Mirck
The Mirck (plural: Mircken) is a trade mark or signet with which a master belonging to a guild usually marked his goods. The right to use a Mirck was granted by the guild. Mircken consisted of lines and sometimes the master's initials, so they resembled the stonemason marks on the building blocks of cathedrals .
The early modern copper masters in Aachen and later in neighboring Stolberg , who were organized in an Ambacht ( guild ) in Aachen , also used Mircken to mark their products, mostly on brass plates . In Aachen, only brass products made from Altenberger Galmei and Mansfeld copper, two raw materials considered to be of particularly high quality, were allowed to be stamped with the Aachen city eagle. In Stolberg, Leonhard Schleicher the old litigated from 1591 until his death in 1606 with varying success through several instances up to the Imperial Court of Justice in Speyer for damages against his former servant and labor servant Matthias Mompart, who had set up his own business, for using his former master's Mirck.
In Stolberg the mirrors were also attached to architectural monuments such as the front doors or above the driveways of the copper yards . Two have been preserved: the Mirck des Servas von der Weiden in the coronation stone above the front door of his house built in 1612 on the Untersten Hof and on the tombstone of the copper master Johannes Markant, who was the first to be buried in the copper master cemetery on the Finkenberg in 1686. A third mirck above the gate of the former Krautlade copper yard was destroyed in the fighting in 1944. It belonged to Heinrich Hansen, the father-in-law of Jeremias Hoesch I the Elder, and probably showed a modified Mercury or Hermes staff .
See also
- Wolf fishing in Westphalia
literature
- Karl Schleicher: History of the Stolberg brass industry (contributions to Stolberg history and local history; Vol. 6). 2nd edition. Lennartz-Druck, Stolberg 1974, pp. 68-70 with illustrations (EA Stolberg 1956).