independence in 1813, the citizen companies were not set up again; the citizen guard took their place .

literature

  • Peter Galperin: In defense and arms. Military citizens, mercenaries and soldiers in Oldenburg and the Hanseatic cities . Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-87943-963-X .
  • Georg Fink, Otto Wiehmann, Antjekathrin Graßmann : Lübeck and its military - from the beginning until 1939 . Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 2000, ISBN 3-7950-3115-X , ( small booklets on city history 16).
  • Schlürmann, Jan : The military of the Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck 1623-1867 , in: Handbuch zur Nordelbischen military history. Armies and wars in Schleswig, Holstein, Lauenburg, Eutin and Lübeck 1623-1663 / 67 , ed. by Eva S. Fiebig and Jan Schlürmann, Husum 2010, pp. 165–204.
  • Thomas Schwark: Lübeck's city military in the 17th and 18th centuries. Investigations into the social history of a professional group in the imperial city . Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1990, ISBN 3-7950-0456-X , ( Publications on the history of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck Series B, 18), (At the same time: Hamburg, Univ., Diss., 1989).