Weinsberger bloody act

The Weinsberg blood deed , also known as Weinsberg Blood Easter , was the killing of Count Ludwig von Helfenstein and his companions at the gates of the city of Weinsberg by insurgent farmers in the German Peasants' War on April 16, 1525, an Easter Sunday .

Course of action

Scene of the bloody deed on Easter Sunday 1525: Castle and town of Weinsberg (contemporary view from 1578)

On Good Friday, April 14, 1525, the united Odenwald and Hohenlohe farmers who had gathered in early April 1525 when the Schöntal monastery was sacked moved from their camp in Neuenstein to Neckarsulm . On the way, the Neckar valley farmers under Jäcklein Rohrbach and the Black Hofmännin joined them, so that on April 15, around 6000 farmers were lying on the meadows off Neckarsulm and were planning their next steps during a day of rest.

The next destination for the farmers was Burg Weinsberg and the town of Weinsberg. The farmers had received news that the castle was only occupied by a few soldiers, and the north side of the castle , which was shot in 1504 by Duke Ulrich von Württemberg, had only been poorly repaired with wickerwork. In the city of Weinsberg, Count von Helfenstein, Austrian bailiff Weinsberg, son-in-law of the deceased Emperor Maximilian I and chief bailiff of all Württemberg farmers and therefore hated by them, arrived with 60 soldiers and streakers (mounted companions) in the city of Weinsberg during Holy Week . The count had had the field captain of the farmers informed in writing that the farmers of the Weinsberger valley should return home, otherwise he would have them burned. Since this threat from the count had an effect and some of the local farmers were intimidated, it was imperative for the farmers' leaders to act quickly and to proceed with numerical superiority against the count in Weinsberg before he received any support from Stuttgart.

On Easter Sunday, April 16, 1525, the peasants' storming of the castle and town of Weinsberg began at around 8 a.m. after they had previously unsuccessfully requested to surrender and had been shot at their parliamentarians. The castle was overrun from the north-west of the Schemelsberg. The small castle garrison could do little against the storming peasants who, in fire protection, overcame the willow network in the north and smashed the castle gate with axes. The castle was taken at around 9 o'clock, where the first atrocities took place; so the castle chaplain Jörg Wolf was stabbed by a farmer. All of the surviving defenders are said to have been wounded when they were later led down to the city. After the farmers captured the countess and her three-year-old son who were staying at the castle and plundered all valuables and supplies, they set fire to the castle. At around 10 a.m., it is said to have been fully on fire.

The town of Weinsberg, which had around 1500 inhabitants and was surrounded by a massive wall with two gates, was overrun from two sides, with the lower and then the upper gate attacked. When the news of the capture of the castle spread in the city after 9 a.m., there were tumultuous scenes. The peasants meanwhile announced that they wanted to let the citizens live when the gates were opened to them, but the brushwood and nobles were to die. Some Weinsberg women urged their husbands to kill the brushwood themselves in order to avert the anger of the farmers. The Count von Helfenstein and the leader of the nobles, Dietrich von Weiler, examined the possibility of breaking out of the besieged city, but saw no possibility. The strong bombardment of the city wall soon made a defense from there impossible. The Upper Gate was finally taken at around 9:30 a.m. by the farmers who then stormed the city.

Countess Helfenstein asks Jäcklein Rohrbach for mercy for her husband. The gauntlet has already begun in the background. Copper engraving by Matthäus Merian d. Ä.

While the citizens withdrew to their homes, knights and sticks fled to the Wolfsturm and the St. John's Church . When the church was also overrun, a group of Count von Helfenstein and Dietrich von Weiler fled over the spiral staircase to the church tower, where Dietrich von Weiler was fatally hit in the neck by a bullet. The situation on the towers was hopeless, so the survivors surrendered. The peasants gave orders to the citizens to stay in their houses. Dietrich von Weiler's corpse was thrown from the church tower, the surviving sticks were executed behind the church, the church and town were looted.

Helfenstein and around a dozen other nobles were captured and sentenced to death by the peasants under the leadership of Jäcklein Rohrbach - against the will of other, more moderate peasant leaders such as Wendel Hipler . The verdict was carried out between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. in front of the lower gate of Weinsberg, when the peasants let the nobles run through the spits . This punishment was a special degradation of the condemned, otherwise it was only imposed on mercenaries , not on knights. The piper Melchior nunmaker, formerly a musician in the service of the nobility, is said to have played a “last dance” for them. The Count's wife, Margaretha von Helfenstein, and his son were not killed, but - allegedly on a dung wagon - sent to Heilbronn after the Countess, according to some sources, unsuccessfully pleaded with the farmers for the life of her husband.

Consequences of the act

The execution of Helfenstein and his companions caused a great shock and even panic among the rulers in Germany, especially in Franconia, as they rightly saw their position threatened. Martin Luther , who initially showed a certain sympathy for the peasants, took the bloody act as the occasion for his work Against the Murderous Rotten der Bauern , in which he urged the nobility to be ruthless against the rebels. The nobility consequently persecuted the farmers with great brutality, especially Rohrbach, but also the city of Weinsberg, although the city was not responsible for the farmers' deeds. Jäcklein Rohrbach was caught and burned alive near Heilbronn on May 20 or 21 . The same fate had befallen Pfeifer Nonnenmacher eight days earlier. Weinsberg was completely destroyed on May 21 by an army of the Swabian Federation , had to pay numerous fines and fines and lost its city rights , which it only got back in 1553.

The trunk of the dead linden tree in the column circle

The Weinsbergers were required to hold negotiations of the bourgeois court, which was still granted to them, only in the open air on the place of the blood deed. A court linden tree was planted on this court square , the branches of which were supported by a wreath of decorated stone pillars after a while. After 1900 there was only one torso left of the linden tree, which died completely in the 1920s. The pillars were stored for their protection during World War II , but fell victim to the fire in the city after they were bombed and bombarded on April 12, 1945.

Literary reception

In 1771 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had Georg Metzler , one of the peasant leaders, report on the act in Götz von Berlichingen at the beginning of the 5th act . Justinus Kerner wrote the historical treatise Storming of the Württemberg city of Weinsberg by the Hellen Christian Haufen in 1525 and its consequences for this city in 1820 , his son Theobald Kerner thematized the Easter of Blood in his poem cycle Pictures from the Peasants' War . In 1936 Johannes Wüsten wrote the drama Weinsberg , which is about the peasant war. Yaak Karsunke put the events at the center of his peasant opera in 1975 . Ulrike Schweikert addressed the Weinsberg bloody deed in 2004 in her historical novel Das Kreidekreuz , in which the peasant war is the main plot. In his historical novel Die Rache des Kaisers , published in 2009, Gisbert Haefs lets his main character take part in the fighting on the side of the peasants.

Musical reception

In the opera Mathis der Maler (1938) by Paul Hindemith , in the fourth picture, among other things, the Weinsberg bloody deed (next to the battle on the Turmberg near Königshofen in June 1525) forms the background for the framework plot.

Individual evidence

^ Fritz-Peter Ostertag, Rolf Becker (ed.): Weinsberg. Pictures from his past . Verlag Wilhelm Röck, Weinsberg 1970, DNB 750006927 , p. 28
↑ Simon M. Haag: On the building history of the upper administrative city of Weinsberg . Verlag Nachrichtenblatt der Stadt Weinsberg, Weinsberg 1995, ISBN 3-9802689-8-5 , pp. 135-137

literature

Erich Weismann: The conquest and destruction of the city of Weinsberg and the Weinsberg Castle in the Peasants' War. A reconstruction of the processes according to contemporary eyewitness reports . Verlag des Nachrichtenblatt der Stadt Weinsberg, Weinsberg 1992, ISBN 3-9802689-7-7