Mathias Peltzer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mathias Peltzer or Matthias Peltzer (* 1508 in Aachen ; † around 1591 ibid) was mayor of the imperial city of Aachen , appeared several times as envoy and was considered one of the leaders of the Protestant minority in Aachen.

Live and act

The son of Greven (chairman) of the Wollenambacht ( guild of wool merchants), Hermann Kremer, called Peltzer (1466-1537), and nephew of the rector of the University of Cologne Matthias Aquensis became a member and Greve in the after his training and taking over the father's business Foremen's guild, in which the cloth and wool merchants were organized as the successor to the Wollenambacht. In this capacity he was soon elected to the Council of the Free Imperial City of Aachen , according to the first Aachen gaff letter . In addition, he was the first of the Peltzer family to deal with brass production, which later achieved a noteworthy heyday through his descendants in neighboring Stolberg .

After Peltzer had to negotiate with the Duke of Jülich in a dispute over sovereignty on behalf of the city in 1567, thanks to him and the diplomatic skill of his delegation, Prince Wilhelm I of Orange-Nassau , who had previously been Wittem Castle, succeeded in 1568 had taken to prevent the city of Aachen from attacking as part of his fight against Duke Alba in order to confiscate Spanish consumer goods deposited here. By paying 20,000 Reichstalers to Wilhelm I, the delegation succeeded in both preventing having to hand over the goods to him and at the same time not alienating Duke Alba, who was standing with his troops near Maastricht at the time. This contract was signed on September 30th, 1568 by Wilhelm von Oranien and the incumbent Aachen mayor Johann von Lontzen and saved Aachen from becoming a battlefield of the Eighty Years War .

This negotiation success led to Peltzer's election as mayor of Aachen in 1570 and 1573 . In one of his first official acts, he offered the neighboring city of Burtscheid a settlement before the Reich Chamber of Commerce, allowing the previous armed coercive measures taken by his predecessors to collect the imperial Turkish tax against which both Meier and Vogt and the abbess von Burtscheid had revolted and instead accept a tiered rate system.

Around 1575, Peltzer joined Protestantism and soon took the lead in the movement. In 1581 he was one of the Protestants who, as part of the Aachen religious unrest, seized the town hall by force in order to free themselves from the discriminatory behavior of the predominantly strictly Catholic council. These council members and other Catholic officials were expelled from the city of Aachen. A year later, Peltzer was a member of the delegation to the Reichstag in Augsburg , where this Aachen problem was on the agenda. However, this was decided to the disadvantage of the Protestants, who were supposed to allow the expelled Catholic councilors and citizens to enter again. Under these circumstances and in spite of the now incumbent tolerant mayor Bonifacius Colyn , Peltzer refused any further participation in the council after his return and was even obliged to pay damages a year later. Alone and almost forgotten, Peltzer died around 1591, as his children, like many other Reformed craftsman and trader families such as Pastor , Schleicher , Hoesch , Lynen or Prym , left Aachen for economic and religious reasons.

family

Before 1546 Matthias Peltzer had his first marriage to Gertrud von Valentzin, daughter of a goldsmith. Around 1550 he was married to Katharina von Ginge, called Joist (approx. 1515–1576), daughter of the copper master and councilor Peter von Gienge. With her he had three sons and two daughters.

His eldest son Matthis Peltzer (1555–1602) was the first of the family to draw conclusions from the quarrels of the religious unrest and moved to Stolberg around 1575, where he acquired the Ravensmühle, Hammermühle and Ellermühle as copper master and the progenitor of the successful and extensive copper master family who established themselves internationally as cloth manufacturers from the end of the 18th century. The youngest son, Heinrich Peltzer (1556–1591), moved to the evangelical free Burtscheid and became the progenitor of the Burtscheid line, which converted back to Catholicism several generations later and that of Aachen syndic Matthias Goswin Pelzer and the two Aachen mayors Arnold Edmund Pelzer and Ludwig Pelzer come from.

Literature and Sources

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The defection of the Netherlands from or the 80 Years War against Spain began near Aachen in October 1568 , on the website of the Aachen History Association on the occasion of Dieter Kottmann's lecture on October 15, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Peltzer, Mathias
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Peltzer, Matthias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mayor of Aachen, first brass manufacturer in the family, representative of the Protestant minority in Aachen
DATE OF BIRTH 1508
PLACE OF BIRTH Aachen
DATE OF DEATH around 1591
Place of death Aachen