Mélacturm
The Mélac or Schlurgerturm on the Ailenberg near Rüdern or Obertürkheim is a tower from the 16th century.
history
The Esslingen city administrator Jos Burkhardt ordered the construction of a tower on the Ailenberg as "Lustheusslin" and ornament of the city. The tower was built in 1574 by the bricklayer Michael Fladenesser and the carpenter Jacob West. Presumably an older imperial town watch tower had stood in its place, from which the ancestral castle of the Württemberg people on the Württemberg could be observed. The tower consists of three stone floors and an octagonal structure made of wood under a conical roof .
Mélacturm
During the Palatinate War of Succession , Esslingen was briefly occupied by French troops. In the 19th century, patriotic, literary stories included the tower in their fictional adaptations. A girl is said to have rendezvous with the officer Ezéchiel de Mélac near this tower, thereby preventing the city from being destroyed.
The Mélac saga through the ages
The "legend" changed over time. According to Gunter E. Grimm, it was said in 1814 that Mélac had feared the anger of the residents at the armory that had been laid in ashes and therefore moved his residence to Esslingen Castle . A townspeople's daughter tried to stab him there in the Mélac house, but she failed because of the tank that he was wearing under his clothes.
In a version from 1949, this girl also has a name: Katharina was the daughter of the Hochdorf pastor Jeremias Haug and lived with a relative, the Adlerwirt. But Mélac has quartered in the "Adler" of all places and found a liking for Katharina Haug. She had made an appointment with him at the tower and was stabbed by him after the unsuccessful murder attempt on her part. Out of horror and remorse, Mélac then refrained from cremating the city.
Grimm chooses these two versions as a prelude to his investigation of the mythical subject. In fact, the first written evidence of the legend appears in the Swabian Archives as early as 1790 . Eberhard Friedrich Hübner's song Das Mädchen von Esslingen , which was set to music by Schubart and sung in 1791 at a concert in Esslingen's town hall, is apparently based on this first written version . However, according to Rudolf Krauss, Hübner's ballad-style songs “do the best they can in terms of banality, and the more gruesome material they deal with, the more comical.” Gustav Schwab created another written version of the legend in 1816. “Das Eßlinger Mädchen” bears witness to the poet's national-patriotic attitude; Mélac is portrayed as the embodiment of French lust. Under the pseudonym A. von Tromlitz, August von Witzleben wrote another version of the legend in the form of a short story. He named the heroine Magdalene Hegelin and described Mélac as a gruesome spooky figure who was quartered in the "Black Eagle" and who had taken an interest in the landlord's daughter. The landlord brought Magdalene to safety in the nearby Poor Clare Monastery and later in Stetten, but when Mélac threatened her father and the city, she returned voluntarily and made an appointment with the Frenchman outside the city. There she tried to stab Mélac, which was unsuccessful. Mélac, for his part, stabbed the girl, but was then pursued by the wild hunt and finally disappeared at the head of the hellish procession on his horse.
Grimm considers the various versions of the legend to be an attempt to compensate for the humiliation and material damage suffered that went along with the French billeting under Mélac. Hermann Kurz, on the other hand, sees the legend as an adaptation of the biblical Judith and Holofernes material .
Historical background
On August 27, 1689, Pastor Haug submitted a request to the city council to condemn the landlord of the "Golden Eagle", Hans Michel Leonhardt Rutenberger, to pay alimony because he did not protect the girl and his daughter when the French invaded Anna Catharina (1667–1743) was therefore deflowered and impregnated by Mélac. At the beginning of August 1690, the child Joseph Haug died, who according to Pastor Haug had emerged from this rape. In 1691 the Adlerwirt became a widower and on July 12, 1694 he married Anna Catharina Haug, who then received citizenship. In October of the same year, their son Johann Wolfgang Friderich was baptized. Speculations were made that Anna Catharina Haug's first son Joseph was not conceived by Mélac, but also by Rutenberger, but could neither be proven nor refuted. Rutenberger died in 1700; his widow soon married another landlord, Johann Saz from Strasbourg .
Schlurgerturm
The second name of the tower, "Schlurgerturm", could be loosely related to the novella version of the Mélacsage. The Weinberggeist Schlurker or Schlurger announces itself in spring with noise and rattling, which shows a certain similarity with the train of the wild hunt, which Witzleben includes in his novella. The appearance of the Schlurgers should indicate a good wine year.
The tower in recent literature
The legends about the Mélacturm were taken up again by Manfred J. Schmitz in his work Who knows how deep the river is under the bridge .
See also
literature
- Andrea Steudle et al., Monument Topography Federal Republic of Germany. Cultural monuments in Baden-Württemberg. Volume 1.2.1. City of Esslingen am Neckar , Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7995-0834-6 , p. 352
- Gunter E. Grimm, the girl from Esslingen. Wandlungen einer Sage , Esslinger Studien 18, 1979, pp. 167-186. Online version: Goethezeitportal (PDF; 189 kB), January 17, 2005
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ This is the spelling of the name in the monument topography, the version with ck is also in circulation.
- ↑ quoted from Andrea Steudle et al., Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany. Cultural monuments in Baden-Württemberg. Volume 1.2.1. City of Esslingen am Neckar , Ostfildern 2009, ISBN 978-3-7995-0834-6 , p. 352
- ↑ quoted from Grimm, Das Mädchen von Esslingen (PDF; 189 kB), p. 10
- ↑ Grimm, Das Mädchen von Esslingen (PDF; 189 kB), p. 14
- ↑ Grimm, the girl from Esslingen (PDF; 189 kB), p. 21
- ↑ Schlurkersage
- ↑ EZ
Coordinates: 48 ° 45 ′ 44.8 " N , 9 ° 16 ′ 29.5" E