Nikolaus Federmann

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nikolaus Federmann (* 1506 in Ulm ; † February 1542 in Valladolid , Spain) was a commercial agent , discoverer and field captain of the Welser family .

Life

As an agent of the Augsburg trading house of the Welser, the Ulm citizen's son brought settlers and miners from Seville to Coro in Venezuela in 1529/30 . He was appointed deputy by the governor Ambrosius Dalfinger . On July 30, 1530, Nikolaus Federmann received power of attorney over Little Venice (Venezuela) from Ambrosius Dalfinger, who had to go to Hispaniola for health reasons .

Federmann set out from the Gulf of Venezuela as early as September 1530, without permission from the Audiencia in Santo Domingo , on a journey of discovery with 110 foot soldiers, 16 horsemen and 100 Indians into the northern Orinoco basin in order to find the "Southern Sea" . He did not achieve his goal of opening up a new trade route to Asia . On March 17, 1531 he returned to Coro with 5565 pesos of gold. Dalfinger banished him to Europe for four years because of the illegal expedition.

Later, his travelogue, published as Indian Historia , put him in such a good light that he was appointed captain general and returned to Venezuela in 1534/35 with the new governor Georg Hohermuth von Speyer .

In 1536 he undertook a second expedition in search of the legendary El Dorado . He founded the city of Riohacha in Colombia . He first moved along the eastern edge of the Cordillera . In doing so, he followed in Hohermuth's footsteps, but avoided an encounter. He crossed the Río Arauca and the Río Meta and reached the Bogotá plateau in 1539. Following the salt trade route, he forced the passage over the icy Andes and came across the traces of the high culture of the Chibcha , whose empire, however, had already been largely conquered and occupied by Jiménez de Quesada . Together with him and the Spanish conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar , he founded the city of Bogotá . Following the Rio Magdalena, he came back to the Atlantic coast near Santa Marta .

On July 8, 1539, Federmann left the New World and traveled back to Europe via Jamaica and Cuba . There the field captain was intercepted by Welsern, who accused him of breach of contract, of failing to provide assistance to his comrades and of embezzling money. The Welsers demanded compensation of 100,000 ducats of emerald and 15,000 ducats of gold. Since he could not pay, he was sent to Antwerp prison for a few weeks . Federmann tried to defend his claims first in Ghent and finally in Valladolid before the Council of India . He fought back with counterclaims and accused the Welsers, among other things, of evading taxes and acting against the interests of the king. On October 19, 1541, Nikolaus Federmann finally agreed to a settlement. The Welser waived financial claims and Federmann gave up the ownership rights to his estate in Colombia. Accused of unfaithfulness by the Welsers and suspected of being a Lutheran by the Inquisition , he died in Valladolid prison in February 1542.

A sector ( Sector Nicolás de Federmán ) of the Teusaquillo district has been named after Nikolaus Federmann in Bogotá since 1968 , and a park and a clinic also bear his name.

Works

  • Indian Historia. A nice short history of Niclaus Federmann des Jüngern von Ulm first raise (about the first expedition). Sigmund Bund, Hagenau 1557 ( digitized in the Internet Archive)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sector Nicolás de Federmán . metrocuadrado.com. Accessed April 28, 2017 (Spanish)
  2. ↑ Nicolás de Federmán, un sector consolidado . portafolio.co. Accessed April 28, 2017 (Spanish)
personal data
SURNAME Federmann, Nicholas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Federman, Nicolás de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Commercial agent and explorer
DATE OF BIRTH 1506
PLACE OF BIRTH Ulm
DATE OF DEATH February 1542
Place of death Valladolid