White Book of Sarnen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The White Book

The White Book of Sarnen is a manuscript in the state archive of the canton of Obwalden . The book contains a chronicle with the oldest tradition in tell history . Friedrich Schiller relied on them when he wrote his drama Wilhelm Tell in 1804.

The handwriting and its content

The White Book of Sarnen is a copy book for the everyday life of the Obwalden Landschreiber. It was customary to keep copy books in important law firms, in which copies of important resolutions were immediately accessible for the law firm's use. Because of the color of the cover, they were called silver, red and white books. The first part of the White Book contains copies of important treaties and alliances. So the federal letters from 1315 to 1452 (Appenzellerbund). Copies of the Sempacher letter , Pfaffenbrief and common federal treaties with foreigners follow . After the Unterwalden letters of freedom, a group of treaties with France followed. It is followed by a collection of armistices and peace treaties.

At the end of the White Book of Sarnen there is a chronicle with the stories of the violent acts of the bailiffs, the story of the story, the Rütli oath, the broken castle and the liberation of the three countries from tyranny. For the first time, they have been combined into a unified whole with regard to the federal oath on the Rütli . The Rütli oath and the tell story appear for the first time in this chronicle.

Shape and name

The White Book originally contained 280 sheets (today 508 pages, some have been cut out); the chronicle, the narrative part of the White Book, has only 24 pages (in the original sheet 208–220r) and originally formed the end of the volume (pp. 441–465).

The old stock of the book consists of 21 regular layers of twelve and three times fourteen sheets with two different watermarks (one watermark comes from the Zurich paper mill on the Sihl).

The book was written by the Obwalden Landschreiber Hans Schriber between 1470 and 1472 and supplemented in 1474 (by Schriber). There are only a few entries from a later period; After 1512, the Kappelerfriede of 1531 and the oaths of the governor, banner lord and Fähndrich of Obwalden (1607) were written into it.

The White Book was so named because of its white cover; the pigskin binding dates from the 17th century (probably from 1608). The inscription on the front cover: "The so-called oldest / weisse Buoch / or / copies of the oldest alliances" wrote a hand from the late 18th century during an inventory before the French Revolution.

author

The White Book was written around 1470 by the Obwaldner Landschreiber Hans Schriber in the style of humanistic chronicling. As a gifted chronicler, he wrote stories about the creation of the Swiss Confederation, about the "beginning of the three countries", from the Obwalden perspective of the 15th century. He relied on the Bern Chronicle by Konrad Justinger (after 1420, which he expressly mentions in the text), on Felix Hemmerli's Zurich Book of the Nobility ( De nobilitate et rusticitate dialogus , around 1450) and on the Nordic Tokosage of Saxo Grammaticus († 1204). In the passages over the Burgenbruch he takes up northern Italian influences: In the Bern Tschachtlan Chronicle , similar broken castles are depicted in the Ashen Valley trains (Mattarela and Trontano Castle near Domodossola ).

In this narrative story of liberation, Hans Schriber for the first time summarized the various local liberation traditions into a coherent history of the origins of the mutual federal alliances and linked them with the Tokosage.

Until recently it is assumed that the Obwalden land clerk Hans Schriber was only the copyist of an earlier chronicle. However, as early as 1895, Anton Küchler identified Hans Schriber as the writer and author of this chronicle in his Sarnen Chronicle , an assumption that the Nidwalden state archivist Robert Durrer also adopted in the Historical-Biographical Lexicon of Switzerland in 1928. The former Obwalden state archivist and philologist Angelo Garovi tried to clarify the author's question in an article in the Obwalden history sheets based on a text analysis of both the legal and the chronic part.

The narrative part

Hans Schriber begins with the Obwalden tale of Vogt Landenberg, who had the oxen taken away from the farmer in Melchi. The son , who defended himself and slapped the bailiff's finger in two, had to flee and the father was imprisoned and blinded in the lower castle of Sarnen. In Altzellen ( Nidwalden ) the farmer Konrad Baumgarten killed Vogt Wolfenschiessen with an ax because he wanted to force his wife to take a bath with him and to "live" with him. In Schwyz asked Vogt Gessler to Stauffacher , who owned this charming stone house. After these words, Stauffacher felt threatened and, on the advice of his wife, decided to go to Uri and Unterwalden to give advice there with the leading people, such as Fürst and Zer women. So then Stauffacher, Fürst and the young farmer from the Melchi came together. They took other people into their confidence, made a secret alliance and met each night on the Rütli (mentioned here for the first time).

This is followed by the world-famous story of Tell in Uri, who did not want to greet the hat and had to shoot an apple off his son's head as a punishment. After this act, the Stauffacher Society became more and more powerful and began to break down the castle towers of the bailiffs, Zwing Uri, Schwanau, Schwyz and Stans. The “strong” castle of Sarnen could only be captured with cunning. The subjects, who had to bring presents and New Year's gifts to Vogt Landenberg at Christmas, came to the castle in the “kitchen for the fire” and left the gate open so that the people hidden in the alder bushes nearby could take over the castle at a horn signal. Afterwards, the three countries formed a league and "defended themselves against the masters".

In the second section of the chronicle there is a report on the accession of Lucerne, Zurich, Zug, Glarus and Bern. Then followed events from the early 15th century: the Werni trade between Bern and Lucerne, the Appenzell Wars, the conquest of the Livinen and Eschen valleys and the Rarn trade.

reception

Etterlin 1507

The Lucerne chronicler Petermann Etterlin took over the liberation version of the Sarner Landschreiber in his "Kronika von der loblichen Eidgenossenschaft" printed in Basel in 1507 and made it widely known at that time. It can also be found in a Jesuit library in Mexico.

The Glarus historian Aegidius Tschudi , who consulted the archive with the White Book in Sarnen in 1569, gave the story of liberation in the Chronicon Helveticum its final form. This (unfinished) chronicle of the 16th century was not printed in Basel until 1734–1736. Tschudi embellished the tradition of liberation with new ingredients: he gave all the people their full names, some of which he borrowed from old documents. He dated the events in the last years of King Albrecht († 1308). Tschudi's representation remained the valid one into the 19th century. This version of the liberation story became world-famous through Friedrich Schiller's Wilhelm Tell and Gioachino Rossini's opera Guillaume Tell . Schiller's Tell takes formulations from the original text of the White Book literally, so to speak. An example:

«Thu said the Tall is securely in my hand / so i want to saw the truth / and was hetti the schütz devoted to me / that i shot mins child hetti so i arched the pillar in üch or the vwr."

- White Book (around 1470); Transcription by Willi Studach

«Tell:
Well, sir,
because you have secured me of my life -
so I will tell you the truth thoroughly.
With this second arrow I shot through - you,
if I had met my dear child,
and yours - verily! I would not have missed. "

- Friedrich Schiller (1804)

"Discovery" of the White Book for research

The White Book is kept in the Witches Tower in Sarnen.

The White Book of Sarnen was "discovered" in 1854 by the Zurich state archivist Gerold Meyer von Knonau during archival work in the Sarner Hexenturm for historical studies. Georg von Wyss , Professor of History at the University of Zurich , heard about this copy book with the story of the tell; he had the book delivered to him by Landammann Franz Wirz and wanted to be the first to publish the Tell story in the Archives for Swiss History . Meyer von Knonau disputed this with him, who was allowed to print them on behalf of the Obwalden government in Geschistorfreund 1857, the communications of the Historical Association of the Five Places.

Gerold Meyer von Knonau was only the "scientific discoverer" of the White Book of Sarnen. This was always known in the Sarner Provincial Chancellery and was kept together with the seal, the provincial banner and the letters (documents) in the town hall or archive tower (witch tower). It was also the land clerk Joseph Gasser who drew the Zurich archivist's attention to the fact that the archive contained a valuable book about the beginning of the Confederation: the “oldest” White Book of Sarnen. This was always listed in archive directories. There was also the "younger" White Book, a copy from 1608 by Jacob Kaiser.

Judgment on the historical narrative

The Lucerne philologist and historian Joseph Eutych Kopp compared the report in the Chronicles with the documentary facts for the first time in 1835. Kopp's criticism of the sources was directed not only against the story of the tell, but against the popular opinion of the assumption of a tyrannical supreme rule, which came to a violent end shortly before King Albrecht's murder on May 1, 1308. According to Kopp, Gessler and Landenberg cannot be identified in the documents as bailiffs in the Waldstätten.

The Basel medieval archaeologist and historian Werner Meyer , based on archaeological excavations at castle sites in central Switzerland, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, found that the castle breakage as a single event did not take place in the sense of the traditional liberation tradition.

On the meaning of the narratives in the White Book of Sarnen, the Zurich literary scholar Max Wehrli wrote : «Here (in the White Book), the later famous stories of the heroic times appear for the first time, for each location as evidence of the struggle for freedom: the man from the Melchi, the Vogt slain in the bath, the Stauffacher in Schwyz, the Rütli oath, the story of Tell, the broken castle - the whole, narrative brilliant liberation saga with the constant presence of the familiar landscape. "

The Zurich Germanist and cultural scientist Peter von Matt , who comes from Stans, says in relation to Landschreiber Hans Schriber, the author of the Chronicle in the White Book:

No Swiss author has ever written a work of greater impact.

literature

  • Gerold Meyer von Knonau : The chronicle in the white book of Sarnen . Zurich 1857.
  • Source work on the development of the Swiss Confederation , Section 3: Chronicles, Volume 1, edited by Georg Wirz. Aarau 1947.
  • Willi Studach: The language of the White Book of Sarnen . Sarnen 1993 (text edition based on the original, with diacritical marks).
  • Werner Meyer : 1291 - The story. The beginnings of the Swiss Confederation. Silva-Verlag, Zurich 1990.
  • Angelo Garovi : Tell and Gessler in the White Book of Sarnen. Chronicle text with the story of Tell and Gessler, which was first handed down. 2018.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Angelo Garovi: Hans Schriber - Landschreiber and author of the Chronicle of the White Book of Sarnen. In: Obwalden history sheets, issue 27/2013, pp. 9–31.
  2. ↑ ETH - e-periodica. Retrieved April 1, 2019 .
  3. ↑ History sheets from Switzerland, 2 vols. Lucerne 1854 and 1856.
  4. ^ Kopp: Documents on the History of the Federal Confederations , Volume 1: Lucerne 1835; Volume 2: Vienna 1851; History of the Confederation. With certificates. 5 volumes. Leipzig, Lucerne, Bern and Basel 1845–1888.
  5. ^ Castle building and breaking of castles in the forest sites. In: Swiss Contributions to the Cultural History and Archeology of the Middle Ages , Volume 11 (1984), pp. 181–198. Werner Meyer, Jakob Obrecht, Hugo Schneider, Die böse Türnli: archaeological contributions to castle research in Urschweiz (1984): "The excavation findings of Schwanau show that the violent castle break actually occurred in Central Switzerland, analogous to numerous other castle demolitions in the Alpine region the 12th and 16th centuries. " (P. 194)
  6. ↑ History of German Literature , Volume 1, Stuttgart 1980, p. 831.
  7. ↑ NZZ on Sunday, October 31, 2010.