Meienberg (Sins)
| Meienberg | ||
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| State : |
 Switzerland
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| Canton : |
 Aargau (AG)
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| District : | Muri | |
| Residential municipality : | Sins | |
| Postal code : | 5643 | |
| Coordinates : | 671 013 / 227882 | |
| Height : | 456 m above sea level M. | |
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Meienberg is a village and former small town in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland . The small village belongs to the political municipality of Sins and was a town in the Middle Ages that was destroyed by the Confederates in 1386 and never regained its former importance.
geography
Meienberg lies between the villages of Auw and Sins and has around 100 inhabitants. The place consists of a few houses on the old street, the «Vorstädtli» in the tree garden, the upper town with the town square on the hill and a few houses on the two streams flowing around it. The city moats that are still visible in the area and the parts of the city wall integrated in the Amthaus are reminiscent of the former city . Meienberg always belonged to the parish of Sins.
The place has a historic inn and small businesses. Recently new houses were built in the upper town around the town square. Of the historic houses on the town square, only the listed office building and the “Villigerhaus” have been preserved. The aim of the new houses in the Baumgarten as well as on the town square is to revive the historic core. A Christmas market takes place on the site of the former town at the beginning of Advent .
history
In 1247 the place was mentioned for the first time as "castrum", in 1258 as "civis". In 1266 it appears as "oppidum". Meienberg was founded by the Habsburgs and was provided with a tower and curtain wall. The square of the town mass about 200 meters, owned a Sodbrunnen and a court Linde . A green linden tree on a mountain is also the coat of arms of the city and office of Meienberg . Around 1300 the Lords of Baldegg and Hünenberg owned the castle fief . Meienberg had neither city ban nor Friedkreis, but market rights and extensive grazing rights in the area. The Meienberg office is also mentioned for the first time in 1273 and lasted until 1798. Meienberg's importance was not that of an urban community, but that of a fixed point of rule.
According to the Habsburg land register of 1308, the high and low courts belonged to the Habsburg rule. It is also mentioned that the area had little income and that the town had burned down. Meienberg's first fire probably happened before 1300 in the feud between Rudolf von Habsburg-Laufenburg (the Bishop of Constance) and Duke Albrecht of Austria . In the Habsburg Urbar, a distinction is also made between the town on the hill, which was built on ancestral land of Old Habsburg and privately owned, and the residents in the Au bei Meienberg. In 1359 Duke Rudolf IV of Habsburg pledged the town and the office to Ulrich Gessler. The Gesslers from nearby Wiggwil had been wealthy in Meienberg since 1251 and later named themselves after the town.
In the course of the worsening conflict between the city of Lucerne and the Dukes of Habsburg, Lucerne accepted several new citizens from Meienberg on January 5, 1386. A few days later, on January 24th, Meienberg was captured by the united confederates . The counter-attack by the Habsburg bailiff in Aargau followed on January 29 and the Habsburg armed forces defeated the federal occupation. Thereupon a federal relief army destroyed the place down to its foundation walls. Meienberg never recovered from this destruction and subsequently sank to a small farming settlement. Although Heinrich Gessler, who was knighted in 1375, tried to rebuild the town, the location of the place away from important rivers and economically important roads had an inhibiting effect and the Confederates also determinedly prevented such a rebuilding.
With the conquest of Aargau , Meienberg came to Lucerne in 1415 and remained the administrative and judicial center of the office. In 1425, Lucerne had to cede the office to the six old locations and it became part of the free offices . Meienberg has retained the market right with market days on January 25, September 29 and November 16. The office building, which dates from the 16th century, served as the administrative building for the clerk and court clerk. From the 16th century, the still existing Gasthaus Kreuz on the old country road served as the court of the bailiff. Previously, the "Villigerhaus" up in the town was used as a former inn for this purpose.
In the short-lived Swiss canton of Baden , Meienberg was assigned to the Sins agency in 1798, together with Reussegg and the Winterhalde. The agencies of Aettenschwil (with Alikon ) and Sins in turn formed the municipality of Meienberg. In 1803 the Sins parish was constituted in the new federal canton of Aargau under the name Meienberg. In 1942 the name was changed to Sins. With the construction of the cantonal road from Auw via Sins to Dietwil in 1853, Meienberg was further sidelined, as the new road passed the town.
In 2005 the foundations of the city, preserved in the ground, were excavated. The excavations revealed that Meienberg was a flourishing economic and commercial center until its destruction in 1386. To revive the historic core, new houses were built between 2000 and 2009 in the area of the “Vorstädtli” and on the town square.
Attractions
The most important sight is the former office building in the upper town. After the destruction in 1386, the fire ruins were not made habitable again until 1575; The building received its present appearance in 1765. The Eligius Chapel, built in 1553, is on the road in the direction of Auw .
Meienberger language
The time of origin of the Meienberger language can no longer be determined with certainty. However, various influences suggest the middle of the 18th century, the first written mention comes from 1886. The vocabulary contains similarities with the language of southern German traveling traders , who mostly traveled via the then Austrian Fricktal to the county of Baden and the free offices to find theirs Sell goods. The end of the line was in Meienberg, because the better organized old places to the south and east blocked further entry. The Meienberger language is likely to have slowly died out as early as 1850. The reasons may have been the disappearance of the handicraft and its local sociability, in which the language could have flourished. Like other Rotwelsche special languages, the Meienberg vocabulary also only covered certain areas of everyday life: occupation (crafts), sociability (inn, drinks, games, singing, smoking) as well as demarcation from others (nicknames for neighboring towns and against the peasantry, the Meienberg's peasant craftsman did not take it fully). Otto von Greyerz wrote in 1929: “What is worth mentioning is the so-called Meienberger Jänisch , a kind of Rotwelsch that can be found in the old town of Meienberg in the aarg. Freiamt received until the beginning of our century. Meienberg is said to have been a homeland of traveling people 'earlier', whose secret language is traced back to a gypsy caravan that once settled down permanently. When 81-year-old Plazid Villiger died in Meienberg in September 1914, he was referred to as the last person who could still speak 'Jänisch' or 'the old Meienberger language'. " Gruyères also cites a list of words that he copied from Hermann Villiger in Auw received the notes of an old Meienberger. This "contains, among other things, the following words from Bernese Mattenenglish, some of which differ in their phonetic form : Fisel: son, boy, model: daughter, girl, Sprussfetzer: carpenter (cf. Spruss: forest, wood), Joli: wine, flax: bread , Pome: apple, Kloft: clothes, Ghes (Chies): money, nobis: nothing, no, weakness: drink, grump (see grume): buy, grump: sell. "
literature
- Franz Xaver Rohner: Historical Publications , Sins 1985.
- JJ Siegrist: Late medieval rule in the southern Freiamt . In: Argovia, 84, pp. 118-198 (1972).
- Meienberg . In: Art Guide through Switzerland, Volume 1, Bern 2005, ISBN 3-906131-95-5 .
- Peter Frey: Meienberg. A medieval urban desert in the upper Freiamt . Here & Now, Zurich 2013, ISBN 978-3-03919-272-4 .
- Otto von Gruyeres: Ligu clay
Web links
- Anton Wohler: Meienberg. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- History of the town of Meienberg
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hansjörg Roth: Yenish Dictionary , Frauenfeld 2001, p. 124 f. ISBN 3-7193-1255-0
- ^ Otto von Greyerz: The Bernese Mattenenglisch and its offshoots: the Bernese boy language in: Swiss Archives for Folklore, Volume 29/1929 , p. 250 f. (online at: www.e-periodica.ch )
- ↑ ibid