Wendel Hipler

Wendel Hipler (* around 1465 in Neuenstein ; † September 1526 in Heidelberg ) was a secretary and chancellor of the Counts of Hohenlohe , who headed the large farmers ' parliament in Heilbronn in May 1525 during the Peasants' War as peasant chancellor .

Life

Origin and service to the prince

Hipler came from a wealthy family from Hohenlohe who had close relationships with the Counts of Hohenlohe . The trained lawyer first appeared as a steward in the service of Count Albrecht II in Neuenstein, later (1492) with Count Kraft IV in Amorbach, then in 1496 as secretary and then as the count's chancellor, possibly as the successor of the pronotator Heinrich Boxberg for whose underage sons Hipler received two fiefs in Tiefensall and Ohrntal. With his first wife, née Mettelbach, he donated two masses in the Öhringen hospital church in 1501 . Hipler is said to have gained further wealth in the course of his work for the Counts of Hohenlohe and received fiefs in Ammertsweiler, Wüstenrot , Schwöllbronn, Stakenhofen and Unterohrn, as well as farms in Westernbach and Büttelbronn. In Finsterrot , the village settlement is said to go back to Hipler. In Öhringen he is said to have owned a fulling mill, which the city's cloths were obliged to use.

Rift with the Counts of Hohenlohe

On the occasion of a legal dispute over two fish lakes, which Hipler is said to have dammed unduly and which he had to cede to the counts along with the associated farms by court decision, there was a rift between Hipler and the Hohenlohern. Hipler gave up his office as Hohenlohe Chancellor and around 1515 after almost 30 years in Hohenlohe service, initially to Wimpfen , the hometown of his second wife. In Neustadt an der Hardt he was temporarily active as a council clerk in the Palatinate service, and in 1524 he was back in Wimpfen.

At this time, in the run-up to the German Peasant War , many who brought an injustice against the counts saw the jurist who had been disappointed by the counts as a welcome helper. Hipler became an attorney for several plaintiffs before the Reich regiment in Esslingen and took up the Twelve Articles of the German peasantry (reform demands of the peasants) , which were then formulated under the peasantry .

Hipler as a peasant leader

After peasants had already risen in the Odenwald and Neckar Valley , a peasant heap formed in Öhringen, whose field clerk Hipler became and who took Öhringen. Hipler was one of the voices who wanted a knight with war experience to lead the peasants, namely Götz von Berlichingen , for whom he spoke out in Neckarsulm and Gundelsheim and who was ultimately pushed into this office.

Hipler moved with the peasant army to Würzburg , where the princes signaled their approval of the twelve articles , but the peasants made further demands and besieged the Marienberg fortress there for four weeks . The siege, which lasted several weeks, gave the sovereigns the opportunity to coordinate their armies and arm them against the peasants. At Hiipler's urging, the Franconian Farmers' Council decided to set up a permanent organization with the Swabian, Rhenish and Alsatian farmers to set up a law firm in the imperial city of Heilbronn .

In May 1525, Hipler was sent to Heilbronn as one of the three Franconian MPs to found the farmers' parliament. Together with the Heilbronn Procurator Hans Berlin , who enjoyed the trust of both the Heilbronn City Council and the farmers, and the Treasury Officer Friedrich Weigandt from Mainz, he had drawn up the Amorbach Declaration on the Twelve Articles . In the declaration, the articles have been adapted to local conditions. This should pave the way to a Reformation . At the opening of the farmers ' parliament on May 12, 1525 in the Schöntaler Hof in Heilbronn, Hipler headed it as farmers' chancellor . The Heilbronn agenda provided for both a representative body and an opposition and wanted to standardize coins, weights and measures and abolish internal tariffs. Ultimately, the commercial economy should be promoted in contrast to feudal economy and thus private property should be strengthened instead of feudal landed property.

But the peasant union came too late. Already on the day of the peasant parliament , on May 12, 1525, the Swabian peasants at Böblingen suffered a defeat against the Swabian Confederation . The city of Heilbronn sent Hans Berlin to dinner in Waldburg to negotiate with him about the handover of the city. The farmers fled the city. Wendel Hipler still tried to set up a position for the fleeing farmers near Weinsberg , and then rode to Würzburg, where he wanted to join the Franconian peasantry again. But Würzburg also opened the gates to Truchsessen on June 7th, 1525, and the Franconian heap dissolved. Hipler was captured by the Count Palatine, in whose prison in Heidelberg he was killed in September 1526 before his trial.

literature

• Gerd Wunder:  Hipler, Wendel. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 199 ( digitized version ).
• Wilhelm Mattes: Wendel Hipler, the chancellor of the peasant army . In: Oehringer Heimatbuch . Öhringen 1929.
• Gerhard Taddey : Wendel Hipler (around 1465–1536). Hohenlohe official and peasant leader. In: Erich Schneider (Ed.): Fränkische Lebensbilder. Volume 22. Society for Franconian History, Würzburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-86652-722-5 ( publications of the Society for Franconian History, Series VII A. Volume 22), pp. 65–78.

Web links

• Wendel Hipler in The German Peasants' War by Friedrich Engels

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Christhard Schrenk , Hubert Weckbach , Susanne Schlösser: From Helibrunna to Heilbronn. A city history (=  publications of the archive of the city of Heilbronn . Volume 36 ). Theiss, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-8062-1333-X , p. 53 .