Thomas Slentz

Thomas Slentz († February 17, 1500 near Hemmingstedt ) was a German Landsknechtsführer .

The name

The spelling forms Slenitz , Slins , Schlinitz and Schlentz can alternatively be found for the name of Colonel Slentz , but mostly he is called Junker Slentz . Thomas Slentz was allegedly from Cologne, but an exact genealogy cannot be made. The provenance of the name points rather to the east (Schleinitz near Meißen ).

Life

Slentz is said to have been comparatively large. He is often described as experienced in the war, brave, prudent, undaunted and a good tactician. The historian Petrus Sax called it a vir bellicosus et virtute bellica ornatissimus . As a Landsknechtsführer he must also have been gifted in business, as well as having a sense of politics and good relations with the territorial princes.

As a colonel of a famous elite army, the so-called Black Guard , Slentz is first attested for the year 1495 alongside Nithardt Fux . This Magna Guardia or Black Guard was a mercenary association from the Dutch area, which operated on the Frisian-Saxon North Sea coast and specialized in fighting rebellious farmers. While the mercenaries came from many different nations, the officers were mostly German.

From 1497 the guard under Slentz - Nithardt Fux had already fallen in an earlier skirmish - was victorious in the service of the Danish King John I as the core of his troops and fought for this u. a. against Sten Sture the Elder .

In folk songs that the Black Guard sing about, an excessive luxury of the Guard is described. In the song De König wol to dem hertogen sprak ... (song no. 218 in the collection of Rochus von Liliencron ) it means that Slentzen's armor shimmered red with gold.

His brother, Jürgen Slentz, was also employed as a double mercenary in the Black Guard , as was a chaplain of the same name, Thomas Schlinitz, who may also have been a relative.

The battle at Hemmingstedt

→ Main article : Battle of Hemmingstedt

In 1500 the guard fought against the Dithmarsch farmers under the leadership of Slentz on behalf of King John of Denmark, Sweden and Norway . On February 11th the army crossed the border to Dithmarschen. The Dithmarscher had fled from the Geest into the marshland , so that only a small army of mercenaries could resist the attackers. Therefore the Black Guard was able to take Windbergen on February 12th and Meldorf on February 13th without strong resistance . She is said to have acted with extreme brutality and caused a bloodbath.

Slentz must have spoken out in Meldorf due to the beginning thaw against a further advance in bad weather. A pertinent dispute between him and King John is evident from a traditional folk song ( Neocorus I, p. 521) .

The army was ambushed by the Dithmarschers on February 17, 1500 and was almost completely wiped out in the battle of Hemmingstedt . A warning from Slentzen that February 17th would be All Souls Day , which would be a bad omen for the company, should be referred to as an afterthought. Another legend about the Junker Slentz belongs to this (Bolten, Ditmarsische Geschichte , vol. 3, p. 142; Vieth, description, p. 321): Slentzen's mother was once prophesied that her son would die in front of a wall would have been built in one night. When Slentz, mindful of these words , saw the nightly built hill at Dusenddüwelswarf by the Dithmarsch farmers , he therefore recognized his impending death, but nevertheless took up the fight and brought it to an end. This transfigured portrayal of his heroism has echoes of the portrayal in the Nordic heroic sagas ( Hagen von Tronje ).

The death

While trying to storm this hill and encircle it, Slentz fell. According to Petrus Sax, he was thrown from his horse by a Dithmarscher, caught in the throat, trampled underfoot and killed in a duel. (Petrus Sax, Dithmarsia, p. 94f.) . Neocorus writes similarly, according to which Slentz was thrown down in a duel and suffocated by being kicked.

Already in the Dithmarsch folk song De König wol to dem hertogen sprak ... the death of the Junker is portrayed in a glorifying manner: It takes the simultaneous attack of three opponents until the Lord of the Guard finally falls. A later addition to the song also mentions the one name of the farmer who was victorious in a duel with the Junker, Reimer van Wiemerstedt . On the one hand, the fact that Slentz is said to have fought the duel on horseback speaks against this representation. It is more likely that he dismounted in the fight like his predecessor Fux at the time and joined the first rank with his spear, as his captain Eutz Beck attests. On the other hand, Petrus Sax reports that Slentz was killed by someone from the Neuenkirchen parish , to which Wiemerstedt does not belong.

Although the Black Guard is always referred to with horror and disgust in the later folk songs of the Dithmarscher , Slentz retains a good name in these songs. The bravely lost enemy is stylized into a figure with the tragic features of the heroic saga.

literature

• Johann Adolfi, called Neocorus : Chronicle of the Land of Dithmarschen . Edited from the original by Prof. Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann , 2 vols., Kiel 1827.
• Johann Adrian Bolten : Ditmarsische Geschichte , 4 vols., Flensburg and Leipzig 1781–88.
• Petrus Sax: Dithmarsia, that is a necessary preliminary report and historical narrative of the state of Dithmarschen from Latin, German and domestic Scriptoribus drawn together by Petro Sax zu Oldenbüttel in Eiderstedt , 1640.
• Walther Lammers : The Battle of Hemmingstedt , Neumünster 1953.
• Rochus von Liliencron : The historical folk songs of the Germans , Vol. 2, pp. 432–456.
• Anton Vieth: Description and History of the Land Dithmarschen or Geographical, Political and Historical Message from the Reported Land , Hamburg 1733.
• Albert Schumann :  Slenz . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 34, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1892, p. 461 f.