Wicker frog

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Epitaph for Wicker Frosch in the Frankfurt Katharinenkirche
Heiligkreuz- und Katharinenkapelle on the Merian engraving from 1628

Wicker Frosch (* before 1300 in Frankfurt am Main ; † October 10, 1363 in Mainz ) was a Frankfurt patrician and canon in Frankfurt and Mainz. He donated a number of institutions that still exist today, including the Katharinenkloster , a welfare institution for old, needy Christian Frankfurt women, and the Katharinenkirche .

Life

As with many people of his time, von Wicker Frosch is neither known about his date of birth nor is there any evidence from his youth. The first documentary mention dates from 1324 as the cantor of St. Stephan in Mainz.

His father was the aldermen and councilor Heilmann Frosch († 1340). His mother was Elisabeth von Geisenheim . The Frosch family was very wealthy and owned numerous farms and estates in and around Frankfurt. The oldest names that can be identified in Frankfurt were Heinrich zu Frosch (mentioned 1295, † 1302) and Wigel zu Frosch († between 1296 and 1300).

Wicker had studied both law and theology and earned a master's degree , but it is not known where. His brother Heilmann († April 6, 1365 ) can be traced back to 1311 at the University of Bologna . From 1323 until his death he was pleban of the Bartholomäusstift and thus city pastor of Frankfurt. His other brother Siegfried († 1350 or 1351) became mayor of Frankfurt seven times (1324, 1328, 1333, 1338, 1343, 1344 and 1350).

Other members of the Frosch family also held important political and spiritual offices at the time, such as his uncle Siegfried as mayor and lay judge and his son Wigel as canon at the Liebfrauenstift .

In 1329 Wicker Frosch was added to the chapter of the Bartholomäusstift as cantor . In 1343 he is mentioned as a scholaster (head of the collegiate school) at St. Stephan in Mainz. Wicker Frosch belonged to a circle loyal to the emperor around the Archbishop of Mainz Heinrich von Virneburg , who had opposed his interference in German affairs in the dispute between Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian and the Pope in 1338 . The city of Frankfurt also held, despite an interdict with Ludwig, who had granted it numerous privileges, including holding a second mass in spring (1330) and expanding the city area threefold (1333).

After a period of rapid growth, Frankfurt was hit by two serious disasters in quick succession: In July 1342, the Magdalen flood of the Main rose to the highest level ever achieved, with the Main Bridge and its bridge chapel , donated a few years earlier by Wicker Frosch, being destroyed. In 1349 the Black Death also raged in Frankfurt, killing over 2000 people within 192 days (around 20% of the population).

The most important foundations of Wicker Frosch fall during this period: On October 23, 1343, the City Council of Frankfurt gave him a piece of land in the Neustadt, which was still under construction at the time, outside the Staufen wall . On this property he built a hospital in honor of the Holy Cross in 1344 with the permission of the responsible Archbishop of Mainz , which he equipped with a generous donation in 1346 . In 1353 he founded a monastery in honor of the holy virgins Katharina and Barbara . The hospital and monastery received two small Gothic chapels next to each other. The St. Katharinen- und Weißfrauenstift , which still exists today, emerged from the hospital, and after the Reformation the monastery became the Protestant Katharinenkirche.

His foundations received supraregional attention and recognition, among other things through an indulgence that 24 cardinals and bishops in Avignon in 1361 granted to everyone who visited the hospital and monastery and prayed for the welfare of the founder or made a financial contribution. As a political safeguard, he had his foundations confirmed by the Archbishop of Mainz in 1354, by the Pope in 1358 and by the Emperor in 1361.

He had a close relationship with Emperor Charles IV . In 1350 Karl appointed him court chaplain . On September 30, 1360, Charles raised him to the nobility . This nobility is the oldest known case of ennoblement in Germany. In 1359 he traveled to Rome on behalf of the city of Frankfurt in order to obtain from the papal curia the liberation of the city from the spiritual jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Mainz. The city council awarded him a bonus of 200 guilders for the successful mission to obtain this privilege .

He died in Mainz on October 10, 1363. In his will of August 6, 1363, he had ordered that he wanted to be buried in Frankfurt, but this provision was deleted again in a second version of the will of September 28. Since he was schoolmaster at St. Stephan until the end , he was probably buried there. But shortly afterwards he also received a memorial stone in the Katharinenkloster in Frankfurt, which was referred to as a tombstone in 1509 . This memorial stone is still preserved, it is in today's Katharinenkirche.

Remarkable

  • Wicker Frosch is mentioned in the novel Der Jude by Karl Spindler (published 1827) as the “house chaplain and right hand” of Emperor Karl IV.
  • A street in the Kuhwaldsiedlung in Frankfurt's Bockenheim district is named after Wicker Frosch .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Roman Fischer: Frosch, Heilmann in the Frankfurter Personenlexikon (article as of February 3, 2017). Retrieved June 12, 2019.
  2. ↑ Roman Fischer: Frosch, Siegfried in the Frankfurter Personenlexikon (article as of February 3, 2017). Retrieved June 12, 2019.
  3. ^ Horst Enzensberger , Church and Monastery in the Late Middle Ages . In: St. Katharinen zu Frankfurt am Main, ed. by Joachim Proescholdt, Frankfurt am Main 1981, pp. 29–36, here p. 30.
personal data
SURNAME Frog, wicker
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Frankfurt patrician and clergyman
DATE OF BIRTH around 1300
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main , Germany
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 1363
Place of death Mainz , Germany