Simon Grunau

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Widowuto banner and coat of arms after Simon Grunau. The coat of arms is typical of the 16th century, but anachronistic in relation to the time around 550, when Widowuto is said to have lived

Simon Grunau (* approx. 1470 in Tolkemit near Elbing ; † 1530 or 1537) was a Dominican in Danzig and an old Prussian historiographer . He entered the Dominican monastery in Elbląg around 1470 and completed a theological course in Padua from 1480-1483 . 1483–1502 he worked as head of the Elbing Order Studies, later as a reading master in Elbing. In 1502 he moved to Danzig, in 1505 he was again master of reading in the Dominican monastery there . In 1514 he took part in the Provincial Chapter in Łowicz , and then belonged to the Convent of Liegnitz . In 1517 he seems to have returned to Gdansk, since he dates the start of work on his chronicle to this year.

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Grunau wrote a “Cronika and a description of all the lustful, useful and historical of the well-known country of Prewssen” in 24 tracts . His chronicle shows him as an opponent of the Teutonic Order and partisan of the Polish crown , but above all as a sworn enemy of the Reformation . Under the impression of the events of his time, he wondered about the fate of his country and the causes of the supposed decline. In doing so, he was not choosy, mixed up adaptations of earlier Teutonic order chronicles and Prussian national chronicles with invented documents and reviews and repeatedly mixed in anecdotes and moral narratives. That is why he has almost unreservedly incurred the ire of research (for example Max Toeppen ). Because of his impartial handling of historical sources, he is often referred to as the "lying monk from Tolkemit".

Apparently there is a break connected with the Reformation, which can be observed in several places in the chronicle. The introduction is also extended to include a dropout that denounces the turbulence of the Reformation as a result of the diabolical politics of the grand masters. This becomes clearest in the summary that forms paragraph 6 of the introduction and extends to 1521. The later tract XXIV appears here with the number XXII; Tracts XXII and XXIII, which deal with the Reformation, have thus been inserted into the text without the summary having been corrected. 1521 is mentioned several times in the text of the chronicle as the current year (for example XI, 7 § 5: the Peterspfennig “the Poles are still too good today in the jare 1521”).

This first version ended with the equestrian war that Grand Master Albrecht von Brandenburg waged against Poland in 1519–1521 . Grunau calls it the "Franconian War" after Albrecht's origins from Ansbach . Parts of the report on Reformation events are inserted into the cultural chapter on the Prussian dioceses at the beginning of the work. The actual description does not appear until the end of the work, before the large concluding tract on the causes of the decline. This is how the new tracts XXII and XXIII are created.

reception

Grunau is still used today as a source for the culture, language and religion of the Pruzzen who were subjected to the Teutonic Order . His mistakes ( e.g. when rendering a Prussian Our Father's text) seem to be due to bad informants rather than deliberate misinformation.

Grunau is interesting not least because he gives a detailed account of his sources in his prologue ; he not only lists titles that he wants to have used, but says something about their accessibility. He says that most of the chronicles were lost or difficult to find and that he had to go to great lengths to find them. This is only supported by the gross and nonsensical mistakes that Toeppen and Max Perlbach could prove to him.

The surviving manuscripts of the Grunau Chronicle all belong to the late 16th or even the 17th century. One cannot even be certain whether Grunau is really responsible for both versions or whether the later additions about the Reformation history are not from someone else. The latest examination of the tradition provides more clarity.

Grunau was used as a source by Lucas David and Caspar Schütz and even Christoph Hartknoch ; only Johannes Voigt rejected him as unreliable.

See also

literature

  • Simon Grunau's Prussian Chronicle, ed. by M. Perlbach , R. Philippi and P. Wagner. Vol. 1–3, Leipzig 1876–1896. (The Prussian historians of the 16th and 17th centuries 1–3; corrected version of the digitized versions of Google Books )
  • Udo Arnold : Studies on Prussian Historiography of the 16th Century . Dissertation, University of Bonn, 1967.
  • Kurt Forstreuter :  Grunau, Simon. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 216 ( digitized version ).
  • Walter Hubatsch : Lucas David from Allenstein, the historian in his time. In: Erwin Nadolny (Ed.): Southeast Prussia and the Ruhr Area: Contributions to local history on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of Allenstein in the sponsored city of Gelsenkirchen. Leer: Rautenberg & Möckel, 1954.
  • Erich Maschke : The older historiography of the Prussian country. In: Scriptores rerum Prussicarum . Vol. 6 (1968), pp. 1-21.
  • Arno Mentzel-Reuters : From the chronicle of orders to national history. The development of the old Prussian regional historiography in the 16th century. In: Klaus Garber , Manfred Komorowski (ed.): Cultural history of East Prussia in the early modern period (= early modern period. Vol. 56). Niemeyer, Tübingen 2001, pp. 581-637 ( online ).
  • Egidijus Miltakis : Simono Grunau kronikos įtaka XVI – XVIII a. Prūsijos istoriografijai [The influence of Simon Grunau's chronicle on Prussian historiography from the 16th to 18th centuries], in: Krikščionių visuomenės raidos atodangos LDK vakarinėje dalyje ir Prūsijoje [The threats to Christian society in the western part of the Baltic and in Prussia]. Skiriama prof. Stephen C. Rowell 50-mečiui [ ceremony for Prof. Stephen C. Rowell on his 50th birthday], ed. v. Marius Ščavinskas, Klaipėda 2015, pp. 95–121.
  • Max Perlbach :  Grunau, Simon . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, p. 33 f.
  • Sallie Jo Strouss: A German Renaissance Encyclopedia: Folklore and literature in the "Prussian chronicle" of Simon Grunau. Dissertation, Northwestern University, 1968.
  • Max Töppen : History of Prussian Historiography by P. v. Dusburg except for K. Schütz, or: Documentation and criticism of the printed and unprinted chronicles on the history of Prussia under the rule of the German Order. Hertz, Berlin 1853 (Reprint: Sendet, Walluf bei Wiesbaden 1973), pp. 122–201
  • Sławomir Zonenberg : Kronika Szymona Grunaua. Bydgoszcz: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego, 2009.

Web links

Commons : Simon Grunau  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Simon Grunau  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Zonenberg pp. 27-29
  2. ^ Vytautas Rinkevičius: Old Prussian. History - dialects - grammar . Edited by Harald Bichlmeier, translated by Harald Bichlmeier and Silke Brohm. Baar, Hamburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-935536-47-9 , p. 23.
  3. ↑ Sławomir Zones Mountain : The handwritten basics of "Prussian Chronicle" by Simon Grunau. On the question of the new edition . In: Marie-Luise Heckmann and Jürgen Sarnowsky (eds.): Schriftlichkeit im Preußenland (= conference reports of the Historical Commission for East and West Prussian State Research. Vol. 30), Osnabrück: fiber-Verlag, 2020 ( [1] ), p. 355-368.
personal data
SURNAME Grunau, Simon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grunaeus; Grynaeus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dominican in Danzig and old Prussian historiographer
DATE OF BIRTH around 1470
PLACE OF BIRTH Tolkemite
DATE OF DEATH 1530