Nikolaus Klinger

Nikolaus Klinger (* around 1551 ; † July 12, 1610 in Sachsenfeld ) was an important hammer lord from the Erzgebirge .

Life

Coat of arms of the Klinger family

Grave slabs of Nikolaus Klinger and his wife Anna in the Peter-Pauls-Kirche Beierfeld

Nikolaus Klinger was born around 1551 as the son of the owner of the hammer mill and estate Förstel of the same name and his second wife Margaretha, daughter of the Marienberg finder Nickel Göppert. After the early death of his father, who died in 1558 during a spa stay in Karlsbad , his mother initially took over the Förstelhammer. Nikolaus Klinger himself was represented as guardian by his uncle Wolfgang Klinger, owner of the Tännichthammer, and evidently trained in hammering and soon took over the Förstelhammer. On November 24, 1583, Klinger married Anna Hempel, the widow of Heinrich von Elterlein . After that he continuously expanded his property. He acquired the Kugelhammer in Schwarzenberg (1590), the Hammer in Untersachsenfeld (1593), Mahlmühle and Gut in Obersachsenfeld (1595), where he lived with his family, the Eisenhammer in Erla (1597) and the Höllhammer in Voigtsberg in Vogtland . The family also owned one of the Rittersgrüner hammer mills for a time. Nikolaus Klinger can be identified as a tenant on the hammer in Obermittweida . Klinger had already introduced the then new blast furnace technology in some of his plants in the 1580s . As the owner of several hammer mills and mines, he was considered one of the richest hammer lords in the Ore Mountains. A visit by the future Elector of Saxony, Johann Georg , whom he and his son-in-law Hans Rüdiger received at the Sachsenfeld estate in 1609, after a hunt on the Pfahlberg, testifies to his influence . His wife Anna had died a year earlier. Nikolaus Klinger died on July 12, 1610 at the age of 59 and, like his wife, was buried in the Peter-Pauls-Kirche in Beierfeld, where Sachsenfeld was parish.

Klinger had made a contribution to expanding the church in the years before his death. He donated a large amount of money for its expansion and in 1609 donated a new altar, on the back of which it was noted:

When Man Zalt 1609 year / Since Nickell Klinger vff Sachssenfelt was inheritance / He vf his vnkost all alone and at all / God and the churches in honor of Bawen this aldar / As he did before a jar / To expand these churches a strange sum money gave

family

Four daughters resulted from the marriage with Anna Hempel:

• Rosina, married Hans Rüdiger, the later "Junker Rüdiger" and son of Lucas Rüdiger, a citizen of Thorn in Prussia, who received the manor in Sachsenfeld from his father-in-law in 1602 and in 1613 also acquired the Eisenhammer in Untersachsenfeld. In 1600 she was the godmother for Barbara Siegel in Elterlein .
• Ottilia, married Eleazar Schlaher von Nimka on Klösterlein .
• Anna, married Hans Unwirth on Wiesa , which she managed herself after his death and the death of her second husband Ernst von Wilkau from 1626 to 1648.
• Esther, the youngest daughter, born in Förstel in 1591, married the Elector Saxon Lieutenant Rudolph von Schmertzing in 1611 , who took over the Förstelhammer from his father-in-law and later other hammer works

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Gustav Beyer: Beierfeld - history of its political, economic and cultural development . 1923, p. 8ff.
2. ↑ Christian Lehmann : Historical scene of their natural peculiarities in the Meißnischen Ober-Ertzgebirge , Leipzig 1699, p. 165.