Usingen town fire in 1692

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The city ​​fire of Usingen in 1692 was a city ​​fire that destroyed two thirds of the city area of Usingen . As a result, the baroque new town emerged , which is still a core of the inner city today. The Reich Chamber Court was concerned with the process of guilty of the fire .

The fire

On the evening of April 23, 1692 the fire started in a barn at Junkernhof (today: Wilhelmjstrasse 15). According to the report, the prince Walrad (he was at the time of the fire in the Netherlands) by bailiff requested Schmid Born and got burned today Obergasse, the market, the north side of the town hall lane that Scheuergasse, the sun alley "Porbach" and the Zitzergasse. Furthermore, the Obertor and the stately house at the Obertor as well as the community school barn were destroyed. The castle , church , schoolhouse, pharmacy , rectory and town hall were spared . A total of 65 riders, 12 houses, 7 barns and 5 stables were destroyed. 2 horses, 4 oxen, 29 cows, 46 cattle, 194 sheep and 141 pigs were burned, 495 people were injured.

There were also fatalities to mourn: the Jew Sabell and his four children, two children of Hans Adam Sieber, a son of Johann Vinzenz and a citizen from Hausen perished in the fire.

The Nassau-Usingen Chancellor Johann Melchior Vigelius , who was on a business trip to the Kurtrier Hof in Thal-Ehrenbreitstein at the time of the fire , lost valuable jewelry, clothing and household effects with his house at Obertor. The loss of the archived letters and the Chancellor's library was irreplaceable . The value of the library alone was given as 10,000 guilders .

A main reason for the rapid spread of the fire was the fact that the houses were mostly thatched and stood close together.

The question of guilt

After the fire, the rumor quickly spread that the groom of the castle countess Catharina Eleonora von Diede zum Fürstenstein, Peter, had started the fire. He was discharged from the service but rehabilitated in the subsequent judicial investigation. In the following investigations, the suspicion became more concrete that one of the countess's three servants had smoked in the barn and thus lit the fire.

The anger of the population was now directed against the elderly castle countess. Concerned about the safety of the castle countess, bailiff Schmidborn asked her to leave Usingen (she still had a retirement home in Friedberg) because he would not be able to protect her. However, she stayed in Usingen and found asylum in the Usingen rectory, where she stayed until the summer of 1692.

Emergency aid and reconstruction

Huguenot church in Usingen, core of the baroque new town

Fire pockets persisted four days after the fire. 100 residents of the neighboring towns were obliged to carry fire-fighting water from the USA to the city to support the fire-fighting work. The first emergency measure was the removal of the animal carcasses.

The homeless were quartered in the remaining houses and neighboring towns. Reconstruction was urgent: the harvest time was imminent and the harvest had to be stored somewhere. In order to avoid wild building, Prince Walrad appointed the painter at the Usinger Hof, Johann Emrich Küntzel (born August 7, 1664 in Usingen), as the "master builder of the local urban planning". Künzel presented a plan with straight streets in a right-angled arrangement, which characterizes the Neustadt to this day.

Some wealthy Usingers were able to build their new buildings in the same year. These included the town school leader Vinzenz Clamm, the preceptor Johann Philipp Russ and the doctor Flick. Most of the other houses could only be built in the following years. The main problem was the lack of lumber. With the approval of the government, residents in neighboring towns were allowed to buy demolished houses and rebuild them in Usingen.

Money collections

The reconstruction and the emergency aid cost considerable sums ( there was no fire insurance at that time). Prince Walrad made a major contribution by exempting the injured party from taxes for 10 years. He also provided immediate aid of 50 Reichstalers to alleviate the plight of the poorest. In order to raise further donations, a number of Usingen citizens traveled all over Germany. Collections took place in the Netherlands, Saxony, Swabia and Franconia and of course in Nassau and Hesse. The Usingen ambassadors were equipped with permission patents for collection ("fire letters"). The six collectors were able to raise 1880 guilders and 14 Albus for the Brandkollektenkasse (and spent 428 guilders, 5 Albus and 2 pfennigs on the trip).

Before the Reich Chamber of Commerce

Catharina Eleonora von Diede zum Fürstenstein , the widow of Friedberg Burgrave Hans Eitel Diede zum Fürstenstein , was a member of the Middle Rhine Imperial Knighthood outside the jurisdiction of Nassau-Usingen. However, this was ignored by the government. She had the grain and all crops of the Junkernhof confiscated. On November 10, 1693, the Imperial Chamber Court declared this measure to be inadmissible at the request of the Countess. Responsible is the Knight's Directory of the Middle Rhine Imperial Knighthood. The princely government appealed against this judgment. No verdict was announced.

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