Blackheads
The Blackheads (sometimes Blackheads ) were mostly associations (North) German merchants in the Baltic cities Riga , Tallinn , Pärnu and Tartu that from about 1400 to the patrician societies of the cities of the Holy Roman Empire have been duplicated.
origin
The Blackheads emerged in 1399 from the previously existing local St. George brotherhoods . In the beginning, St. George (protector of knights and warriors) was the patron saint of this covenant. This role was later taken over by Saint Mauritius , whose symbol, the Moor's head, has entered the coat of arms of the Blackheads. However, it is not clearly proven that the latter was also the namesake of the Blackheads. Others interpret this name as a counterpart to the "gray" or "white heads" of the older members in the Great Guilds, still others as a reference to the color of the black balaclava worn in medieval battles, since the Blackheads also defended their cities.
Today only the companies from Riga and Reval exist. Despite the fact that they were founded at the same time and the statutes were the same, there was later a divergence that resulted in different names - still used today:
- The company in Riga was called the Black Heads Company ;
- the society in Reval (now Tallinn ) was called the Brotherhood of Blackheads .
Further Blackheads Brotherhoods arose in Narwa , Wolmar and Dorpat . In addition to the Baltic brotherhoods, there is also a Blackheaded Brotherhood from Stralsund . In addition, there are suspicions that Blackheads brotherhoods also existed in Wismar and Novgorod .
Common features
The Blackheads were an association of journeyman merchants, similar to those that existed in other Hanseatic cities in the Baltic region. The condition for membership was that the journeyman had to be unmarried. The association mainly served social purposes, but also had a political function, for example the Blackheads stood together to defend the city. As soon as they were married, the merchants joined the Great Guild .
In the Baltic countries there has always been a strong sense of community-based ways of life. One united in the house community and in business associations. Since the 13th century the citizens were united in brotherhoods. The great Marian guild is first recorded in Riga in 1354, in Reval in 1363, in Dorpater in 1387. In addition, shortly afterwards the brotherhoods of the Blackheads emerged . The customs were firmly and richly developed: admission customs, farewell drinks, contractual customs, penny and main drinks, carnival masks ( schodüwel ), piercing, ring races, Austanz (dance parades), tree carrying, Maigrafen customs, shooting societies (since 1354), games of chance and games of skill.
The citizenship was organized in two guilds: the large or Mariengilde , in which the merchants had come together, and the small or Antonigilde , which comprised the craftsmen. The “third force” was the irregularly meeting guild of unmarried merchants, the Blackheads. At the head of the guilds stood the worth evenings elderly man, who chaired meetings and represented the guild externally. He was followed by a lifelong leadership group of four elders, a privileged senior committee that had disciplinary justice over the guild members (bank of elders), and the group of ordinary members. The Blackheads were also structured; even the titles of their representatives were the same.
Local merchants were not accepted by the Blackheads; these united in their own guild.
The Artus courts of their forerunners, the St. George brotherhoods , and later the houses of the Blackheads served as the meeting place for the Blackheads .
Riga
Riga was founded in 1201 by the Bremen bishop Albert von Buxthoeven , the city was laid out based on the example of Bremen. Therefore, to this day there are striking similarities and centuries-old common traditions between the two cities. The Roland in front of the House of the Blackheads is a striking symbol of this.
During the Middle Ages, Riga was a powerful seaport, the largest city in the Kingdom of Sweden; the leading port for the Russian Empire during the 17th century; Main trading center for the entire region in the 18th and 19th centuries. This status was achieved and consolidated early on through medieval membership in the Hanseatic League , which was not perceived so much as a union of cities, but as a union of merchants' associations within the cities of northern Germany and the Baltic States.
Since 1447 the Blackheads had rented the parade hall on the upper floor in the New House of the Great Guild from the City Council. Events were regularly held here that were declared as “drinks to drink”, namely, as is documented, “during the shooting festivals, on Shrovetide and on other days”. Up to 300 bachelors took part in each drink ; the lists of participants for the years 1480 to 1573 still preserved today comprise about 2000 pages.
In addition, the Blackheads played a major role in the cultural scene at the time. They organized jousting games, carnival balls and city festivals in Riga, donated pictures to the churches and cannons to the city for the park. The foreign merchants thus created a home and influence in the distance. Because the blackheads, who still had to be unmarried, had enough money.
The Black Heads Company also offered young, unmarried foreign merchants accommodation. You can visit the halls and the bridal chamber for newly married guild members in the faithfully rebuilt house of the Blackheads.
In the 20th century, as a result of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Baltic Germans were forcibly resettled in 1939 and the company was deleted from the register of associations. Parts of the treasures were allowed to be taken away. In 1960 the company was founded as the Compagnie der Schwarzen Häupter aus Riga e. V. initially new in Hamburg, in 1980 she moved to Bremen. Even today it strictly adheres to the old statutes (statutes of the company from 1416) and among other things preserves its legendary silver treasure.
Once a year, the showpieces are taken out of the showcase. In the fall, the friars' meal of the 20 remaining Blackheads takes place. Instead, the Rigische Welcome from 1616 comes on the table, a richly decorated giant silver tankard, as well as the 74 cm high Saint George's reliquary from 1507 and the magnificent jug in the shape of Saint Mauritius on a hippocampus from 1665, whose black head is on all treasures Company emblazoned. Since 1987, the treasure trove of 34 individual pieces has been on permanent loan outside of this annual event in the Roselius House on Böttcherstraße in Bremen.
“Maintaining and promoting old traditions” is what the statutes require from the now widely dispersed and old members. Today this is primarily limited to the annual meal, at which new members are only very rarely accepted.
Reval / Tallinn
Reval occupied a prominent place among the Hanseatic cities of the eastern Baltic region because of the stacking right: all goods passing by had to be stacked in front of the city gates and traded at the local market price. Reval's merchants earned money from the forced trade between East and West. The city quickly became a fortress, fortified with 35 towers. The brotherhood of the Blackheads, who ran the Reval House of the Blackheads in Langstrasse, played a major role in the town's history . Here, too, they were an association of unmarried (mostly foreign) salesmen who, after marrying and becoming independent , were able to rise to the patriciate of the city as members of the Great Guild . In the course of time it became common for the brotherhood to be joined by an increasing number of unmarried citizen sons of the city.
The members of the brotherhood left Tallinn in the 1940s. In Germany the society was known as the “Brotherhood of Blackheads from Reval e. V. “newly founded. But she is also based in Tallinn again (as "Mustpeade Maja"), just like in the past in the House of Blackheads.
We know that there were interesting relationships between the Dominicans and the Brotherhood of the Blackheads from a very early age. The Blackheads owned valuable altars in St. Catherine's Church, ordered from Bruges and Brussels. These altars have been preserved to this day; they have been exhibited in the museum and concert hall of the Nikolaikirche.
The Reval Blackheads have a number of well-known honorary members, including three Russian emperors and two Swedish kings.
literature
- Maria Anczykowski, Hans-Albrecht Koch , Annelore Leistikow and Hildegard Wiewelhove: The silver treasure of the Black Heads Company from Riga . HM Hauschild, Bremen 1997. ISBN 3-931785-57-2
- Christina Kupffer: The Livonian historian and lawyer Friedrich Konrad Gadebusch (1719–1788). History as memory in the age of enlightenment . Dissertation, Philosophical Faculty, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen 2000.
- FA Redlich: A new contribution to the history of the Christmas tree . In: Niederdeutsche Zeitung für Volkskunde, vol. 13, 1935, pp. 234–239.
- FA Redlich: Customs of the Livonian merchant . Plates, Riga 1935 (originally doctoral thesis, Göttingen 1934).
- Erik Thomson : The company of the Blackheads in Riga and their silver treasure . Publication series Nordost-Archiv, No. 6. Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, Lüneburg 1994. ISBN 3-922296-06-8 .
- Hellmuth Weiss : The black heads. Your position in Reval and your relationship with the German Hanseatic League . Lecture on the 575th anniversary of the Brotherhood of Blackheads from Reval on March 23, 1974 in Hamburg.
Web links
- Brotherhood of Blackheads from Reval (Official Website)
- Blackheads House in Tallinn
- Archive of the Compagnie der Black Heads in Riga (The German-Latvian digitization project brings together the archive of the “Compagnie der Black Heads in Riga”, which was separated as a result of the resettlement of the Baltic Germans in 1939, in a German-Latvian cooperation “virtually” and makes it online in a joint archive portal researchable.) The oldest part of the archive came to the Herder Institute in the course of the resettlement of the Baltic Germans in 1940 and in 1952 in Marburg . The part that was not exported to Germany in 1940 is in the State Historical Archives of Latvia (LVVA) in Riga.
Footnotes
- ^ Johann Suibert Seibertz : Walther von Plettenberg, master of the German order in Livonia . Friedrich Regensberg, Münster 1853, p. 66
- ↑ Diverse: Sociability and social career in the Reval guilds and Brotherhood of the Blackheads. (Anthology) Paul Kaegbein, Gert von Pistohlkors and Matthias Thumser, 2012, p. 44 f. , accessed June 15, 2016 .
- ^ Official website of the Tallinn Blackheads