Sebastian Breuning (Vogt)

Sebastian Breuning († December 11, 1516 in Stuttgart) was Vogt von Weinsberg and, as a political opponent of Duke Ulrichs von Württemberg, was sentenced to death after a short hearing for alleged high treason.

Live and act

Sebastian Breuning is considered a protagonist of the bourgeois-class opposition to the claims of the Württemberg ducal house. About a year after the Treaty of Tübingen was signed , he was arrested for high treason at Hohenasperg Castle and tortured for months until Duke Ulrich, then 32, had his political opponent publicly executed on the Stuttgart market square. It was a judicial murder that excited the whole country.

This happened because in May 1515 Duke Ulrich stabbed his stable master and friend, Hans von Hutten , from behind while hunting in the Böblingen Forest , after he had chatted behind closed doors at court about the duke's unrequited love for the stable master's wife Had exposed ridicule. Emperor Maximilian I then ordered that a council should be placed at his side as co-regency. The Duke had to reluctantly agree to an even stronger influence of the estates over his government. Angrily, he planned to let the bourgeois bailiffs feel as soon as possible out of respectability, whom he accused of interplaying behind his back with the emperor to his disadvantage, that he alone was the master of Württemberg.

Duke Ulrich von Württemberg then summoned his landscape , had an imperial letter read to it and asked for an answer. The landscape representatives elected a committee of 12 representatives from the cities of Württemberg to write the answer. These then called in a number of officials, among them Sebastian Breuning, Konrad Vaut and the famous Dr. Johannes Reuchlin .

Some of the committee members, e.g. B. Conrad Vaut, Sebastian Breuning, Keßler von Göppingen , Breittenstein von Tübingen , Wenzelhäuser von Urach are said to have secretly discussed the withdrawal of the Duke's government authority to be effected by the emperor. Some wanted to freely explain to the duke that they wanted to stand by him as obedient subjects, but others, led by Sebastian Breuning, ensured that the answer was applauded "if he was right to suffer or if he were wrongly exaggerated." This group also brought about Sebastian Breuning's election as envoy.

Duke Ulrich was on November 20, 1516 the governor of the vineyard, Sebastian Breuning, whose brother, the governor of Tübingen, Konrad Breuning , the governor of Cannstatt, Konrad Vaut and the mayor of Stuttgart, Hans Stickel , arrest and on the Hohenasperg imprison . They were accused of high treason, because they should have turned to the emperor after Ulrich's bloody act. Konrad Vaut was also threatened with a charge of lese majesty. The defendants denied the allegations, but on the instructions of Ambrosius Volland , who was the duke's advisor and confidante, the men were severely tortured until they made a confession. No witnesses for or against the prosecution were sought. According to the extorted confessions, the main hearing was set for December 10, 1516 in the courtroom of the manor house on the Stuttgart market.

There the negotiation took place again under the chairmanship of Ambrosius Volland. All four of the defendants had revoked their extorted confessions under torture, but their convictions had been determined beforehand. Witnesses were again not heard. After a brief hearing, the three bailiffs were sentenced to death, only Hans Stickel escaped with his life. Just one day after the verdict, the poor sinners bell rang at the market. In hairy shirts, Konrad Vaut and Sebastian Breuning were led between a trellis of mercenaries with swords and spears under loud drum rolls in the market to the execution block. Both were beheaded and Konrad Vaut possibly quartered. Konrad Breuning was tortured for another year before he was executed.

Appreciation

In Tübingen, the Breuning Foundation commemorates Sebastian Breuning and his family.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Andrea Bachmann: Die Breuningstraße , Tagblatt-Anzeiger, 2010. ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ Hans Widmann: Tübingen as a publishing town , Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1971, p. 34 f.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Rose Wagner: Mosaik, special publications of the Martinszeller Verband No. 17 , Stuttgart 2002, pp. 38–43.
4. ↑ Ludwig Friedrich Heyd: Ulrich, Herzog zu Württemberg: a contribution to the history of Württemberg and the German Empire in the Age of Reformation, Volume 1. LF Fues, 1841, page 454.