Peter Siegel

Peter Siegel (* 1485 in Kirn ; † October 15, 1560 ibid) was a German Lutheran theologian and student of Martin Luther . In his hometown of Kirn an der Nahe, he introduced worship based on his teachings - long before the sovereigns officially accepted the Protestant faith.

Life

Siegel's parents were the baker Nikolaus, called Ciesgen Siegel and a daughter of Hen Thielmann. He first learned the bakery trade like his father, then possibly went to the monastery. It was only at the unusually mature age of 33 that he felt inspired by Martin Luther's teaching to become a priest. He went to the University of Wittenberg , where he studied theology himself with Luther from October 1518.

Presumably he became pastor in Münster am Stein in 1522 , where he already held the service after the teachings of Martin Luther. However, other sources assume that the sovereigns proposed him for this post, but that he did not receive it. Soon afterwards he also married, which also shows his departure from Catholic dogma. With his wife Gertrud (called Getz), who also came from Kirn, he had two sons whose marriages and descendants are documented.

According to the inscription on his tombstone, he must have returned to his hometown of Kirn around 1528 and preached in the Lutheran style in St. Pancras Church, because the epitaph of the person who died in 1560 testifies that “he spent 32 years at this church - so much his opponents also raged - the Gospel of Christ had preached in a pure and unadulterated manner after all human ingredients had been eliminated. ”The raging opponents are likely to have primarily included the canons of the local collegiate monastery . In 1536 he was mentioned as the hospital master (i.e. head of the old people's and poor house), and in 1538 for the first time as a Lutheran pastor.

As late as the 1540s there were disputes about the true doctrine, so that an exact date for the introduction of the Reformation in Kirn cannot be determined. The sovereigns, the Wild and Rhine Counts , apparently protected the Protestant pastor from sanctions by the Catholic authorities, but only officially converted to the Lutheran creed after the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. The citizens of the place, which was heavily influenced by craftsmen, already supported the Lutheran doctrine by a majority in the 1540s. From 1544 the Corpus Christi festival (an important Catholic holiday) is no longer mentioned in the documents of the wool weavers' guild. Kirn remained purely Protestant until 1681 when French troops occupied the city and neighboring Kyrburg.

Siegel died on October 15, 1560 and was buried in the church. His tombstone was covered by the Catholic altar in 1684 when the church was set up as a Protestant and Catholic church under pressure from the French occupying forces. It was removed either in 1752 or when the church was renovated at the end of the 19th century. The inscription is only preserved in a copy that was made during later denominational disputes to prove the Lutheran tradition in Kirn, and which erroneously gives the year of his death as 1675.

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1. ↑ ^{a b c} K. Herbert Küstner, Paul Hornemann: City of Kirn residents' book 1544-1900
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Ulrich Hauth: Close to God and people. History of the Evangelical Church Community Kirn an der Nahe, Matthias Ess, Bad Kreuznach, 2014
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} DI 34, Bad Kreuznach, No. 314 † (Eberhard J. Nikitsch), in: http://www.inschriften.net/landkreis-bad-kreuznach/inschrift/nr/di034-0314.html# content