Peter von Boetticher

Peter von Bötticher (* around 1525 in Nordhausen ; † 1585 in Halberstadt ) was Count Hohnstein's Chancellor and reformer in Nordhausen from 1550 to 1566 and Prince-Bishop Halberstadt's Chancellor of Duke Julius von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel from 1567 to 1585 .

Live and act

Peter von Bötticher was the son of Nordhausen councilor Hermann Bötticher (1490–1561) and his wife Elisabeth von Werther. The father came from a Nordhausen patrician family , which belonged to a branch of the Reichsministerialengeschlecht von Wechsungen and called himself Bötticher since the middle of the 15th century, after a Heinrich Wechsung (approx. 1435-1474) married an heir to the mayor family Bötticher from Nordhausen. The mother of Peter Bötticher was a daughter of Hermann von Werther, who came from a patrician branch of the von Werthern knightly family.

After attending the Latin school in his hometown, Peter Bötticher moved to the University of Leipzig in the spring of 1544 and studied law . In the fall of 1545 he received his doctorate in both rights at the same university . In 1548 he was back in his home town of Nordhausen and from 1549 lived there in the Werther headquarters on the east side of the Kornmarkt. In 1550 he appears as Chancellor of Count Ernst V. von Hohnstein and in 1557 as Chancellor of Count Volkmar Wolf von Hohnstein until Easter 1566. While Michael Meyenburg, as mayor of the imperial-free city of Nordhausen, pushed through the Reformation there, Peter Bötticher was instrumental in the Reformation entrusted to the neighboring county of Hohnstein and in the Walkenried monastery , led the election of two evangelical abbots to this monastery on behalf of his Count's lord and obtained their confirmation from the abbot of the mother monastery Altkampen. Like Mayenburg, Bötticher was friends with the reformer Justus Jonas , who became the godfather and namesake of his son Justus in 1551.

The Emperor Maximilian II , who tried to balance things out with the Reformation, raised him to imperial nobility on October 24, 1563 in Pressburg . The coat of arms combines elements of the v. Werther's coat of arms on the mother's side and the Bötticher's mayor's coat of arms. The greyhound comes from the coat of arms v. Werther, the emerging arrows from the coats of arms of the Bötticher.

At the end of 1567, Peter von Bötticher was appointed canon and monastery chancellor by the Halberstadt cathedral chapter . He accepted the call and moved to Halberstadt, where he took up his new office at Easter 1568. Its important position for the Reformation also shows that in 1576 Duke Julius of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel became the namesake and godfather of his youngest son Julius.

In 1577 he negotiated with Elector Augustus of Saxony the barter agreement by which the suzerainty over Eisleben of Halberstadt Electorate came. Between 1550 and 1578, Bötticher took part in the Reichstag and sessions of the Reich Chamber of Commerce and represented intelligent legal positions with a majority in various disputes. His role as a reformer has only been partially dealt with scientifically.

At the end of 1585 he died in Halberstadt. He received his final resting place in the local St. Martini Church . His tomb is no longer there.

He was married in his first marriage to Margarethe Ernst (1525-19 November 1565), daughter of the north house citizen Jost Ernst (1508-1581), who gave him five children (three sons and two daughters). In 1568 he married Margarethe Mey, a daughter of the Halberstadt mayor Burchard Mey, who gave birth to two other sons and four daughters. As patricians, councilors, mayors and imperial-free citizens, his children initially made no further use of the title of nobility, but carried the coat of arms with a greyhound and aspiring arrows. It was only after the devastation of the Thirty Years' War that the coopers of the lineage resident in Ichstedt, Ringleben and Borxleben took on the title of nobility in their name.

Peter Bötticher became the progenitor of various lines of the Boetticher family through his sons .

Art history

In Peter von Bötticher's estate there was a glass that Justus Jonas received as a present from Martin Luther on January 25, 1546 on his last trip to Eisleben in Halle (Saale) and passed it on to Peter Bötticher as a godparent gift for his son Justus in 1551. At the table, Luther had made the following slogan for his friend Jonas in the glass he had brought with him: “Dat vitrum vitro Jonae vitrum ipse Lutherus, Ut fragili vitro similem se noscat uterque.” (“Dr. Luther brings old Dr. Jonas a beautiful glass, Das teaches them both fine that they are fragile glasses. ”On this glass later the Latin verse and its German translation with the portraits of Luther and Jonas are painted, and the base of the same is set in gilded silver. Justus Bötticher passed it on to his son, the Schwarzburg official Justus Bötticher zu Kelbra, and from this it was passed on to the archdeacon Reinhart zu Sondershausen, who had married his daughter. Reinhart gave the glass to Duke Rudolf August von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel in 1680 . It is now being kept in the Wolfenbüttel library.

literature

Paul Anton de Legarde: News about some families with the name Boetticher , JF Starke, Berlin 1867
Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Briefadeligen houses, 1908
Hans Hermann von Boetticher, Oskar Pusch: Peter Bötticher and his time: a chancellor life in the age of the Reformation: Chancellor of the county of Hohnstein a. Harz 1550-1566 and Prince Bishop. Halberstadt Stiftskanzler 1567-1585 , Research Center East Central Europe, 1975

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Boetticher, Peter von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Bötticher, Peter von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German reformer, chancellor and canon
DATE OF BIRTH	around 1525
PLACE OF BIRTH	Nordhausen
DATE OF DEATH	1585
Place of death	Halberstadt