Neustadt Roland
The Neustädter Roland stands at the Ratskeller in the center of Neustadt / Harz , a place in the southern Harz in the Nordhausen district in the Free State of Thuringia . It is one of the last five surviving wooden Roland figures in Europe.
history
Today's Roland is an upright man figure made of oak, 3.31 m high. In her left hand she holds a heraldic shield adorned with the city's coat of arms while her right hand is raised in the gesture of an oath hand . The court sword - symbol of the city's blood justice - is still in the scabbard of this figure .
The creator of the figure is unknown, the township as the client is certain. The first mention of a statue of Roland in Neustadt is not documented; it is assumed that it was the year the city was granted city rights.
Emperor Ferdinand III. awarded the town of Neustadt unterm Hohnstein a year, horse and cattle market on November 4, 1653. In 1678 a city fire destroyed the first Roland as well as large parts of the old town and also the city archive with the documents stored in it. After losing these valuable documents, four “honorable” citizens elected by the city had to write down the city statutes from memory and swear them publicly. Since that time, no market has been held in Neustadt. At the request of the council, Count Christoph Friedrich zu Stolberg-Stolberg renewed the market rights on March 1, 1723 and stipulated that every year on Thursday or Friday after the 6th Sunday after Trinity the annual, horse and cattle market in Neustadt with free entry Buyers and sellers should be deterred.
The Neustädter Roland was renewed as a court sign of the city in 1730, the special thing about this Roland is the raised hand of the oath and the lack of a sword in hand, probably one wanted to remind of the circumstances that the city can no longer produce older documents as legal evidence .
literature
- Renate and Roger Rössing: Rolande in Germany , Hinstorff, 2004, ISBN 3-356-00976-1
- Dietlinde Munzel-Everling : Rolande: The European Roland representations and Roland figures , Stekovics; 2005, ISBN 3-89923-104-X
Web links
- Rolande ( Memento from May 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ^ Ditlinde Munzel-Everling (digitized version )
- ^ Johannes Erhardt: Nordhausen am Harz, Ilfeld, Neustadt . Our little hiking booklet, number 101. FABrockhaus Verlag. Leipzig 1966. p. 54
Coordinates: 51 ° 33 ′ 37.5 ″ N , 10 ° 50 ′ 6.8 ″ E