Schöppenchronik

Handwriting

The Schöppenchronik , usually referred to as Magdeburger Schöppenchronik or Magdeburg Schöffenchronik , is a chronicle from the Middle Ages on the history of the city of Magdeburg .

content

The chronicle was created between 1350 and 1516 and was intended to serve the official use of the lay judges and the old town council. Both judicial and political decisions should be supported by the historical record.

The chronicle is divided into several parts and has survived in a total of ten manuscripts from the 15th to 17th centuries. The first two parts of the Schöppenchronik deal with the history of Magdeburg in retrospect, using the knowledge of the 14th century, from the supposed foundation of the city by Julius Caesar to the plague epidemic of 1350. This is followed by contemporary reports up to 1428. The period from 1428 to 1450, in which Magdeburg's clashes with Archbishop Günther II fell, was later destroyed. Records are then again from 1450 to 1468 and then sporadically up to 1516, whereby all descriptions from 1450 onwards are no longer in an original version, but only as a list of events.

author

The authors of the Schöppenchronik are not known and are not mentioned anywhere. It is now questionable that the town clerk Heinrich von Lammesspringe could be the author of the first version. The first author probably used individual documents and news about the city's history, as well as compilations such as the Magdeburg Annals and the Magdeburg Bishops' Chronicles .

The Schöppenchronik was continued by other authors in the following decades. Their names are also unknown.

Manuscripts

In the meantime, 34 manuscripts from the Schöppenchronik are known, previously there were 10. The most important manuscript is now in the Berlin State Library (signature Ms boruss. Fol 172 ).

Prints

• Karl Janicke (ed.): The Magdeburg Schöppenchronik. (= The Chronicles of the German Cities. Seventh Volume / The Chronicles of the Low German Cities. First Volume.) Leipzig 1869. ( Digitized , Google book )

literature

• V. Henn: Magdeburg Schöppenchronik. In: Kurt Ruh, Gundolf Keil, Werner Schröder, Burghart Wachinger, Franz Josef Wortsbrock (Hrsg.): The German literature of the Middle Ages. Author Lexicon . Volume V. 2nd, completely revised edition, Berlin, New York 1985, ISBN 3-11-022248-5 . Pp. 1132-1142.
• Gundolf Keil : Magdeburg Schöppenchronik . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Volume VI. 1995. Sp. 79.
• Helmut Asmus, 1200 years of Magdeburg - the years 805–1631 , Scriptum Verlag Magdeburg GmbH Halberstadt 2000, ISBN 3-933046-15-7 , page 346 f.
• Sylvia Meyer: The Magdeburg Schöppenchronik as a witness to history and language In: Sachsen-Anhalt-Journal 29 (2019), no. 4, pp. 4–5

Web links

Commons : Schöppenchronik  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Magdeburger Schöppenchronik Repertory "Historical Sources of the German Middle Ages"
• Magdeburger Schöppenchronik Directory of manuscripts in the manuscript census
• Literature on the Schöppenchronik in the Opac of the Regesta Imperii

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Klaus Graf doubted its authorship, as it was first mentioned from 1386, Karl Janicke had made this suggestion, see Klaus Graf: Die Magdeburger Schöppenchronik. Suggestions for future research. In: Saxony and Anhalt . Volume 30. 2018. pp. 131-172 , especially pp. 141-143.
2. ↑ Hinrik van den Ronen and Engelbert Wusterwitz as city syndic from 1411 to 1421 as possible later authors were only assumptions by Janicke, because both were mentioned in the chronicle. The polished, high-quality language of the period around 1411–1421 would also be an indication of Engelbert Wusterwitz as a possible temporary author, but just a guess.
3. ^ Graf, p. 131
4. ↑ Berlin manuscript in the manuscript census