Ulman Stromer

Ulman Stromer (born January 6, 1329 in Nuremberg ; † April 3, 1407 ibid) was a Nuremberg wholesaler, manufacturer and councilor in the 14th century. He had the first paper mill built north of the Alps in 1390 , thus establishing the production of paper in Central Europe.

Life

The - rebuilt - Hadermühle Stromers in a view of the city of Nuremberg from 1493. Like all paper mills, it was located outside the city walls (the building complex in the lower right corner) due to the stench and noise.

Ulman Stromer was born as the twelfth of 18 surviving children of Nuremberg merchant Heinrich Stromer († 1347) (from the Stromer von Reichenbach family ) and his second wife Margarete Geusmid (Geuschmidtin, † 1350).

He was trained as a merchant in the family business in Barcelona , Genoa , Milan and Cracow and went on business trips to Cracow and Lviv at an early age . In 1358 Stromer married his first wife Anna Hegner († 1365), the daughter of the richest hammer and smelter owner in Sulzbach. One year after her death in 1366, he married Agnes Groland († 1413), who was only 14 years old. In 1368 he acquired a large property on the main market immediately north of the Frauenkirche (Hauptmarkt 16 / Obstgasse 2) for 1825 guilders and expanded it into a representative residence and merchant's farm for over 2000 guilders.

According to his own statements, Stromer began in 1360 with the records of his Püchel von meim geslecht and von abentewr , in which he documented events in his family, the company, but also in politics. In 1370, together with his brothers Peter and Andreas , he took over the management of the family's wholesale house, whose stores stretched from Barcelona to Riga and Azov .

From 1371 he was councilor in the inner council of the imperial city of Nuremberg . Although he only held the most important office in the city regiment as Supreme Captain from 1396, he was seen in the Nuremberg Council as "Gray Eminence" (Fleischmann) as early as the 1380s. From 1372 he was the caretaker of the St. Clara convent for 18 years. In the city war of 1388 he acted successfully against Burgrave Friedrich V (1395–97); Ulman Stromer incorporated Nuremberg into the Swabian-Rhenish Association of Cities . In an inglorious way he was probably also involved in the so-called debt settlement of 1388.

In 1390 he converted the Gleißmühle on the Pegnitz into the first paper mill north of the Alps into the Hadermühle ( hadern = rags). With this, the comparatively cheap mass-produced paper began to replace the expensive parchment made from animal skins north of the Alps . The oldest illustration of the paper mill (no longer active at that time) can be found in the Nuremberg Chronicle , it shows the mill, rebuilt after a fire in 1479 with the fortified mansion protecting it in 1493.

Ulman Stromer was closely associated with the Palatinate Wittelsbach elector Ruprecht II , and his financial support contributed in 1400 to the overthrow of King Wenzel (1376–1400) and to the election of Ruprecht's II son Ruprecht as king (1400–1410). Ruprecht II stayed with Ulman Stromer during stays in Nuremberg, and in 1401 his wife Elisabeth Burggräfin von Nürnberg (1358–1411) was the godmother of Ulman's granddaughter.

The Nuremberg plague epidemic in the winter of 1406/07, in which Stromer's son of the same name was killed among eight members of the family, he himself succumbed on April 3, 1407 “on suntag after easter”.

Autobiography

Ulman himself consciously passed on parts of his life and work to us. His "Püchel von meim geslecht und von abentewr", written between 1360 and 1401, marks the beginning of the historiographical literature of the free imperial city of Nuremberg and is considered an early work with "autobiographical" features in the German language. In terms of content, the work essentially comprises 1. Family messages, 2. Political events, 3. Economic information. All three subject areas always appear closely linked in terms of content and form and can hardly be separated from one another. Only by means of various other sources could historical science prove that Ulman or his closest relatives were more or less directly involved in most of the historical events described. From the beginning, Ulmans Püchel was widely received in Nuremberg and can therefore be regarded as the basis of medieval historiography in the city. As a source, it testifies above all to the pronounced self-confidence of the Nuremberg patriciate in the 14th century, which experienced an unparalleled political and social rise during this time.

Appreciation

On the Wöhrder Wiese in Nuremberg, a memorial in the form of metal stacks of paper and an inscription on the former site of the Hadermühle commemorates the construction of the first German paper mill and its initiator, the Nuremberg councilor Ulman Stromer.

publication

• Püchel from my sex and from adventure. Manuscript 6146 in the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg.

Editions

• Ulman Stromer: Püchel von meim geslecht and von abentewr, in: Karl Hegel (ed.): The Chronicles of the German Cities Vol. 1, Leipzig 1862.
• Ulman Stromer: Püchel from my sex and from abentewr. 24-page text volume (selection: Lotto Kurras): partial facsimile of the manuscript HS 6146 of the Germanic National Museum Nuremberg. 277-page commentary volume with transcription: edited by Lotte Kurras. Contributions: Lore Sporhan-Krempel, Wolfgang Stromer von Reichenbach and Ludwig Veit. For the 600th anniversary of the founding of Germany's first paper mill, ed. from the Association of German Paper Mills (VDP). Müller and Schindler, Stuttgart 1990.

See also

• Stromer from Reichenbach
• Peter Stromer
• Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach
• Grünsberg Castle

literature

• Johann Ferdinand Roth: History of the Nuremberg trade . Adam Friedrich Böhme, Leipzig 1801, pp. 162–164 ( Google Books )
• Ernst Mummenhoff :  Ulman Stromer . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 36, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1893, p. 617 f.
• Walter Vock: Ulman Stromeir (1329-1407) and his book. Supplements to the Hegelian edition, in: MVGN 29 (1928), pp. 85–168.
• Ernst Frh. Stromer von Reichenbach: Our ancestors in the imperial city of Nuremberg 1250 to 1806 , Nuremberg: Fromman 1951.
• Lore Sporhan-Krempel, Wolfgang von Stromer: The trading house of the Stromer of Nuremberg and the history of the first German paper mill , in: Quarterly journal for social and economic history, Vol. 47, H. 1, 1960, pp. 81-104.
• Wolfgang Stromer von Reichenbach : The Nuremberg trading company Gruber-Posmer-Stromer in the 15th century , Nuremberg: Association for the history of the city of Nuremberg 1963 (also Diss. Erlangen).
• Lotte Kurras: Ulman Stromer. Püchel from my sex and from adventure ; Partial facsimile of the manuscript Hs 6146 of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg. Commentary tape. With contributions by Lore Sporhan-Krempel , Wolfgang Stromer von Reichenbach and Ludwig Veit. To mark the 600th anniversary of the founding of Germany's first paper mill, published by the volume Deutscher Papierfabriken, Bonn 1990.
• Peter Fleischmann: Councilor and patriciate in Nuremberg. The rule of the councilors from the 13th to the 18th century (= Nürnberger Forschungen 31), Vol. 2: Councilors and councilors, Nuremberg 2008.

Web links

• Literature by and about Ulman Stromer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Ulman Stromer in the repertory "Historical Sources of the German Middle Ages"