Lübeck imperial freedom letter

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Imperial freedom letter from the city of Lübeck from 1226

The imperial freedom letter of Emperor Friedrich II brought the city of Lübeck imperial freedom in June 1226 . It was thus directly subordinate to the emperor and enjoyed extensive autonomy, not least because of its distance.

prehistory

After the fall of Henry the Lion , Emperor Frederick I, called Barbarossa, gave the town on the southern Baltic coast, which was founded in 1143, with the Barbarossa privilege of September 19, 1188, with lands and rights of use that were intended to secure its rapid development.

Imperial freedom 1226

Friedrich II. With his falcon. From his book De arte venandi cum avibus (On the art of hunting with birds) . Late 13th century

In 1226 the people of Lübeck were preparing to free themselves from the influence of Denmark under King Waldemar II , under whose rule the city had developed very positively economically since 1202. To this end, it seemed to the Lübeckers a confirmation of the privileges obtained by Barbarossa in 1188. As a result of Marold's research, these have been slightly adapted to the changed framework conditions. Presumably the original was suppressed in the course of this - not uncommon in the Middle Ages - forgery. The council messengers Wilhelm Witte and Johann von Bremen as ambassadors of the council of the city of Lübeck achieved the recognition of Barbarossa's privileges presented in this way by his grandson Friedrich II in May 1226. The timing was otherwise favorable, as one of the emperor's closest advisers developed the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order Hermann von Salza based on the Golden Bull of Rimini from March of the year settlement plans for the Baltic States , which were later also processed via the port of Lübeck. Between June 14 and 21, 1226, the council messengers in the imperial castle in “Borgo San Donnino”, today's Fidenza , received the most important Lübeck constitutional document with the imperial freedom letter. The Grand Master Hermann von Salza can also be found among the witnesses listed in the document. With the imperial immediacy and the further safeguarding of territorial claims in the surrounding area, especially along the Trave to Travemünde and Priwall , development requirements were laid that helped establish the rapid rise to the head of the Hanseatic League .

Right source after the battle of Bornhöved

At first, however, the freedom of the Reich was only on paper. Only with the battle of Bornhöved , which was devastating for Waldemar II , could the rights gained by Friedrich be implemented for the people of Lübeck. But then the content of the document soon became significant. Waldemar blocked the access to the port at Travemünde as early as 1233 and met the Sword Brothers who were dependent on supplies via Lübeck and who, together with the Lübeckers, had Pope Gregory IX intervened . against Waldemar. Also in the dispute with the Lübeck bishop Burkhard von Serkem , who fortified his Gut Kaltenhof too strongly on the lower reaches of the Trave from 1280, the dispute was only resolved with the approval of Pope Johannes XXII. and settled after Serkem's death in 1317. The imperial freedom letter played a role in the assertion of ownership of the Priwall in the centuries-old dispute with the Mecklenburg dukes and the assertion of Travemünde against the Counts of Holstein up to the Congress of Vienna . With the Lübeck Bay case , the document found its final judicial assessment by the State Court of Justice for the German Empire . It was not until the Greater Hamburg Act of 1937 that the loss of statehood lost its effect, which today only survives in the historical demarcations.

The certificate

Two copies of the imperial freedom letter are preserved in the archive of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck . The documents are written on parchment in Latin and have dimensions of around 50 × 50 cm. Both were in until 1940 Trese Council in the Marienkirche in Lübeck stored. On one is a wax seal, on the other there was a gold bull of Friedrichs at least until 1945 , which was lost in the turmoil of the post-war period. In this respect, the text of the two documents differs from one another with regard to the completion notes of the Imperial Chancellery. The other deviations in the copies are of minor nature. In 1940 the Lübeck documents were initially stored in a safe in the basement of the tax office in Hüxstraße and then in 1942/43 stored in a tunnel in Thuringia. From there, the holdings were transferred to various storage locations via the Soviet Union , most of them to Potsdam from the early 1950s. Before the German reunification, the first return of the archive material began. The handover of the Reich Freedom Letter in the Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic in East Berlin started in December 1986.

Witnesses

Documentary witnesses listed in the document 1226 are:

Aftermath and current status

The land and sea borders established by the emperor at the time, as well as the fishing rights to the Trave , Dassower See and in the Lübeck Bay , for example , still exist today. Although they were disputed with regard to inland waters for centuries, they were confirmed by the Imperial Court in 1890 in a legal dispute between Mecklenburg and Lübeck .

literature

  • Olof Ahlers (ed.): Lübeck 1226 - Imperial freedom and early city. Lübeck 1976.
  • Antjekathrin Graßmann (Ed.): Lübeckische Geschichte. 2nd edition, Lübeck 1989. ISBN 3-7950-3203-2
  • Antjekathrin Graßmann (Ed.): Lübeck-Lexikon, Lübeck 2006. ISBN 3-7950-7777-X
  • Meike Kruse: For the indexing of the holdings of the archive of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck that were relocated in 1942/43 and returned between 1987 and 1998. In: The memory of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck: Festschrift for Antjekathrin Graßmann on the 65th birthday. In connection with the Association for Lübeck History and Archeology and the Hanseatic History Association ed. by Rolf Hammel-Kiesow and Michael Hundt . Lübeck: Schmidt-Römhild 2005, pp. 571-583, ISBN 3-7950-5555-5
  • Gerhard Schneider : Endangering and Loss of Statehood of the Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck and its Consequences ; Lübeck: Schmidt-Römhild, 1986; ISBN 3-7950-0452-7

Single receipts

  1. ^ Document book of the City of Lübeck (UBStL) I, No. 7.
  2. ^ Emil Ferdinand Fehling , Lübeckische Ratslinie , Lübeck 1925, no.108.
  3. ↑ UBStL I, No. 34.
  4. ↑ UBStL I, No. 35.
  5. ^ Document text
  6. ↑ RG ZVLGA 6 (1891), pp. 243-326