Nicolaus Zech

Nicolaus Zech (* 1559 in Coburg ; † February 2, 1607 ibid) was "Princely Saxon land rentmaster" and councilor at the court of Duke Johann Casimir von Sachsen-Coburg .

Life

Ascent to chamber councilor and village lord

Zech was born in 1559 in Steinweg in Coburg; his father came from Unterwohlsbach . In 1578 he joined the ducal court of Johann Casimir as a kitchen clerk. From 1588 he held the office of ducal bailiff . He was responsible for the administration of the entire court and household affairs, including the supervision of court servants, bakers, guards, wage servants and gatekeepers, but also the inventory management of the pantries and pantries, the cellar and the silver room. Zech showed great economic talent.

In 1588, Zech was enfeoffed by Abbot Conrad II. Holzmann von Langheim with several farms in Scheuerfeld from the property of the Langheim monastery. Zech managed his acquired property economically. He improved the profitability of agricultural goods and made them model goods of high yield, which was to the advantage of him and his farmers. He himself commented as follows: “ Thanks to my and my farmers' diligence, we have managed in Scheuerfeld that the fields now carry 300 shock grains that previously only had 50 shock. "

In 1594, Duke Johann Casimir appointed him “Princely Saxon Land Rentmaster” in order to put the Duke's ailing finances in order.

In 1597 he acquired the feudal rights over Scheuerfeld and Oberhergramsdorf from the Langheim monastery , represented by Abbot Johann VI. Kippers. With this Zech rose to liege in Scheuerfeld, to whom the farmers had to pay their hereditary interest and taxes.

In recognition of his services in the successful restructuring of the Duke's ailing state finances as rentmaster , Zech was appointed chamber councilor by Johann Casimir in 1598. In addition, the Duke granted him extensive rights over Scheuerfeld and Eichhof by means of a pardon and release letter , including the right to rule, the jurisdiction of inheritance, the right to dispense, brew and eat as well as the right of patronage , but also the military freedom and the exemption from billeting and other rights Loads.

In Scheuerfeld, Zech had now risen to become a village lord; his rights even went beyond what is customary for a noble manor. Zech used the opportunities he had gained to initiate a lively construction phase in Scheuerfeld. He built a brewery, a brickworks, a mill in the Grund and a house for himself. After completion, he moved from Coburg, where he previously owned a house on the market square , to his new house in Scheuerfeld. He used his patronage right to fill the parish of Scheuerfeld with a pastor in 1601, to set up a school and to appoint a teacher.

Intrigue, imprisonment and death

As a member of the chamber council, Zech was the only representative of bourgeois origin on the committee of the three highest officials of Johann Casimir's court and state administration, while the other two members were nobles. In 1601 Zech resigned from this committee, as there was irreconcilable opposition with the two noble members. Johann Casimir's brother Johann Ernst pretended to have missed out on the division of land in 1596 by Zech's instigation; the entire court nobility finally conspired against Zech. The courtiers discredited Zech with the duke. On April 14, 1603, Duke Johann Casimir had him arrested and taken to the Veste Coburg . The arrest was justified with insults against the Duke in an eight-year-old letter from Zech to the forester Seelmann in Mönchröden. The second charge in the indictment brought against Zech was the violation of a ducal order. Although Zech was essentially acquitted in the judgment of July 14, 1603 (judge Petrus Wesenbeck only considered an “appropriate fine” to be appropriate), Zech remained imprisoned. After the judge died on August 26, 1603, the duke withheld the sentence.

In the meantime the duke had his own wife, from whom he had divorced, also imprisoned in the fortress. Since the sergeant at the fortress, Nikolaus Stupffer (also known as Zollner, because his father had this job), made it possible for the two of them to be held in very relaxed conditions, Duke Johann Casimir had him executed and his head impaled on September 8, 1603. The events made it possible for the Duke to initiate another legal procedure outside of the Saxon jurisdiction and to obtain a conviction from Zech at the law faculty in Marburg. According to the judgment of September 17, 1603, Zech was to be pilloried, his oath fingers chopped off and he himself whipped; then he should be expelled from the country. However, since it was feared that he might divulge secrets outside of the country, he was held as a state prisoner in the fortress, now under inhumane conditions. With this, Johann Casimir broke without hesitation the promise he made to Zech in the pardon and release letter of 1598 to “ not let him complain with any violence ”. Zech's wife, Barbara, could not withstand the excitement of her husband's imprisonment; she died in 1603. Nicolaus Zech himself died on the night of February 2, 1607 in custody on the Coburg Veste; he left two children, ages 14 and 13. As the culmination of the cruelty, the Duke had the coffin nailed up immediately so that no one (not even Zech's children) could see the dead man again.

literature

• Hermann Wank: The story of suffering of Duchess Anna of Saxony ..., Coburg 1898, pp. 33–34.
• Thilo Krieg: Coburg local history and local history . Part 2, home history, first issue: History of the Veste Coburg, Coburg 1924, p. 20.
• Walter Schneier: Coburg in the mirror of history . 2nd Edition. Druckhaus Neue Presse Coburg, Coburg March 1986.
• Günther Bätz, Roland Eibl, Günter Leib, Rolf Lipfert: Scheuerfeld in the course of time 1100–2000 . Frankenschwelle KG, 2000. (there pages 36-39).
• Evangelical Lutheran Pfarramt Scheuerfeld-Weidach (Ed.): Scheuerfeld. 400 years of the parish. 400 years of school . 2001. (there pages 154-155).
• Thomas Nicklas: The House of Saxony-Coburg - Europe's Late Dynasty , Stuttgart 2003, p. 49.
• Hans-Joachim Böttcher : The time of my life was little and bad - Anna von Sachsen (1567-1613) , Dresdner Buchverlag, Dresden 2016, ISBN 978-3-941757-70-7 , pp. 125–129.

Single references

1. ↑ Quoted in Scheuerfeld im Wandel der Zeit 1100–2000 , p. 37
2. ↑ According to Scheuerfeld in the course of time 1100–2000 p. 38 on the other hand: 17th to 18th July 1603.