Martin Kaschke

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Martin Kaschke (born November 5, 1610 in Massen near Finsterwalde ; † October 6, 1727 in Fürstlich Drehna ) was a farmer and employed under the Drehna rule of the Counts of Promnitz as economic bailiff. In the Niederlausitz area it became known as the "Niederlausitzischer Methusalah ".

Life

Kaschke was born to poor farmers in 1610. At the beginning of the Thirty Years' War in 1618, Kaschke was eight years old and in his life report states that shortly before the outbreak of war he saw a comet in the sky that remained there for 30 days. Kaschke also reports on the Great Comet of 1680 , which he believes was a sign of the Second Turkish Siege of Vienna that broke out in 1683 .

Kaschke survived several famines, such as the drought from 1630 to 1631, which went hand in hand with the destruction of Magdeburg , the drought of 1693 and that of 1719. For 1641 he reported a mouse plague that destroyed the grain of the fields and in combination also led to famine with the ravages of the Thirty Years' War.

On May 12, 1706 he experienced an almost total solar eclipse . Contrary to Nicolaus Copernicus ' doctrine, he was convinced that "the sun runs, and the earth is immobile, because otherwise the ladder that you saw leaning against the earth in the sky at night would have fallen over."

He survived two plague epidemics , including the plague epidemic of 1680, but presumably lost his second wife around this time after she had been mentally deranged for eight years. Kaschke assumed that she had consumed “magically prepared water”. Kaschke was married three times. His first wife died after just one year in childbed . According to Kaschke, the third marriage was the happiest. At the age of 87, Kaschke had a son who survived him. One daughter died in an accident, and contact with another son was broken.

During the Drehna reign of the Counts of Promnitz, Kaschke was employed as the economic bailiff and in this function had to be able to interpret the coming weather based on phenomena and rules and, for example, determine the times of sowing and harvesting.

Kaschke attributed his old age to moderation in all areas: “Yes, it is, if I lived excessively, I would hardly have reached such an old age. [...] When I liked it best, I stopped, and as I was moderate in eating and drinking, I did not do too much of love either ... "According to his own statement, he had never taken medicine in his life, but took" every morning a handful of my own urine instead of the tea or brandy wine ”, whereby he“ again kept all epidemics and diseases very happy for me ”.

Kaschke died of a gastrointestinal infection at the age of almost 117 after spending nine days in a sick bed . Most of the staff of the royal court were present at his funeral and the Duchess herself attended the funeral sermon and funeral address in the church.

The Lower Lusatian Methusalah

Three years after Kaschke's death, the Drehna pastor Christoph Crusius set him a literary monument with the writing The Lower Lusatian Methusalah . The 200-page work is designed as a fictional conversation between the late Kaschke and ancestor Jakob , a theologian and a philosopher. Statements about Kaschke's life take up relatively little space. The work, in which Crusius processed numerous conversations with Kaschke, which were probably held from his assumption of office as pastor in Drehna in 1724, was published in Guben in 1730 . Previously known copies of the work are now in the possession of the SLUB Dresden , the University Libraries Halle and Darmstadt and the British Library . A new edition, with extensive notes and an afterword, appeared in November 2010.

literature

  • Christoph Crusius: The Lower Lusatian Methusalah: di Denck- and believable life description of a man who lived one hundred and seventeen years old in Drehna not far from Luckau in Lower Lusatia, as was the case in a constructive conversation between the 147-year-old Ertz father Jacob And the 117 year old Martin Kaschken, in addition to the funeral sermon and parenting given to this man. Höhme, Guben 1730. A new edition of the book, edited and provided with numerous notes and an afterword by Dr. Rainer Ernst, published in November 2010. be.bra Wissenschaftsverlag, Potsdam, 2010.
  • Gudrun Söffker, Alexander Kästner: Everyday experience and erudition. Martin Kaschke and Christoph Crusius on faith, prodigies and "magic". 2003.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. The Lower Lusatian Methusalah , p. 20.
  2. The Lower Lusatian Methusalah , p. 50.
  3. The Lower Lusatian Methusalah , p. 110 f.