Swedish mold
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 The Swedish mold |
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| Year of death: | 1632 |
| Country: | Sweden |
| Colour: | Mould |
| Owner: | Gustav II Adolf (Sweden) |
| Equestrian: | Gustav II Adolf (Sweden) |
The Swedish horse is a stuffed warhorse belonging to the Swedish King Gustav II Adolf , who was hit and killed by a bullet during the siege of Ingolstadt in 1632 while the king was exploring . It is considered to be the oldest preserved animal preparation in Europe.
description
The horse was groomed in a natural, standing position with the head slightly lowered, turned to the right and the left front leg slightly raised. The horse's coat is that of a beige spotted apple gray with dark legs that turn black. The mane and short tail are gray. The eyes are modeled open and his ears are set up. The left foreleg shows a large defect at the transition from the bow to the leg, which was concealed with a lighter, obviously strange, long-haired piece of fur. The skin was mounted on an anatomically elaborated wooden body and sewn with rough stitches. The horse's coat looks very worn with hair that has fallen out in places.
history
After the Swedes emerged victorious from the Battle of Rain am Lech during the Thirty Years' War , they moved down the Danube via Neuburg and took up position on April 29, 1632 outside Ingolstadt. From Oberstimm and Unsernherrn they besieged the city on the opposite side of the Danube, where Elector Maximilian of Bavaria was waiting for them with his troops. The Bavarians were initially able to push back the Swedes by shelling them. A night attack on the fortress also failed. On the morning of April 30th, after the service between 9 and 10 o'clock , Gustav Adolf rode his white horse towards the hornworks of the Danube bridge held by the city to explore its surroundings. The Swedish troops were shot again, with the king's horse being hit in the leg by a bullet, falling and burying Gustav Adolf under himself. The king was lucky and remained uninjured apart from a few bruises on his legs, while the margrave's son Christoph von Baden-Durlach, riding next to him, was fatally hit in the head. The king and his dead companion were transported back to the Swedes' camp, whereas the white horse was killed on site by a shot at the mercy and left lying there. The next day, a prisoner informed the Bavarians that they had met the king's mount. According to tradition, the animal was hit by the bullet of a falconet that had been fired from the donkey bastion on the other side of the Danube. Gustavus Adolphus continued the siege of the city for two more days and lost more than 2,000 soldiers in the fighting. When the Swedes' main camp in the village of Oberstimm burned down on the night of May 3, 1632, the siege was abandoned and the Swedish army withdrew the following night. Ingolstadt thus became the first German city that could prevent this army from invading. On May 4th, the people of Ingolstadt transported, among other things, the dead horse of the King of Sweden to their city, peeled off its skin, tanned it and mounted it on a wooden base. The preparation was initially set up as a trophy in the old armory of the New Palace . It was later shown in various other locations until it passed into the ownership of the municipal museum in 1920, where it has since been shown in the permanent exhibition.
Lore
The events surrounding the death of the Swedish horse are independently well documented from several contemporary sources. The detailed description of the place and occasion Ingol = Stat etc., probably printed in Augsburg in 1632, reports on the part of the Swedish besiegers:
"Friday morning / your Royal Mayst made yourselves. Sampt third / to take a look at a hill / the same quality / in the hope / the enemy would have enough to defend himself if the hill was removed / in turning back but such recognition was solved a bit / which your Maystat takes the horse from under your body: your Mayst . but that after a brave spirit and fearless heart / came back to a fresh horse / and arranged for a speedy progress / the work undertaken. "
From the side of the besieged city an entry in the annual report of the Jesuit College reports :
“XX Ultimus fuit hic obsidionis dies et pene etiam ipsius regis. Ille enim dum Neoburgo reversus in castra, obequitat, lustrat, imperat; seque extra vallum et dumeta in apertum campum, patibulum intra et urbem incautius effert; ecce tibi in ipsum ex arte tormentatio accenditur. Globus clunes equi exsecutus, sessorem ipsum nihil laesit; praeterquam quod offusum in terram alteri impositum iumento pedis aliquis ex casu dolor in castra reportatum consecutus sit. Inde bestia a praetoriano iuvene ne diutius saeviret glande traiecta nostris praeda mansit. Regius fuit caballus et confessione captivorum, et forma generosa: niveus, virgatis, interlucentibusque speculis varius, cuius pellis elaborata, opereque topiario sussulta figuram vivam refert, asservatam in arce; quod in eo Rex Balthicus hostis transmarinus Romani Imperii invasor, Ingolstadium viderit, nec (?) ingressus sit, monumentum ad posteritatis memoriam sempiternam. "
"XX It was the last day of the siege and almost also of the king himself. When he returned from Neuburg to the camp, he rode down the ranks, scrutinized, gave orders; and goes extremely carelessly into the open field outside the entrenchment and the bushes, between the gallows and the city; a bombardment is kindled on him according to all the rules of the art. A bullet hit the horse's rear but did not injure the rider; except that, having fallen to the ground and mounted on another mount, he suffered a pain in the foot from the fall when he was brought back to camp. The animal was then killed with a bullet by a young man from the bodyguard so that it would no longer rage in pain; so it remained a prey for our own people. It was the royal horse, both because of the testimony of prisoners and because of its noble shape: snow-white, piebald with streaky, shimmering patches of color; his skin, worked on and supported by an artistic work, reproduces the living figure, kept in the castle; because the Baltic king, the overseas enemy, the intruder into the Roman Empire, saw Ingolstadt on it and did not get into it, a memorial to the eternal memory of posterity. "
A historical wooden plaque on the mold describes the facts:
"Here you can see the Schümbl whereupon the king sweden the fortress Ingolstatt Reconized the schiimbl but under the king with a piece of ball In 1632 the 3rd (month scratched) was killed."
In addition, the shot from the donkey bastion on the Swedish king is shown in a watercolor by Johannes Ulrich Windberger from 1633 , which also gives a detailed overview of the Swedish camp on the other side of the Danube.
Different dates
Although the event has been passed down very well from contemporary written sources, different dates can be found on the day of the gray horse's death in both older and more recent literature. On the one hand April 30th and May 3rd on the other hand is mentioned. Most of the historical sources date the gray horse's death to April 30, 1632, whereas the report of the Jesuit College mentions May 3, to which numerous subsequent authors refer. According to Hanns Kuhn, however, several sources from the Swedish camp, such as the Stockholm Reich Archives, from Swedish agents and companions of the king, confirm Friday, April 30th as the day of the incident. This also fits in with the mention in the Jesuit College report that the event took place on the last day of the siege of Ingolstadt.
meaning
For a long time, the Swedish mold was only the second oldest animal preparation in Europe. Maximilian II's elephant was several decades older, but it was destroyed during or shortly after the Second World War, so that the Ingolstadt Swedish horse, which is now in the holdings of the Ingolstadt City Museum in the Kavalier Hepp , is the oldest preserved animal specimen in Europe. Only a few months younger is another stuffed horse that was also ridden by the Swedish King Gustav Adolf during his lifetime: the brown Oldenburg Streiff , which is kept in Stockholm , was shot with his rider in the battle of Lützen in autumn 1632 and came a little later to death.
literature
- Tobias Schönauer: Ingolstadt at the time of the Thirty Years War. Social and economic aspects of the city's history (= contributions to the history of Ingolstadt . No. 4 ). Ingolstadt 2007, ISBN 978-3-932113-48-2 , p. 44-54 .
Web links
- The Swedish horse on the side of the city museum of Ingolstadt
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Gerd Riedel, Ruth Sandner: The Swedish Threat to the Fortress of Ingolstadt - What is the “Legacy” of 4 May 1632? In: Historical archeology . No. 1 , 2014, ISSN 1869-4276 , p. 1–15 here: pp. 6–7 , doi : 10.18440 / ha.2014.1 .
- ^ A b c Hanns Kuhn: The Swedes before Ingolstadt April 28 - May 4, 1632 . In: Collection sheet of the historical association Ingolstadt . No. 50 , 1931, ISSN 1619-6074 , p. 109–112 ( [1] [ONLINE; accessed May 5, 2017]).
- ↑ Ingolstadt City Museum
- ↑ Kurt Scheuer: We felt a saddlecloth for the Swedish horse
- ↑ Christian Silvester: The story of the dead horse in front of the donkey bastion . In: Donaukurier . October 4, 2011 ( [2] [ONLINE; accessed May 4, 2017]).
- ↑ Kurt Scheuer: The Swedes before Ingolstadt 1632
- ↑ Ferdinand Opll : "... a rarity never seen in Vienna before, admired by everyone". On the life, death and afterlife of the first Viennese elephant . In: Studies on Viennese History (= yearbook of the Association for the History of the City of Vienna ). No. 60 , 2004, ISSN 1027-8788 , p. 255 .
- ↑ Michael Klarner: The Ingolstadt Swedish horse. ( Memento from September 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
Coordinates: 48 ° 46 ′ 3.9 " N , 11 ° 24 ′ 58.7" E