Wolf Maximilian Laminger from Albenreuth

Lomikar's death. Illustration by Věnceslav Černý for the “Old Bohemian Legends” (Staré pověsti české), 1894

Wolf Maximilian Laminger von Albenreuth (also Lamminger , better known as Lomikar ; born November 23, 1634 , † November 2, 1696 in Trhanov ) was a baron , landowner and proto-industrial entrepreneur in western Bohemia . His family received the Chodian territory in 1630 . In 1691 privileges were granted to ten German communities near Taus ( Domažlice ). Wolf Maximilian Laminger von Albenreuth put down the Chodian revolt against his rule in 1693. In 1695 the Chod leader Jan Sladký Kozina was hanged in Pilsen. After his death in 1696, Laminger entered the Chodian tradition as the epitome of the cruel landlord and became a ghost in many forms that threatened people. His place of death, the Chodenschloß near Taus, the associated lordships of Chodenschloß, Kauth (Kouty) and Zahoran were sold by his heirs to Heinrich Georg Reichsgraf von Stadion von und zu Tannhausen, Dompropst zu Bamberg and Domdechant in Würzburg.

Ancestors and family

Wolf Maximilian came from the Upper Palatinate noble family of the Lamminger , who shared a coat of arms with the Lords of Hertenberg with a silver barrier on a green Dreiberg. His ancestors came to the Egerland in the 14th century and acquired the Alt Albenreuth estate near Eger ( Cheb ) in the 15th century . The Lamminger (Lomaner) belonged to the lower nobility with insignificant possessions. Later they reached the barons and counts. Wolf Maximilian's father Wolf Wilhelm was the first to acquire substantial assets. After the end of the class uprising, he converted to the Catholic faith in good time, appropriated the goods of his three emigrated brothers and began to build a manor in the border area around the town of Taus in western Bohemia . At his death in 1635 he left his widow Barbara and the four underage children some incoherent dominions, a manor in Trhanov (Chodenschloss), a brewery and, along with other subjects, the inhabitants of eleven Chode villages , which are subject to interest and robots , which he received in 1630 after a long and tough legal dispute had been sold into subjection to inheritance , but by no means wanted to accept this.

The family property was initially under the care of his widow Barbara, later the eldest son Wolf Friedrich took over the management. In the middle of the 17th century, the Lamingers von Albenreuth were already among the more powerful families in Bohemia . According to the tax roll from 1654, they owned a house in Prague and the eleven Choden settlements, 21 other, mostly German-speaking, villages in the border area with Bavaria and the Upper Palatinate . They took 39th place among the 510 noble families of Bohemia. Since Wolf Friedrich was supposed to embark on the career of a clergyman, the siblings ceded the estate to their youngest brother, Wolf Maximilian, in 1660 for financial compensation.

Act

Wolf Maximilian Laminger Freiherr von Albenreuth left no doubt during his thirty-six years as a landlord that he was ready to exhaust all means to raise the remote estate to the national standard. He rounded off the land ownership by buying neighboring lords, founded new self-managed Meierhöfe , built a glassworks , a blast furnace with five iron hammers and around 1686 the second oldest textile factory in Bohemia. By buying two market towns, he made himself economically independent from the market in the town of Taus. 1676–77 he had the so-called Chodenschloss built in Trhanov as a befitting residence for himself, his wife Katharina Polyxena, née von Lobkowitcz († 1709) and his two daughters.

This pre-industrial development was accompanied by draconian measures to pacify the subjects . Laminger confiscated farming land, set up sales monopolies, for example by forcing the villagers to only buy beer from the authorities, and kept making new demands for compulsory labor . These phenomena were not uncommon in the country depopulated and devastated by the Thirty Years War . The nobility everywhere increasingly went over to their own economy and the submissive population was brought into serfdom . Laminger proceeded particularly ruthlessly against the Chodians, who had had great privileges as royal border guards and defended these rights since the Middle Ages.

The Chodians had already lost a large part of their traditional rights under Wolf Maximilian's Laminger's predecessors, but they still kept the documents they had received from the Bohemian kings. They too were determined to use all means to defend themselves against the demands of the authorities. In the years 1652–70, 1680 and 1692–95 they turned to Vienna and Prague with supplicas , hired lawyers, appeared in person before Emperor Leopold I of Habsburg and ignored all defeats, including the “eternal silence” imposed on them in 1668 (perpetuum silentium). Violent clashes broke out in the villages. Laminger imposed prison and flogging sentences on villagers who refused to do labor. He had the last major uprising in 1692–1695 put down with the help of imperial soldiers. The Chod leaders were arrested. The royal chamber in Prague sentenced them to one year of forced labor each, but Laminger appealed and demanded their death penalty . Emperor Leopold softened the second sentence, so that in the end only one of the leaders, Jan Sladký Kozina , was publicly hanged in Pilsen on November 28, 1695. Laminger died a year later, on November 2, 1696 in his castle in Trhanov at one stroke .

Afterlife

The temporal connection between the two deaths was obviously the basis of the legend that soon began . In the course of the 18th century, the story of a divine judgment to which Lomikar was subjected arose in the Choden region .

In the most common version, the resistance fighter Kozina calls out the words on the gallows:

“Lomikare! Lomikare! Do roka budeme spolú stát před súdnú stolicí boží! Hin se hukáže, hdo z nás -
Lamingen! Lamingen! From today over a year we will stand together before the judgment seat of God, there it will be decided who - "

... whereupon the executioner knocks over the stool. On the anniversary of the execution, Laminger celebrates a feast in his castle and makes a malicious toast to his former opponent, saying what a bad prophet he was. Then a door opens into the stormy night, Kozina's ghost appears and "Lomikar" falls dead in shock.

Legends and aftermath

The earliest written record of the originally oral tradition of these events was obtained in 1799 by the Taus provost Ernst Papstmann. In the 19th century the material underwent a few dozen literary adaptations, although it remains uncertain in detail to what extent the fiction took up an evolving oral tradition, or to what extent the creations of individual authors found their way into popular tradition and influenced it. The Jewish country doctor Georg Leopold Weisel created outstanding, nationally acclaimed works in his historical treatise “The Choden Trial” from 1848, the writer Božena Němcová in 1846 with the collection “Obrazy z okolí domažlického” (pictures from the area of ​​Taus), and finally Alois Jirásek with his novel "Psohlavci" (The Dogs' Heads) from 1884, which for decades was the best-selling fiction work in Bohemia and Czechoslovakia . In the 19th century, the story of Kozina, Lomikar and the Chod uprising had a distinctly national orientation, and the German-speaking Laminger von Albenreuth were set in opposition to the Czech-speaking Chodians. In the second half of the 20th century, the material was used as an early form of class struggle , to which Martin Frič's 1955 film adaptation of "Dogs Heads" made a particular contribution. In both directions, the artistic treatment pushed the interest in historical truth into the background in favor of ideology, and "Lomikar", as the epitome of the evil German feudal lord, fitted into both concepts.

The landlord took a third path in stories that folklorists and local historians recorded among the rural population in the 19th century. After that he found no rest after his death. His spirit appears in various forms in the Trhanov area : as a beggar or nobleman , as a devil with a horseshoe, headless rider , burning dog, black cat, horse or bull, as a light phenomenon, fog or as a wall that suddenly hikers in the night Puts away. The encounter with "Lomikar", as he was called, was considered dangerous and often ended in death. While his opponent Kozina was stylized into a folk hero , Lomikar turned into a dangerous ghost in many forms in the rural traditions .

Origin of the family name

The family name “Laminger” is said to be derived from the village Lomany bei Plasy (= one who comes from Lomany) and has been handed down in a variety of other spellings; for example Lomaner, Lamingar, Lamingár, Lomigar, Lamminger or Lammingen. The name form "Lomikar" comes from Jirásek's novel "The Dogs Heads". while for the noble family Lamminger no uniform name has prevailed.

literature

• Jaroslav Kramařík: Kozina a Lomikar v chodské lidové tradici. Academia, Prague 1972.
• Eduard Maur: Kozina a Lomikar (= Slovo k historii. 20, ZDB -ID 2833845-5 ). Melantrich, Prague 1989.
• Eduard Maur: The Choden farmers. Obstinacy and resistance of a privileged group of subjects in Bohemia in the 16th-18th centuries Century. In: Jan Peters (Ed.): Manorial societies in European comparison. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-05-003161-1 , pp. 387-398.
• Heribert Sturm on behalf of the Collegium Carolinum (Institute) (Hrsg.): Biographical lexicon for the history of the Bohemian countries. Volume 2: I-M. R. Oldenbourg, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-486-52551-4 , p. 371.

Remarks

1. ↑ www.rozhlas.cz
2. ↑ Widow of Alexander Ferdinand Wratislaw von Mitrowitz ( genealogy.euweb.cz )
3. ↑ The Czech version is reproduced here after Alois Jirásek: Staré pověsti české . 3. Edition. Prague, Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, 1959. pp. 221–228. ( online ). The German version follows GL Weisel: The Choden Trial, 1848. Here reproduced from Jaroslav Kramařík: Kozina a Lomikar v chodské lidové tradici. Academia, Prague 1972, p. 17.
4. ↑ The form chosen here Laminger follows Roman von Procházka : Genealogical handbook of extinct Bohemian gentry families. Verlag Degener & Co, Neustadt / Aisch 1973, pp. 237, 241; and supplementary volume, R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1990, p. 53.

Web links

Literature and other media by and about Wolf Maximilian Laminger von Albenreuth in the catalog of the National Library of the Czech Republic