Legend of the pike in the Kaiserwoog

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The fish on the Kaiserslautern city arms

The legend of the pike in Kaiserwoog tells of an event that is said to have happened in 1497, at the end of the Middle Ages , in the then Electoral Palatinate city ​​of Lautern, now Kaiserslautern . There an ancient, huge pike is said to have been caught in a lake, the Kaiserwoog , which was wearing a ring with a Greek inscription . The traditional wording 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 then imperial city of Heilbronn ; there it is known as the legend of the pike in the Böckinger See . The events about the pike in Heilbronn and Kaiserslautern were passed on as actually happened by scholars in specialist books on ichthyology and German history for several centuries and only shifted from the field of science to the field of legend after the Age of Enlightenment .

The legend

According to legend, a sensational catch was made on November 6, 1497 in the reservoir called Kaiserwoog at Lautern in the West Palatinate . A pike 19  shoes long (5.70 meters by today's standards) and 350  pounds in weight had been pulled out of the water. This was announced by a board that once hung in the Kaiser's palace in Lauter . The giant fish wore a ring made of gold-plated copper on its neck , which consisted of small chain links and was embedded in the letters. The notice board stated: "This is the shape of the ring or the chain that the pike had worn on its neck for 267 years." The pike was brought to the royal seat of Heidelberg and eaten at the table of Elector Philipp . The Greek inscription on the ring said Johann XX. von Dalberg , Chancellor of the Elector and Bishop of Worms , translates: "I am the fish, the first of all to have been put into the lake by the Emperor Frederick the Other Hand during the 5th wine month in the year one thousand two hundred and thirty."

Historical background

Between 1152 and 1158, Friedrich Barbarossa , initially king and from 1155 emperor of the Holy Roman Empire , had the imperial palace built in Lautern as one of the residential castles in his native Hohenstaufen lands . Barbarossa's biographer Rahewin described the complex on the Lauter around 1160: “In Kaiserslautern, he (Friedrich I) built a royal house out of red stones and decorated it with no small amount of splendor. Because on one side he has surrounded it with a strong wall, the other side is lapped by a lake-like fish pond, which contains all the delicacies of fish and poultry to graze the eyes and the palate. It encounters a park that offers an abundance of deer and deer food. "Kaiserslautern came 1375/1402 as Empire Pawn shaft to Electoral Palatinate. Between 1570 and 1580, Count Palatine Johann Casimir had a renaissance castle built, which was adjacent to the imperial palace. Kaiserpfalz, Casimirschloss and the lake-like fish pond were located in the city center near the point where the modern town hall , built from 1963 to 1968, rises. In 1760 the Kaiserwoog had an area of ​​40  acres , that is 10  hectares ; it was drained after 1766.

Truthfulness

The Emperor Frederick II named in the alleged inscription spent most of his reign in Sicily and southern Italy . In the years between 1220 and 1234 he did not stay in Germany. On October 3, 1230 his itinerary shows him in Melfi in southern Italy, which excludes his presence in Germany at the specified time - October 5, 1230.

In older versions of the saga, there is only talk that the ring was brought to Heidelberg, the royal palace at the time. According to more recent versions, the pike itself was eaten at the table of Elector Philip in Heidelberg, and the ring was also presented on this occasion. Lehmann refers to this when he assumes that the Count Palatinate might have once placed a particularly large pike on his table and had a piece of jewelery that might already be in the treasury put on it as a "court or scholar joke".

The numbers given for the size, weight and age of the fish exceed the size, weight and age of today's pike by three, four or five times. The pike species Esox lucius is common in the Palatinate ; extinct giant pike are not known.

Contemporary narrative variations and evaluations

Ring with Greek inscription - Gessner's depiction from 1558

Martin Crusius wrote in his Annales Suevici , which appeared in print in 1595/1596 , that Conrad Gessner reported on the catch of the imperial pike in a lake near Heilbronn, whereas the story is written in handwritten notes in the same way, but with an indication of the catch weight of 350  pounds , reported for the city of Kaiserslautern. Crusius then decided on Heilbronn as the more likely location. That the emperor would have used two pike in the same year 1230, one in Heilbronn and one in Kaiserslautern, and that these would then have been caught in the same year 1497, seemed all too improbable to him.

Marquard Freher gave more detailed information on the fishing location Kaiserslautern in the second volume of his Origines Palatinae, printed in 1613 . Also citing Conrad Gessner's information, he announced that a sensational catch had been made in the Kaiserwoog near Kaiserslautern in 1497: a pike had been caught with a gold-plated ring made of copper with small chains attached to the gills under the skin shimmered out. The bishop of Worms, Johann von Dalberg, was able to translate the Greek inscription on the ring into Latin :

“ΕΙΜΙ ΕΚΕΙΝΟC ΙΧΘΥC Ο ΤΗΝ ΛΙΜΝΗΝ ΠΑΝΤΟΠΡΩΤΟC ΕΙΛΥΤΑ ΔΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΚΟCΜΕΤΟΡΟC ΦΕΔΗΡΙΚΟΥ ʹB ΤΑC ΧΕΙΡΑC ΕΝ ΤΗ ʹΕ ΗΜΕΡΑ ΤΟΥ ΟΚΤΟΒΡΙΟΥ ʹΑ ʹC ​​ʹΛ.”

"Sum illegal piscis stagnum omnium primum ingressus per Imperatoris Federici II. Manus, quinta die Octobris Anno 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."

- Marquard Freher : Originum Palatinarum, pars II

In contrast to Conrad Gessner, Freher gave the inscription in capital letters , the sigma in C-form, with a slightly different version of the Greek text. Freher referred to a painting of the pike with the ring. In the castle of Kaiserslautern it shows the length of the fish by a black line 19  feet long - according to today's measurements 5.70 meters - with the following inscription:

“This is the size of the pike / according to Kayser Friderich, this name the other / put his hand into the wagon for the first time / and marked it with such a ring a °. 1230. Was brought to Heidelberg on November 6th a °. 1497th when he had been in it 267th year. "

- Marquard Freher : Originum Palatinarum, pars II

The ring is also shown with the following inscription:

“Haec est forma annuli quem Lucius gessit in collo ad CCLXVII. annos; qui captus anno MCCCCXCVII. Lutrae ex stagno, et Heidelbergam perlatus IX. November hora post meridem secunda. "

"This is the shape of the ring that the pike wore on its neck for 267 years, which was caught from the Woog in Lautern in 1497 and was brought to Heidelberg on November 9th at 2 pm."

- Marquard Freher : Originum Palatinarum, pars II

The ring with the inscription was - according to Freher rightly - kept in the electoral treasury in Heidelberg in 1612 . Freher adds that the highly learned Conrad Gessner was wrongly informed and would have reported more correctly about the pike if he had known the picture in Kaiserslautern. Freher's information remains the only source for the picture in the Kaiserslautern castle and the ring in the Heidelberg treasury. At the latest after Kaiserslautern in 1635 and Heidelberg in 1622 and 1693 were conquered and plundered in armed conflicts, the trace of the picture and the ring are lost. In Kaiserslautern, Freher's version of the story was valid, while in Heilbronn Gessner's version was honored and also owned a painting of the pike. Johann Matthäus Faber wrote that Freher was wrongly informed and relocated the history of pike to Königslutter (this is not true, since Freher only discusses the similarity of names between Königslutter and Kaiserslautern, but moves the catch to Kaiserslautern), “and if he gets to see our pike, he would have changed his relation. "

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. Some wondered whether the pike had already grown up when the emperor put it in the pond, or whether it had continued to grow in the 267 years, in which case the ring would have had to grow with the fish due to an ingenious construction. One assumption was that the emperor had given the fish a special life force that made it possible to survive - just as the emperor Friedrich himself lived on in folk tales. That pike and other fish can reach old age was still certain for Linnaeus , who referred to the story of the pike from Heilbronn and Kaiserslautern.

In 1846 the naturalists Georges Cuvier and Achille Valenciennes devoted a seven-page study to the pike saga of Heilbronn and Kaiserslautern, which "is retold in almost all ichthyological specialist books" and referred it to the realm of the legend. However, they let the bears be tied up so that the skeleton of the fish would still be shown in Mannheim . However, that was a whale skeleton. Even Johann Georg Lehmann pushed the story in 1853 in the field of historical science into the realm of legend .

More stories

Northern pike ( Esox lucius )
Wild carp ( Cyprinus carpio )

Several stories in and around Kaiserslautern are mysteriously linked to the legend of the pike in the Kaiserwoog:

The fish in the coat of arms of Kaiserslautern

Already in the oldest city seal of Kaiserslautern, of which an imprint from the 14th century has been handed down, there is a stripe with two fish in the middle between the depiction of two buildings - the imperial palace and the chapel. In later seals there is a fish or no fish. What kind of fish is meant cannot be inferred from the old seal impressions. Lehmann interprets the seal in such a way that the stake represents the Lauter flowing through Kaiserslautern, in which one or two fish are sometimes drawn for clarity. The town's coat of arms is derived from the seal, which shows a pole with a rising fish in the middle, reminiscent of the pike in the Kaiserwoog.

The two carp in the Kaiserwoog

A leaflet has come down to us from 1537, which tells the Kaiserslautern legend in the oldest traditional version. There is no mention of Emperor Friedrich II, but only of Emperor Friedrich, whose return is expected. The folk legend does not differentiate between the emperors Friedrich I and his grandson Friedrich II, who both died in distant lands and are buried. We are not talking about a pike, but a carp :

“In the same lake (the Kaiserwoog in Lautern) he (Kaiser Friedrich) is said to have caught a large carp once and hung a gold ring from his finger to one of his ears as a memorial. The same fish is said to remain untrapped in the pond until the future of Kaiser Friedrich. At a time when the pond was being fished, two carps were caught, which were locked around their necks with gold chains, which are still carved in stone at the Metzlerpforte in Kaiserslautern in human memory (in the linguistically modernized version of the Brothers Grimm from 1816). "

The Archbishop's Ring

In 1788 Johann Goswin Widder first told the Freher story, and then went on to say that "about 12 years ago" a copper ring was fished out in the Stadtwooge in Kaiserslautern and brought to Heidelberg, with the following inscription:

“SER. FRAN. LVD. EELCT. TREV. ME IMPOS. 1721 THE 23 APR. POND. 8. LIB. "

"The most serene Franz Ludwig , Elector of Trier , appointed me because I weighed 8 pounds, 1721, on April 23rd."

- Johann Goswin Widder : attempt of a complete geographical-historical description of the electoral prince. Pfalz am Rheine, Volume 4

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Josef Schmitt: Legends from Kaiserslautern. The pike in the Kaiserwoog. (No longer available online.) Lautringer.de, archived from the original on February 22, 2015 ; accessed on May 27, 2015 .
  2. ↑ a b Jürgen Keddigkeit ; Ulrich Burkhart; Rolf Übel : Palatinate Castle Lexicon , Vol. 3, I – N, Kaiserslautern 2005, therein Lemma Kaiserslautern , pp. 102–121.
  3. ↑ Lehmann 1853, p. 156.
  4. ↑ Hauber 1912, p. 326.
  5. ↑ Lehmann 1853, p. 81 ff.
  6. ↑ a b Conrad Gessner : Historiae Animalium Liber IIII qui est de Piscium & Aquatilium animantium natura , Zurich: Christoffel Froschower 1558, in the unnumbered preface Epistola nuncupatoria .
  7. ^ Conrad Gessner : Nomenclator aquatilium animantium. Icones animalium aquatilium in mari & dulcibus aquis degentium , Zurich: Christoffel Froschower 1560, p. 316.
  8. ^ Conrad Gessner (translator: Conrad Forrer ): Fischbuoch , Zurich: Christoffel Froschower 1563, fol. 175 f.
  9. ^ Martin Crusius : Annales Suevici , III, Frankfurt am Main 1596, lib. I, cap. VII, p. 25 f.
  10. ↑ Hauber 1912, p. 320.
  11. ↑ a b c d e Marquard Freher : Originum Palatinarum , pars II, [Heidelberg] 1612, cap. 12, p. 58 f.
  12. ↑ Hauber 1912, p. 316.
  13. ↑ Hauber 1912, p. 321.
  14. ↑ Georges Cuvier , Achille Valenciennes : Histoire naturelle des poissons , Tom. 18, Paris & Strasbourg 1846, pp. 226–232 or pp. 305–312 of the popular edition.
  15. ↑ G. Hartmann: The legendary pike from Kaiserslautern and Heilbronn . In: Mannheimer Geschichtsblätter , 28, 1927, No. 3, column 76 ff.
  16. ↑ Lehmann 1853, p. 12, p. 81 ff.
  17. ↑ Lehmann 1853, p. 192 ff.
  18. ↑ Hauber 1912, p. 323.
  19. ^ Johann Goswin Widder : Attempt of a complete geographical-historical description of the electoral prince. Pfalz am Rheine , Volume 4, Frankfurt and Leipzig 1788, p. 201 ff. ( Presumed errors of the typesetter in LVD and EELCT ; should read correctly "LDV" for Ludovicus and "ELECT" for electus )