Saltpetre riots
The saltpeter riots were several peasant uprisings that occurred in the Hotzenwald in the 18th and 19th centuries.
prehistory
In the " Grafschaft Hauenstein ", an administrative district of the former Upper Austria , there was a peculiarity in the absolutist German states at the beginning of the 18th century . A layer of “free” farmers had survived here, who knew they belonged directly and exclusively to the Habsburg imperial family.
In addition, there had been rural self-government on the "forest", as the southern Black Forest was briefly called back then, since the Middle Ages . In eight unions , for example, all male residents had the right to choose their representatives, the “unification masters”, and these in turn had their own rights and duties. Your "Redmann", that was the elected spokesman for the Einungsmeister, even sat as a representative of the Hauensteiner Einungen or the " landscape " next to the cities and the nobility with a seat and vote at the Breisgau estates in Freiburg . The direct subordination to the imperial family, which was represented in the administrative district Grafschaft Hauenstein by the Waldshut resident Waldvogt on site, and the unification constitution were the central contents of freedom, the undiminished preservation of which the farmers campaigned. Both the development of these freedoms and their design had little to do with those freedoms that the Stedinger on the Lower Weser (in the thirteenth century), the Frisians or the Dithmarschen (in the sixteenth century) defended in tough battles and thereby lost in whole or in part . Nevertheless, the freedoms of Lower Saxon , Bavarian and Swabian-Alemannic farmers in the southern Black Forest and in the Alpine regions are comparable if it is remembered that they received them from the respective sovereigns for special services: for land that was wrested from the sea or the forest , or freedoms that they preserved because they settled in the inhospitable alpine valleys and helped enable alpine crossings. For the free farmers and the peasant self-government in the southwestern Black Forest region, the freedoms that they retained into the eighteenth century should be seen as thanks for clearing achievements from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Görwihl was the capital of the unions. This is where the annual master elections took place in front of the “Adler” inn. All the residents were proud of this unified constitution. At the same time, over the course of centuries, the monks of the St. Blasien monastery had settled in the county in their area of responsibility, the "Zwing und Bann", farmers who made the land arable as serfs. The monastery of St. Blasien had become an increasingly powerful landlord from generation to generation and had extended serfdom and bondage to the regions of the free peasantry around Görwihl, Hochsal and Birndorf, among others. Monastic rule on the one hand and unity and free peasantry on the other were potential conflicts that repeatedly led to heated disputes. This is how the Peasants' War began in this region and found one of its outstanding leaders in Kunz Jehle von Niedermühle.
Saltpetre riots in the 18th century
Resistance also arose at the beginning of the eighteenth century. One who saw dangers looming for freedom and the constitution was the farmer and saltpeter boiler Johann Albiez (called Saltpeterer-Hans) from Buch . The then already over seventy-year-old enjoyed a great reputation in the forest. His agitation against the monastery and for the "old rights and freedoms" was heard. And when in May 1727 the inhabitants of the county were supposed to take a pledge of loyalty to a new abbot , Franz II Schächtelin , they refused to "pay homage". The refusal to pay homage to an authority was considered a rebellion. The soldiers were sent into the forest and billeted in the farms, so that resistance to the homage quickly collapsed. Meanwhile, Salpeterer-Hans was arrested in Freiburg im Breisgau , the seat of government in Upper Austria at the time, in the “Bären” inn . He died there in September 1727.
Other farmers, such as Johannes Thoma or Josef Meyer, took over the leadership of the saltpeterers, as they were now called, and ensured that distrust of the monastery and its efforts, but also of the other authorities, did not fall asleep. Among the peasantry themselves, groups were formed for and against the saltpetre endeavors and worsened the situation. The farmers facing the saltpeterers were called the "Tröndlinschen" or the "quiet ones" after the names of the leaders. The "Saltpeter Wars", as they were also called here and there, therefore took place mainly between the opposing peasant groups - those who unmistakably resisted the sale of old rights and freedoms and the others who wanted the same thing, but others " Wanted to tread quiet paths, such as buying yourself freely.
But when the monastery decided in 1738 to consent to the ransom of all farmers in the unification districts operated by the unions and a referendum resulted in a majority in favor of the ransom, the nitric-minded congregations did not want to pay when the payment date approached. There was even a meeting between the troubled peasants on the one hand and the military on the other in May 1739 near Etzwihl. Shots drove the peasants to flight. This second saltpetre revolt resulted in death sentences for some of its leaders. In 1745 there were two further periods of unrest. In the spring there was even a “saltpeter government” in the county for two weeks, and in the autumn the saltpetre people tried twice to storm Waldshut in order to free some imprisoned like-minded people there. This siege and attempted storming of Waldshut and in connection with this, big night-time brawls between "restless" and "calm" ones above Schmitzingen formed a temporary end to the saltpeter riots. But it continued to ferment "in the forest" for a few years. Only with the deportation of all leading saltpetre families to the Banat (e.g. Freidorf , Caransebesch , Lugosch , Neubeschenowa , Neupetsch , Rekasch and Tschakowa ) did the unrest initially end. However, they found a religiously legitimized and greatly changed new edition in the nineteenth century.
Nineteenth century saltpeter
This new resistance movement, whose representatives saw themselves in the tradition of the original saltpetre, also bothered the authorities. In the meantime, this southern part of the Black Forest, the former "Grafschaft Hauenstein", like other parts of Upper Austria, fell to the new Grand Duchy of Baden in the course of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 . The previously Catholic areas were under the rule of an evangelical grand duke and his administration. The county's residents, who clung to the traditional Habsburg Imperial House and identified with it, viewed the new government with great suspicion.
The many changes that the change of affiliation brought with it and that ran parallel to changes in the economy and culture created unrest and provoked resistance. In the nineteenth century, the new "saltpeter" limited themselves to passive forms of resistance when they refused to send their children to schools with "uncatholic" teachers or no longer went to the churches in which priests of reform Catholicism ( Wessenbergianism ) preached . The compulsory vaccination was also unpopular . Over time this resistance crumbled. Only a hard core remained. They were also the "fundamentalists" back then. Over the years they formed an association that only gradually died out in the twentieth century.
Similarities
If you examine both resistant movements for their similarities, then the greatest agreement is that people or groups of people resisted being forced by an authority to do or not do something they did not want because it was up to theirs Conviction against custom and tradition. Resistance and protest movements that do not want to see any changes in the traditional constitutions - regardless of whether they are political, economic, cultural or other factors affecting everyday life - have a long tradition in Germany . But there were also revolutionary movements, that is, endeavors that wanted to abolish and renew the existing political and economic power relations. Only very rarely did they lead to victory. Up to the present day it was mostly those who resisted the state forces that had the military at their disposal and the laws on their side and used them. One more note: the saltpeter riots were by no means a "revolutionary" movement. But they can justifiably be classified in a history of the "resistance movements".
reception
In Görwihl, in the Görwihl local history museum, a saltpeter mill is a reminder of an old craft and the resistant farmers.
The text of the book "Die Salpetererunruhen im Hotzenwald" (Dachsberg 1993) by Joachim Rumpf from Görwihl arose from an academic term paper that was written in 1968 for a teaching exam with Wolfgang Hug . A detailed analysis of the reception of the saltpeter riots in the journal Vom Jura zum Schwarzwald , the Fricktalisch-Badische Vereinigung für Heimatkunde , 83rd year Laufenburg 2009, pp. 19–78, comes from the same author .
A thorough analysis of the constitution of the Upper Austrian county of Hauenstein and the comparison with the development of the constitutions of the founding places of the Confederation and the efforts of cooperative self-government in Upper Austria was carried out by Martin Andreas Kistler from Dogern, which was accepted as a dissertation by the Law Faculty of the University of Basel in 2005.
In 2007 Stefan Baumgartner from Freiburg wrote a book “Between tradition and revolution. The problem of “freedom” and “rule” in the constitutional history of the County of Hauenstein in the context of the “saltpeter riots” of the 18th century ”, in the history seminar at the University of Freiburg i. Breisgau with Prof. Dr. Neutatz.
Furthermore, David M. Luebke at the University of Oregon in the USA and Tobias Kies at the University of Bielefeld did research on saltpeter in previous years . The fact that it is not only scientists who are interested in the saltpetre is shown by the efforts of local lore and tradition, which put saltpetre in the limelight on given occasions. Street names, memorial stones, restaurant names and carnival and music clubs also remind of this resistant peasant movement in the Hotzenwald with names and activities .
Novels and plays have also been written about the saltpeter. In 2004 and 2005, for example, “Der Salpetererhans” by the dialect poet Markus Manfred Jung was performed with great success on the open-air stage at Klausenhof in Herrischried . In the summer of 2005, a game about the saltpetererhans also premiered on the open-air stage of the Engel in Buch. This play, which was always sold out in several performances, which was written by the poet Christa Kapfer from Steinen im Wiesental and played by a large number of committed citizens from Buch, contributed - according to the local press - a lot to the understanding of the saltpetre history among the population. Also in 2006, on the occasion of the Waldshuter Chilbi, the Saltpeterer was commemorated in a home game.
At the end of the 19th century, Arthur Achleitner had dealt with the unrest of the 19th century in two short stories that appeared in the Imgrün Tann collection in 1897. In 1910, the saltpeterer play Der Held vom Wald by Hermann Essig was first self-published, then in 1913 by Cotta'sche Verlagbuchhandlung . For the drama he was also awarded the Kleist Prize in 1913 . In 1938 Karl Leopold von Möller wrote his historical novel Die Salpeterer: A German Peasants' Struggle for Freedom . In it he described the emotional consequences of the saltpetre people who were banished to the Banat because of their rebellion against the Prince-Bishop of St. Blasier .
literature
- Emil Müller-Ettikon : The saltpeter. History of a struggle for freedom in the southern Black Forest. Schillinger, Freiburg im Breisgau 1979, ISBN 3-921340-42-X .
- Joachim Rumpf: The saltpeter riots in the Hotzenwald. 3rd revised and expanded edition. Schillinger, Freiburg im Breisgau 2010
- Jakob Ebner : History of the Saltpeterer of the 18th Century , Volume I., 1953
- Jakob Ebner: History of the Saltpeterer of the 18th Century , Volume II., 1954
- Jakob Ebner: History of the Saltpeterer of the 19th Century , Volume III., 1952
- Jakob Ebner: History of the villages in the parish Birndorf near Waldshut on the Upper Rhine
- Joseph Lukas Meyer : History of the saltpeterers on the south-eastern Black Forest , 1857
- Thomas Lehner: The Saltpeterers - How Black Forests fought and suffered for their freedom , Schillinger Verlag Freiburg
- Thomas Lehner: Die Salpeterer - free people, not subject to any authority 'on the Hotzenwald , Verlag Klaus Wagenbach Berlin, 1979, ISBN 3-8031-2036-5 .
- Heinrich Hansjakob : The Saltpeterer, a political-religious sect in the south-eastern Black Forest , Waldshut 1867
- Johannes Künzig : Saderlach . An Alemannic village in the Romanian Banat and its original home. Karlsruhe, Müller 1937; XVI, 354 pp. + 31 plates, maps; ²1943, Berlin (folk research, supplements to the magazine for folklore, 6).
- Günther Haselier : The disputes between the Hauensteiners and their authorities. A contribution to the history of Upper Austria and the south-west German peasant class in the 18th century . Dissertation Karlsruhe. 1940/41.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Künzig, p. 39
- ↑ Möller, Karl von. In: kulturportal-west-ost.eu. Retrieved June 18, 2017 .