Ludolf von Munchausen

Ludolf von Münchhausen (born April 28, 1570 in Apelern ; † September 21, 1640 in Hessisch Oldendorf ) was a landowner and private scholar; he put together one of the largest libraries of his time.

origin

Ludolf's father was Börries von Münchhausen (1515–1583) from the "white line" of the well-known Lower Saxon noble family Münchhausen ; As Rittmeister in the service of his distant cousin, the mercenary leader Hilmar von Münchhausen , he had earned well on joint campaigns and in 1560 he built the moated castle of Apelern , whose lands had been in the family since 1377. He was married to Heilwig Büschen (1537–1599), who in 1565 inherited the Hessisch Oldendorf and Remeringhausen estates from her father Claus Büschen . From 1569 Börries was also drost and pawnbroker at the princely castle Lauenau , where he also acquired the Münchhausen'schen Burgmannshof from a cousin in 1580.

Training and travel

From 1577 Münchhausen received humanistic training at the Möllenbeck Canonical Monastery and from 1582 at the Stadthagen court , together with his sovereign, Count Ernst von Schaumburg , who was almost the same age . From 1584 he attended the Katharineum Braunschweig , where Martin Chemnitz taught. From 1586–88 he studied in Basel, where he went to eat with the ethicist Samuel Grynäus (1539–1599). In 1587 he moved to Strasbourg for half a year , where he heard Johannes Sturm and from 1588–89 to Geneva to see François Hotman , with a detour to Lyon.

Before he devoted himself entirely to the administration of his estates, he undertook a "late humanist educational trip" to the Netherlands from 1590–1591 (where he was for a short time court junker to Count Peter Ernst I. von Mansfeld , the field marshal of the Spanish armies in the Netherlands), then on to England, Ireland, Scotland (where he gained access to the court of Jacob VI ), Norway, Sweden and Denmark (where he visited the laboratory of the astronomer Tycho Brahe ). From 1592–1593 he traveled to Austria, Hungary, Bohemia (where he tried his hand at alchemical arts in Prague, inspired by Georg Am Wald ) and Poland, and then in 1598 to Italy. He noted his impressions in extensive travel diaries. He also left records about the family in the so-called "Remeringhauser Chronik" as well as business books.

Landowner

Münchhausenhof in Hessisch Oldendorf

In the inheritance with his brothers Claus (on Apelern ) and Otto (on Castle Swede village in Lauenau ) in 1594 which killed him Münchhausenhof in Hessisch Oldendorf with there already from his mother built castle and a of leased Meierhof in Remeringhausen to which he carried Bauernlegen 1599 converted into a manor (initially not recognized by the sovereign). There he had a castle built in the Weser Renaissance style, of which an outbuilding still stands today. From 1602 to 1634 he was treasurer councilor and member of the provincial estates Complaints Commission. Against the absolutist aspirations of Count Ernst , he always insisted on the traditional class rights of the landed gentry.

Library

Ludolf von Münchhausen's fame is mainly due to his important library, perhaps the largest in the empire ; the volume is estimated at 13-14,000 volumes. It should therefore hold the libraries of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria (approx. 11,000 volumes), the Vienna Court (approx. 9,200 volumes), Heinrich Rantzaus (6,300), Joachim I von Alvensleben (4,700) as well as Johannes Sambucus (2,618) and the Bibliotheca Corviniana (2–2,500 numbers).

At Wieden, the collection areas are rated as follows: 40% Theologica, 12% Juridica, 11% Historica, 6% Medicinalia, 31% Other. What was missing was the Romansh entertainment literature. 64% of the titles were in Latin. It also included numerous important manuscripts. After the University of Rinteln was founded in 1619, the Bibliotheca Münchhausiana replaced some of the missing university library.

The library was sold piece by piece by Ludolf's heirs through the bookseller Peter Köhler in Bremen in 1665; they entrusted the handwritten catalog to Adam Olearius in Gottorf , it can no longer be found today. The books are now widely scattered, individual copies are kept in libraries and archives in Berlin, Bremen, Bückeburg, Celle, Hamburg, Hanover, Jena, Copenhagen, Lüneburg, Magdeburg, Münster and Wolfenbüttel. The ownership entry is usually: LVDOLFF VON MVNCHAUSEN , the Supralibros LVM and the year of acquisition.

Spiritual exchange

The family had close ties to the theologian Konrad Schluesselburg , Ludolf's grandmother Mette von Büsche, née. von Holle once made the study possible and otherwise patronized him, as did her brother Georg von Holle . Schlüsselburg trusted Ludolf's brothers and dedicated the sixth book of his heretics catalog to Ludolf and his siblings in 1598 . Münchhausen also maintained a close exchange with the Schaumburg superintendent and pastor in Oldendorf, Theodor Steding (1582–1653), who also wrote his funeral sermon. The Rinteln professor Johann Peter Lotichius dedicated the speech Super fatalibus hoc tempore academiarum in Germania periculis (Rinteln 1631) to him. There were also closer acquaintances with Samuel Grynäus (1539–1599) in Basel, Johannes Müntzenberg, prior and lector in the Frankfurt Carmelite monastery , with Hugo Blotius , Eberhard von Weyhe and Cyriacus Spangenberg , who dedicated his noble mirror in 1591 to Ludolf's brothers Klaus and Otto and their brother-in-law Hilmar . Ludolf Justus particularly valued Lipsius , whom he had heard in 1590 in Leiden and whose pacifism and stoicism he adopted.

Marriage and offspring

Preserved side wing of the Remeringhausen manor built by Ludolf in 1599

On May 19, 1600 he married 15-year-old Anna von Bismarck (* 1585 in Krevese ), daughter of Abraham von Bismarck on Schönhausen and Krevese. The story of his courtship is often told with the saying: "Anneke, wutt you meck or wutt you meck nich?" The couple had 18 children, including seven daughters (they appear in the pedigree of many noble families of Lower Saxony) and twelve sons; the latter all died - except for two - either in childhood or under tragic circumstances in the turmoil of the Thirty Years' War ; including:

• Ludolf (1602–1628), cornet, died of the plague in Stade.
• Hilmar (1603–1625), ensign in the Netherlands, died in Rees on the Rhine.
• Abraham (1606–1627), was shot by robbers in Eischweg / Jutland in the Danish service.
• Börries (1607–1680), on Oldendorf, studied 1622–1624 in Wittenberg with Friedrich Balduin and Balthasar Meisner , during which time he lived with Egidius Hunnius . From her marriage to Sophie Magdalene von Hammerstein , there were 13 children, five of whom reached adulthood. The white line that still flourishes in Lauenau and Groß Vahlberg goes back to him .
• Ernst Friedrich (1610–1633), lieutenant captain, fell near the Bremen border.
• Christian (1612–1643), on Remeringhausen, was killed by his farmers in Schöttlingen when he wanted to seize a cow (tombstone on the church in Heuerßen , epitaph on the church in Rinteln).
• Ernst (1613–1670), on Remeringhausen, had twelve children with Catharina Sophie von Ditfurth , including Börries (1663–1722), Drost zu Lauenau and Moringen; this founded the line described in the article Moringen , now extinct in the male line, from which the poet Börries Freiherr von Münchhausen (1874–1945) also came.
• Leveke (1616–1675) married Christian von Bessel, Drost zu Liebenau, and in the second marriage Hans Adam von Hammerstein auf Equord and Hornoldendorf, Drost zu Altenbruchhausen; the couple became the first parents of various lines of the Hammerstein family. Her younger sisters married into the von Mengersen , von Bardeleben and von Campe families .

literature

• Brage bei der Wieden: Outside world and views of Ludolf von Münchhausen . Hanover 1993 (Göttingen philosophical dissertation), 308 pages. ISBN 3-7752-5883-3

Web links

• History of the Remeringhausen manor
• Sundial on the Remeringhausen manor
• Descendants of Herbord von Bismarck ( Memento from July 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Brage bei der Wieden: Außenwelt und Anschauungen Ludolf von Münchhausen , p. 37, p. 44: “He thereby broke away from the predominant, older form of the noble long-distance journey, the campaign, to which the educational journey still sometimes refers. In the next generation, the goal of understanding the world narrowed down to capturing courtly customs. Instead of the humanistic-theological character and consciousness formation, the paradigm was the imitation of socially conform virtue. "
2. ↑ Brage bei der Wieden, ibid., Pp. 51–72
3. ↑ Brage Bei der Wieden, ibid., Page 62: “The Romance entertainment literature is almost completely missing - quite different from what Otto Brunner found for the Austrian aristocratic libraries. There can be no talk of a tendency towards Romanization, a reorientation of the high nobility towards France, as Eva Pleticha also observed in Franconia, in northern Germany. It was not just the language barrier that was holding back, but also the genre. Theological edification and controversial literature still dominated, in Ludolf's aristocratic library as well as in the prince's library Simons zur Lippe ”.
4. ↑ For more information on the biographies of Ludolf's parents, siblings and children, see Brage bei der Wieden, pp. 274–284