Legend of the pike in the Böckinger See

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Northern pike ( Esox lucius ) with shiny gills

The legend of the pike in the Böckinger See deals with an event that is said to have happened in 1497, at the end of the Middle Ages , in the then imperial city of Heilbronn . An ancient and huge pike is said to have been caught in a lake there , wearing a ring with a Greek inscription. The literally handed down inscription on the ring says that Emperor Friedrich II was the first to put the pike into the lake by hand in 1230 - that is, 267 years earlier. In another tradition, the incident is reported in almost the same form for the former Electoral Palatinate city ​​of Kaiserslautern . There tradition knows it as the legend of the pike in the Kaiserwoog . The story of the pike from Heilbronn and Kaiserslautern was passed down for centuries by scholars in specialist books on fish science and German history and only moved from the field of science to the field of legend after the Enlightenment .

Historical background

In earlier times the main arm of the Neckar ran near Böckingen , the city of Heilbronn itself was on a smaller eastern tributary. During a flood in 1333, there was a breakthrough, the Neckar shifted its main course to the east close to the city of Heilbronn. After legal disputes, King Ludwig the Bavarian granted the city of Heilbronn the Neckar privilege on August 27, 1333 , according to which the city was allowed to determine the course of the river. The original main arm at Böckingen, which initially had a connection to the Neckar, later left an elongated lake as a result of drying out and silting up, several hundred meters long and 20 to 45 meters wide. In this Neckar oxbow lake near Böckingen, the Böckinger See , Martin Crusius had the “imperial” pike caught.

narrative

Ring with Greek inscription - Gessner's depiction from 1558
Illustration of the pike in a Heilbronn chronicle from the 17th century

In the preface to his fish book, printed in Latin in 1558, addressed to Emperor Ferdinand , Conrad Gessner reports that in 1497 a sensational catch was made in a lake near the Swabian town of Heilbronn - he does not name the lake: a pike had been caught wearing a ring of copper that shimmered under the skin on the gills. The Greek inscription engraved on the ring was said to have been made by the Bishop of Worms , Johann III. von Dalberg , can translate into Latin :

“Εἰμὶ ἐκεῖνος ἰχθύς, ταύτῃ λίμνῃ παντόπρωτος ἐπετεθεὶς διὰ τοΰ Κοσμητου Φεδηρίκου ʹᾳ τὰς χειἡτές έß τὰς χειἡρὰς έραντττττστο ττς” ρανττς ”

"Ego sum seine piscis huic stagno omnium primus impositus per mundi Rectoris Federici secundi manus, the quinto Octobris MCCXXX."

"I am the fish that was first put into this lake by the hands of the ruler Frederick the Second on the 5th day of October 1230."

- Conrad Gessner : Historiae Animalium Liber IIII qui est de Piscium & Aquatilium animantium natura

Gessner referred to the scholar Conrad Celtis (1459–1508) as an informant. A representation of the ring is attached. Since the related writings of Conrad Celtis or Johann von Dalberg can no longer be found and a letter to Conrad Celtis from 1500 only briefly deals with the translation by Johann von Dalberg, Gessner's text is the oldest extant detailed account of the legend. While Gessner put the text of the story in the preface to Emperor Ferdinand, but did not say anything about it in his eight-page lemma "Hecht", the more manageable edition of the book in 1560 brought the story in a somewhat shortened version at the end of the lemma "Hecht ". In the same place the German version of the story appears in Conrad Forrer's German translation of the fish book from 1563. There the year of the catch is incorrectly printed as "1447", which subsequently played no role, since the scholars received Gessner's Latin text .

While the Latin editions of Paul Ebers Calendarium historicum did not contain the text, Ebers Söhne adopted the story in 1582 in their German translation of the Calendarium historicum on October 5, 1230, "augmented with many new histories" .

Martin Crusius corresponded in 1588 about Gessner's pike story, included it in his Annales suevici , which appeared in print in 1596 , and held that the lake near Heilbronn meant the Böckinger See. However, there is another larger lake near Heilbronn, the "Lauffener See". Crusius wrote that the story was reported similarly for Kaiserslautern, but decided on Heilbronn as the more likely location. That the emperor used two pike in the same year 1230, one in Heilbronn and one in Kaiserslautern, and that these were then caught in the same year 1497, seemed all too improbable to him.

Christoph Lehmann reported in his Chronica of the Freyen Reichsstatt Speyer 1612 that anyone who came to Heilbronn could see the image and size of the fish including the ring "from the Thor when you rey from Speyr on a board".

In the Heilbronner Chronik it says: “In addition to other honors, the Heilbronn Council honored this Emperor Friedrich with a pike, which the Emperor himself placed in the Böckinger See as a special memory for its size and beauty, and previously attached a mesingne copper ring to this pike open your ears, written on it in Greek letters: I am the fish which Emperor Friedrich the other put into this lake with his own hand on October 5th in the 1230 year after the birth of Christ. This pike was caught again in 1497 and emperor Maximilian was revered because he swam in the lake for 267 years, as Conradus Celter (sic!) Also writes, and this pike is all here in Heilbronn under the bridge gate ”.

Representations

In 1912, several matching paintings of the fish with the ring could be seen in Heilbronn. One was in a corridor in the town hall above a door, a scaled-down copy of it as a supraport in the large council chamber in the same building, a third in the Gasthaus zur Sonne in Böckingen. The painting in the hallway in the town hall contained an inscription “Renovirt 1812” (illustration in Die Gartenlaube , 1897). The two paintings in the corridor of the town hall and in the inn in Böckingen supposedly showed the fish in life size (on a scale of 1: 1) with a length of exactly 300 cm, a maximum thickness of 42 cm and a ring, which without causing any significant constriction, was placed around the "neck" of the fish.

Depiction of the pike in the Heilbronn town hall

Above the fish was an inscription with the following verses:

I am the fish that was made
in this sight by Friderico the other one
named Regent of the World in the year 1230 on the 5th of October

Below the fish was an inscription with the following verses:

Look at Heilbronn understand me right
In the Weyer called Böckinger See
The one in itself has
six mornings on the water but without all gfahr
Which must be drained
What has to be borne by the deadline
When one was counted a thousand four hundred years
and ninety seven

After Christ our Heyland's birth
such a pike was caught in it The figure
here ground down stands
In this size a ring around
the neck From Mös grown on the neck a
strong under the raft feathers
To be
dug so man with Greek script is so there

The painting served as a model for the clinker brick facade of the teaching pool at the Fritz-Ulrich-Schule Grund- und Werkrealschule Böckingen, designed by Gerhard Binder . In addition to the sun, sailing boats and birds, it shows the stylized “Böckinger Pike” in a modern version.

literature

  • Conrad Gessner : Historiae Animalium Liber IIII qui est de Piscium & Aquatilium animantium natura . Christoffel Froschower, Zurich 1558, p. [9] ( resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de - unpaginated preface Epistola nuncupatoria ).
  • Conrad Gessner: Nomenclator aquatilium animantium. Icones animalium aquatilium in mari & dulcibus aquis degentium . Christoffel Froschower, Zurich 1560, p. 316 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).
  • Conrad Gessner: Fischbuoch . Christoffel Froschower, Zurich 1563 ( e-rara.ch ).
  • Paul Eber : Calendarium historicum , Wittenberg 1582, p. 400. books.google.de
  • Anton Hauber : Emperor Friedrich II. The Staufer and the long-lived fish . In: Archive for the history of natural sciences and technology 3, Leipzig 1911/12, pp. 315–329. Wikisource book (PDF, 5.8 MB)

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b Conrad Gessner : Historiae Animalium Liber IIII qui est de Piscium & Aquatilium animantium natura. Christoffel Froschower, Zurich 1558, in the unpaginated preface Epistola nuncupatoria .
  2. ↑ Hauber 1912, p. 317 f.
  3. ↑ Gessner 1558, pp. 590–597.
  4. ^ Conrad Gessner: Nomenclator aquatilium animantium. Icones animalium aquatilium in mari & dulcibus aquis degentium. Christoffel Froschower, Zurich 1560, p. 316.
  5. ^ Conrad Gessner (translator: Conrad Forrer ): Fischbuoch. Zurich: Christoffel Froschower 1563, fol. 175 f.
  6. ^ Paul Eber : Calendarium historicum. Wittenberg 1582, p. 400.
  7. ↑ Hauber 1912, p. 320.
  8. ↑ Hauber 1912, p. 320.
  9. ↑ Hauber 1912, p. 315 f.
  10. ↑ a b c Th. E .: The pike in Heilbronn . In: The Gazebo . Issue 45, 1897, pp. 756 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
  11. ↑ Hauber 1912, p. 316
  12. ↑ brass