Nikolaus Straub

Nikolaus Straub (* around 1415 in Leonberg ; † after May 11, 1500) was a notary in Hall and Heilbronn, among others . He participated in the papal reform of the Heilbronn monasteries in 1465. In Heilbronn he was also appointed the city's first general syndic and represented the cities of Heilbronn and Wimpfen in missions to the Pope in Rome and to the Emperor in Antwerp. Although he was not a theologian, he is the author of a pre-Lutheran German translation of the Gospels from around 1460, which is now in the holdings of the Leipzig University Library as manuscript 35 .

Life

Straub was nicknamed Lenberg Spirer Diocese and was therefore born in Leonberg (then in the Diocese of Speyer ). Nothing is known about his family or his youth. On December 20, 1431, he enrolled at the University of Heidelberg , where he became a baccalaureus in 1433 and completed his master's degree in May 1435 . He then worked according to the customs of the time, for some time at the faculty. In June 1437 he was elected to the Faculty Council, after which there are no further records of his work at the University of Heidelberg. He may have left the city soon after because of the plague that raged at the time .

In 1444, Straub first appeared as a notary in a document made in Heilbronn . A Vidimus , probably also made in Heilbronn in 1445, also comes from his pen.

Straub was an imperial notary, d. H. he had been granted the necessary privileges by a court count and exercised his activity freely and not in a city chancellery. He therefore worked for different clients in different locations and temporarily held other offices in different locations. This explains why his life path appears erratic and so far only scattered and incomplete records have been found about him.

In 1446 he was mayor in Wimpfen im Tal and as such represented Eberhard von Finsterlohe before the spiritual court in Würzburg . There are no records of any kind over the following years.

In 1457 Straub was a notary in Feuchtwangen, where he recorded a dispute between the cities of Schwäbisch Hall and Würzburg. It is possible that this made his contacts in Schwäbisch Hall, where he subsequently worked.

In 1459 he appeared in a legal dispute between the Comburg monastery and the village of Gelbingen , and in the following period he worked frequently for the Comburg monastery and also for the Schöntal monastery . The last document from him from Schwäbisch Hall dates from March 1, 1463, when he notarised a donation in Rieden . During his time in Schwäbisch Hall, Straub must have prepared the manuscript with the German translation of the Gospels, which is now in the Leipzig University Library, because he is reading it with Nicolaus Straub. notarius hallensis signed.

In 1465 Straub was found again in Heilbronn, where he, as a legal expert, accompanied Abbots Johann IV von Wimsheim and Bernhard von Hirsau during the papal reform of the Heilbronn Franciscan Monastery and the Klarakloster and recorded the visit in a letter to Pope Paul II . In the first half of 1466 Straub himself was with the Pope in Rome on this matter. In the following years he worked again for the Schöntal monastery, but also for the city of Heilbronn in Heidelberg.

Around 1470 Straub wrote a commentary on Roman law, which he completed in 1471 and which is now in the Speyer State Library as Book No. 1. Straub no longer signed this commentary as a notary in Hall, but as a general syndic in Heilbronn - an office that had only been created for him in 1471. In this activity he advised the city court and notarized its judgments.

In 1471/72 Straub was again in Rome, where he presumably initiated the separation of the secular infirmary from the spiritual Heiliggeistspital on behalf of the city of Wimpfen . Back in Heilbronn he represented the city in the dispute with canon Albert Cock .

In 1485 Straub went on his third trip to Rome, this time to have Pope Innocent VIII approve a settlement between the city of Heilbronn and the Heilbronn Carmelite monastery . The dispute dragged on and Straub was on the road for almost two years. He was unable to fulfill the original reason for the trip, but instead obtained an indulgence from the Pope to build the choir of Heilbronn's Kilian Church .

Back in Heilbronn, Straub was immediately sent on another longer mission to Antwerp , where he and Emperor Friedrich III. negotiated to avert the accession of the cities of Heilbronn and Wimpfen to the Swabian Confederation . However, the emperor insisted on his request.

Straub's last major trip probably took him to Ingolstadt in 1493, in order to honor the town's honor to the Heilbronn Kilian Church preacher, who received his doctorate in theology there .

In the years up to 1500 there are still some certificates issued by Straub in Heilbronn. On May 11, 1500 he appeared before the Heilbronn mayor's court for the last time. A little later he seems to have died, now around 85 years old.

Bible translation

Since the 19th century, the holdings of the Leipzig University Library have been an undated translation of the four Gospels as manuscript no. The manuscript is signed Nicolaus Straub sst. notarius hallensis .

The Leipzig manuscript Ms. 35 was first published in 1939 by Erich Zimmermann . Zimmermann located its origin in Schwäbisch Hall based on linguistic criteria. Later authors, including Karl Langosch in the author's lexicon , initially followed Zimmermann's location. There was also no doubt that Straub was a notary in Schwäbisch Hall. Starting with Heimo Reinitzer in the new edition of the author's lexicon from 1995, the Leipzig manuscript was located in the East Central German-East Bavarian border area due to linguistic peculiarities. As a result, an author from Halle an der Saale also seemed possible. Reinhard Müller even doubted that the translator could be identified in the 2000 German Literature Lexicon. In 2016, Andreas Deutsch submitted a detailed paper on Straub and the manuscript, in which he proves with sources and comparisons of scripts that only the Schwäbisch Hall notary Nikolaus Straub can be considered as the author of the manuscript and that the manuscript can also be found on the basis of his known life dates a very narrow period, namely his years as a notary in Hall between 1458 and 1463, can be dated.

Straub's translation of the Gospels is close to Martin Luther's later translation. This is attributed both to the fact that both translators are faithful to the content and to the oral translation of the texts, which is already widespread in folk mythology. The peculiarities of Straub's translation are probably due to the fact that he was not a theologian but a lawyer and therefore did not create the text with regard to theological subtleties.

Andreas Deutsch sees Straub's motivation to translate the Gospels most likely in a recommendation as a capable writer and translator for church clients, as he repeatedly had with the monasteries of Comburg and Schöntal during his time in Schwäbisch Hall around 1460.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lemberg in the Palatinate, which is called otherwise (e.g. in Putsch: documents from the archive of the imperial city Schwäbisch Hall 1. Stuttgart 1967), which is now in the diocese of Speyer, was still in the diocese of Metz during Straub's lifetime.
2. ↑ Erich Zimmermann: The Leipzig manuscript Ms. 35. In: New research and texts on the history of the German Bible. Potsdam 1939, pp. 70-76.
3. ^ Karl Langosch: Straub, Nicolaus. In: Author's Lexicon 5. Berlin 1955, Sp. 1069.
4. ↑ Gerd Wunder: The citizens of Hall. Sigmaringen 1980, p. 123.
5. ↑ Reinhard Müller: Straub, Nikolaus. In: Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon 20. Zurich / Munich 2000, Sp. 523.

literature

• Andreas Deutsch: Nikolaus Straub von Leonberg (around 1415 – around 1500), notary and Bible translator. In: Zeitschrift für Württembergische Landeskunde 75. 2016, pp. 11–49.

Web links

• Manuscript 35 at manuscripta-mediaevalia.de