Wernher I. (Berchtesgaden)

Wernher (or Wernhard or Bernhard ) († 1204 ) was provost of the Berchtesgaden monastery as Wernher I from 1188 to 1201 , then provost of Salzburg .

Act

Power gain

Wernher was elected provost of Berchtesgaden from among the Augustinian canons of Berchtesgaden in 1188. After Count Gebhard III. von Sulzbach died in 1188 without a male heir and the protective power of the founding family ceased to exist, apparently the Counts of Plain immediately appointed one of their own as Vogt over the "Berchtesgadener Land". (A Count Liutpold von Plain and Hardegg is mentioned by name .)

But the good relationship with the Stauferhaus evidently continued to work after Gebhard's death. In 1194, Wernher achieved an “enormous increase in power” for himself and his successors, which was manifested in a document that was later referred to as the “Magna Charta of the Berchtesgaden Regional Authority”. In it, Emperor Heinrich VI. that the Berchtesgadener Stiftspröpste as provincial and court lords could not only have the lower but also the higher jurisdiction exercised by a bailiff of their choice. "We order that the people of Berchtesgaden should be led by their provost in both worldly and spiritual matters" ( ut a prefate ecclesie preposito tam in secularibus quam in spiritualibus regantur iubemus ) With that the closed clearing area and its peasants were by every judge - and the power of counts was freed and was subject to the pen-sprinklers alone - and the Counts of Plain were left behind once more.

The mischief

1191 is for the first time in a mandate of Emperor Henry VI. there is talk of salt mining on the Tuval or in the Dürrnberg , a mountain range that runs north from the Roßfeld and today forms the border between Germany and Austria. Furthermore, the saline at Gollenbach was first mentioned in a document in 1194. And so, during Wernher's reign, the first armed conflicts about salt ("Salzirrungen"), which the pen had to fight off, also took place.

The attacks of the men from Hallein and the county of Kuchl continued Emperor Heinrich VI. at Wernher's request, he immediately received a prohibition document for further “harassment” of the monastery. But a little later, in 1193, an armed crowd of residents from Reichenhall penetrated the Hallthurm into the monastery land and destroyed the mine at Gollenbach. The emperor stood up again and asked the Berchtesgaden, actually hostile archbishop Adalbert of Salzburg , to support the monastery monastery in his interests - with the result that, in addition to the cremation of Reichenhall in 1196, he also “accidentally” offered the monastery “300 marks silver” Damage caused by looting. At the end of these disputes, when the emperor fought in distant Sicily, Wernher and the monastery had to accept a tripartite division of the salt deposits in Tuval in 1198 - two thirds went to the archbishop and the Salzburg cathedral chapter and only one of them to the Berchtesgadener.

In 1201 Wernher was elected Provost of Salzburg and held this office until his death in 1204.

literature

• Manfred Feulner: Berchtesgaden - history of the country and its inhabitants. Verlag Berchtesgadener Anzeiger , Berchtesgaden 1986, ISBN 3-925647-00-7 , pp. 41, 47 f.
• A. Helm , Hellmut Schöner (ed.): Berchtesgaden in the course of time . Reprint from 1929. Association for local history d. Berchtesgadener Landes. Berchtesgadener Anzeiger and Karl M. Lipp Verlag, Munich 1973, pp. 100, 261–262.
• Stefan Weinfurter : The foundation of the Augustinian Canons' Monastery - reform idea and beginnings of the Canon Regulars in Berchtesgaden , in: Walter Brugger , Heinz Dopsch , Peter Franz Kramml: History of Berchtesgaden: Between Salzburg and Bavaria (until 1594). Volume 1, Plenk Verlag, Berchtesgaden 1991, ISBN 3-922590-63-2 , pp. 229-264, here: p. 255.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Stefan Weinfurter: The founding of the Augustiner Canon Monastery - reform idea and beginnings of the regular canons in Berchtesgaden , p. 255.
2. ↑ Manfred Feulner: Berchtesgaden - history of the country and its inhabitants , p. 47.
3. ↑ Manfred Feulner: Berchtesgaden - history of the country and its inhabitants , p. 41 f.
4. ↑ Hellmut Schöner (ed.), A. Helm : Berchtesgaden in the course of time . Keyword: Pröpste pp. 261–262.