Michael Gottschald

Michael Gottschald , also Gottschaldt , (* 1597 in Cotta in Bohemia; † April 22, 1674 in Eibenstock ) was an early modern German entrepreneur .

The son of the merchant Bartholomäus Gottschald fled with his parents as an exile from Bohemia to Saxony. First he settled in Pirna , but then moved to Eibenstock in the Ore Mountains , where he worked as a member of the town council, raft writer and tin trader and publisher . In 1653 he received the electoral license to set up a blast furnace in Wildenthal in the western Ore Mountains and two years later the privilege to operate a hammer mill in the same location. The hammer in Wildenthal is named in 1656 among those companies in Electoral Saxony that had to deliver iron for the royal stables in Dresden . In 1658 Gottschald was in arrears with the duties to the Schwarzenberg office .

Gottschald owned half the Muldenhammer and had to take it to court in 1658 against the Hammerherren Siegel in Schönheide . In 1659 several hammer masters sued Gottschald. In 1647/48 and 1666/69 he was city judge in Eibenstock, 1665 is referred to as a hammer lord and council member. In 1688, the hammer master from Wildenthal paid 1 thaler and 6 groschen quarter tax from the Hohofen, 1 taler from two tin hammers and 12 groschen from the stick and fresh fire.

Gottschald was also called Holtz-Michel by his contemporaries ; he kept a tutor for his children. His daughter Anna married Christian Wittich , a son from the Ore Mountains Hammerherren family Wittich . His grandson Johann Jacob Gottschald (1688–1759) became a pastor and a hymn poet.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Johann Paul Oettel : Old and New History of the Royal. Pohln. and Churfürstl. Saxon. freyen Berg-Stadt Eybenstock , 1748, p. 254f / S. 288ff
2. ↑ Christian Lehmanns “Historischer Schauplatz”, p. 62: “ In the Schneebergische Mulda are drowned: ... 1660 2nd Advent / of the Holtz-Michel / in Wildenthal Hammer-Lord / Praeceptor, a very modest studiosus, M. Hoch's pastor zu Weißbach Sohn “.