Paternoster maker

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Contemporary representation of a paternoster maker workshop, Regensburg 1698
Paternoster strips made of cattle metacarpal and metatarsal bones with rows of round holes from which spherical paternoster pearls were drilled (excavation finds from the Würzburg Franciscan monastery)

Paternoster makers ( paternoster maker , paternoster maker or paternoster maker ) made rosaries . Often, the professional title Amber Dreher used interchangeably, as the most widely used material was Baltic - or Baltic amber . Ivory , wood , mother-of-pearl , bone , horn or coral , and sometimes silver , are also used to make such prayer chains . The term paternoster maker is only mentioned in chronicles of some of the cities in which guilds of this profession were formed.

Qualifications, products and trade relationships

Amber turner masters were required to have certain performance records, which were determined independently by each guild. In its guild letter of 1745, the Königsberg guild demanded "a quarter of a pound of spherical corals without adding a Cicul according to the eye measure, in which the holes must be the same and straight". In old chronicles, rosary beads are often referred to with the technical term 'corals'.

In addition to pearls for rosaries, which represented by far the largest part of the production of amber twisters, other everyday objects were also made. In a Lübeck document from 1709, for example, “Mäßer, Häffter, Schalen, Kasten, Spoon” are mentioned. Applied art objects, however, were hardly made. Exceptions were hereof apparently so rare that they are explicitly mentioned, as is clear from a report of the Lübeck trades elders from 1692 in which a "Lädgen or Cabinet" and two crucifixes is the speech of the Lübeck Amber Dreher masters Johann Segebad and Niklas Steding have been made. The Danzig and Königsberg amber turner made tobacco and needle boxes, cases and pipe mouthpieces of a more artisanal character. An outstanding example of a technical innovation was provided by master Christian Porschin , who belonged to the Königsberg guild , who invented the amber burning mirror in 1691, with which, according to his own statements, powder could be ignited much more easily than with conventional glass mirrors. Furthermore, glasses made of amber are said to have come from the Porschin workshop.

The trade relations of the guilds can only be traced using a few documents. However, these indicate that the paternoster makers' guilds regularly not only sold their products on the local market, but also exported them. From a document of the Stolper Guild from the year 1791 it can be deduced that goods from the paternoster makers were delivered to what was then Constantinople (Istanbul), Smyrna (Izmir) and Aleppo; the Königsberg guild maintained trade relations with Turks and Armenians.

history

In the 14th century the first paternoster maker guilds were established in the Hanseatic cities of Lübeck and Bruges , a century later in Stolp (1480/82), 1477 in Danzig , 1535 in Kolberg , before 1550 in Köslin , 1539 in Elbing and 1641 in Königsberg . The fact that the guilds initially emerged far west of the stretches of coast of the Baltic Sea that supplied amber and only gradually in their vicinity is due to the fact that the rights holders from the amber shelf - initially the Teutonic Order , later also the Prussian dukes - embezzled amber by drying up the black market tried to prevent by keeping the potential buyers of the raw material, namely the amber turner, out of the find area. The establishment of the first amber turning guild in East Prussia coincides with the leasing of the amber shelf to the city of Gdansk.

The guilds were in addition to the amber-moving others with the Amber processing employed in trades, the so-called Inventierer, focusing on the arts and crafts of Inkrustierens understood. The Teutonic Order , which received the government in Prussia from Emperor Friedrich II , brought the amber from the Samland coast to Gdansk and from here to Bruges and Lübeck, where it was processed. The Guild of Paternoster Makers was founded in Bruges in 1302. About 100 years later, it included 70 masters and more than 300 journeymen and apprentices. Paternoster makers from Lübeck are first mentioned in the civil register from 1317, the first documentary mention (guild roll) comes from the year 1360. Around 1400 there were at least 16 masters of the guild in Lübeck (at that time still referred to as "office") of paternoster makers. At that time there were at least 40, and according to other sources, more than 100 amber turner active there. The official statutes from this time indicate that the raw material was mainly, but not exclusively, obtained from the Teutonic Order . For some time at the beginning of the 15th century, merchants of the city guaranteed the paternoster makers that they would buy their finished products at fixed prices up to an upper limit of 80 pounds. The paternoster makers were allowed to sell additional production locally or in the vicinity, but not at the merchants' trading centers (Venice, Cologne, Frankfurt and Nuremberg). For several decades, this regulation prevented oversupply and kept the price of amber articles at a high level.

In the years 1449 and 1454 there were complaints from the paternoster makers in Lübeck, who complained to Grand Master Konrad von Erlichshausen about "sending Prussian raw amber directly to Venice". They demanded that all amber found in Prussia should be purchased, as it was "their and their Bruges colleagues traditional law". This should serve in particular to prevent "the emergence of competing amber industries in other places". In the spring of 1454, the situation for the Bruges and Lübeck amber paternostemaker's office worsened when the religious war broke out. Both offices tried to secure the continuation of the amber trade with Danzig. The deliveries were endangered by pirates.

The rules of the guilds ensured their members had the best possible access to the raw material, which was at times scarce, and aimed at keeping people outside the guilds away from the trade. In order to enforce this claim, journeymen were not allowed to carry out amber orders on their own account or even to purchase amber. On the other hand, it was usually only possible for a journeyman to become a master himself if he married the daughter of a guild master. People who tried to process amber on their own against the organizational principles of this guild, so-called Bönhasen , were persecuted, and their family members were often excluded from any activity in the guild. Some guilds also treated wandering journeymen from paternoster makers' guilds in other cities as Bonhasen. Other conditions of access to the guild were proof of a certain capital stock (Lübeck), civil rights, lifestyle, conjugal birth (Danzig and others) or the taking of a masterpiece under the supervision of the elderly man (Danzig).

With the Reformation , the importance of the paternoster makers decreased in the following centuries, even if business improved from time to time, especially due to increased demand from various ruling houses. Most of the guilds were able to hold out into the 19th century, for example in Königsberg until 1811, in Lübeck until 1842, the last amber twist guild, in Stolp, even until 1883. Daniel Barholz, the town clerk in Elbing , reported in 1646 that the Elbingen city government replaces amber turner.

various

The patron saint of the paternoster makers was St. Adalbert . The profession is the origin of the family name Paternostermaker.

literature

  • Carl Friedrich Wehrmann (Ed.): The older Lübeck guild roles. Lübeck 1872, p. 347ff. ( Digitized version ).
  • Johannes Warncke: The paternoster makers in Lübeck. In: Journal of the Association for Lübeck History and Archeology. Volume 19, 1918, pp. 247-256 ( digitized version ).
  • Antjekathrin Graßmann (Ed.): Lübeckische Geschichte. Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 1997, p.?.

Web links

Commons : Paternostermacher  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Segebad, Johann . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 30 : Scheffel – Siemerding . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1936, p. 441 († [before?] 1692).
  2. ↑ a b Otto Pelka: Bernstein. Berlin 1920.
  3. ↑ K. Andrée: The amber and its meaning in the natural sciences and humanities, art and applied arts, technology, industry and trade. Koenigsberg 1937.
  4. ^ H. Buchholz: Bernstein - the gold of the north. Kiel 1961.
  5. ↑ a b K. Hinrichs: Bernstein, the "Prussian gold" in art and natural history chambers and museums of the 16th - 20th centuries. Dissertation, Humboldt University Berlin 2007.
  6. ↑ a b W. Tesdorpf: Extraction, processing and trading of amber in Prussia from the time of the order to the present. Jena 1887.
  7. ↑ a b W. Stieda: Lübische amber turner or paternoster maker. In: Mittheilungen the Verein für Lübeckische Geschichte und Alterthumskunde. 2nd Issue, No. 7, 1886, pp. 97-112.
  8. ↑ Hansischer Geschichtsverein (Ed.): Hansische Geschichtsblätter . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Vienna 1871, p. 69 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  9. ↑ Ernst Robert Daenell: The heyday of the German Hanseatic League; Hanseatic history from the second half of the XIV. to the last quarter of the XV. Century . G. Reimer, Berlin 1905, p. 149–150 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  10. ↑ L. Brühl: Bernstein, the "gold of the north". In: Oceanography. Issue 166, Volume XIV, 10.
  11. ↑ George C. Williamson: The book of amber. London 1932.