Wolfgang Uhle

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Wolfgang Uhle (* 1512 in Elterlein ; † April 7, 1594 in Breitenbrunn / Erzgeb. ) Was a German Lutheran pastor. He is referred to as "the plague pastor of Annaberg ".

Life

Memorial stone at the Breitenbrunn Church
Memorial stone for the Clausnitz local judge Georg Bieber

The son of a citizen, Uhle grew up in the small town of Elterlein. After attending school, he studied theology in Leipzig and came into contact with the teachings of the Reformation . In 1542, he was in Wittenberg ordained and the place became a deacon in Neustädtel . Then he was a Protestant pastor in Lauterbach, Stollberg and Oberlungwitz . In 1558 Uhle became pastor in Clausnitz , where the family bought an estate in 1561.

The legend says that during this time there were arguments between Pastor Uhle and the corrupt Clausnitz local judge Georg Bieber, which escalated in 1563. The pastor, who had a tendency to be angry since his youth, then killed the judge and fled to the forests on the Bohemian side of the Ore Mountains . In his absence, Uhle was sentenced to death for murder by the neck court.

Existing sources, on the other hand, show neither the relationship between the pastor and the judge, nor the outcome of the court proceedings. It is certain that Bieber was slain on July 10th, 1563, because Uhle's successor noted in the Clausnitz church book:

In 1563 Jare, July 10th, which was the sonabent after Kiliani, the judge for Clausnitz George Bieber was slain by the pastor there, Mr. Wolff Ulen, with a sharp Husserian hammer, who was the judge, down in the village bey of smelters.

The pastor was evidently considered the perpetrator. At first he eluded a “short trial”, but then sought safe conduct from the elector so that he could face a “proper trial”. It is doubtful that at the end of the negotiations Uhle was convicted of a murderer. He may have been convicted of manslaughter, or the judge's death may have been a result of self-defense or even an accident.

In 1565 the plague broke out in Annaberg . Possibly in the following year, but the autobiography Uhles published by Gertrud Busch (see below) suggests that it was in 1568 that Wolfgang Uhle can be found there as a “plague pastor”. Legend has it that Uhle made the city an offer to take over the position of plague pastor on condition that he was pardoned. The city accepted his offer, since hardly any other pastor would voluntarily go to the city affected by the epidemic, and stood up for him with the elector. After the pardon from Elector August , Wolfgang Uhle took the position.

In fact, it can be proven so far that Uhle worked from October 1566 to the end of April 1568 in three periods in Annaberg as pastor for the "poisoned people". In spite of his constant contact with the infected, the nursing and spiritual care of the dying, Uhle apparently did not contract the disease. His successor Petrus Schüler (or Schiller) was also spared, who took up the office of pestilential, plague pastor, in 1568, and during whose service the plague reached its climax.

This remarkable fact was presumably also regarded as a kind of “divine judgment” about Uhle. Uhle's credibility was restored or confirmed. Certainly his self-sacrificing work became known beyond the city limits, so that it was probably not difficult to return to a normal position as a parish priest after the plague parish. From 1568 until his death, Uhle worked as a pastor in Breitenbrunn for 25 years. He initially lived in the town, which was then characterized by mining and silviculture, with his wife, who died around 1577/78 after 48 years of marriage. He took care of all parish affairs and, as one of the few in the village who could read and write, also instructed the children.

On April 7, 1594, the first Sunday after Easter, Uhle suffered a stroke in front of the altar; he died at 1 p.m. It is unknown whether he was buried in the Breitenbrunn church or in the associated cemetery. At the edge of the cemetery in Breitenbrunn, a memorial stone commemorates Wolfgang Uhle. The "Pfarrer-Uhle-Stein" is located at the murder site near Clausnitz.

literature

  • Gertrud Busch: The Plague Pastor of Annaberg , Schwarzenberg 1939 (A novel)
  • Karl-Hans Pollmer : "The neck court ... three times ..." - Wolfgang Uhle, the plague pastor of Annaberg / Poetry and Truth In: Erzgebirgische Heimatblätter 4/1980, pp. 93-95, ISSN  0232-6078
  • Hans Burkhardt : Wolfgang Uhle, plague pastor from Annaberg , Leipzig 1995
  • Gert Weidhas: Wolfgang Uhle, testimonials and assumptions , Leipzig 2000 (source study)
  • Joachim Mehnert: Hold the priest !, From the neck dish on Purschenstein to the plague hell of Annaberg , Annaberg 2007
  • Stephan Schmidt-Brücken: News from the Annaberg plague pastor Wolfgang Uhle . In: Erzgebirgische Heimatblätter, 30 (2008), no. 2, pp. 24–26.

Web links

Commons : Wolfgang Uhle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Quoted from: Hans-Wolfgang Tittel. The judge's murder of Georg Bieber . In: The Judge Murder of Georg Bieber ( Memento from July 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Cf. Stadtarchiv Annaberg, church invoice from 1566/67.
  3. ↑ The exact date of death can be found in a pastoral letter from Christian Lehmann (cf. Schmidt-Brücken 2008, 25f.)
personal data
SURNAME Uhle, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Plague pastor of Annaberg
DATE OF BIRTH 1512
PLACE OF BIRTH Parents
DATE OF DEATH April 7, 1594
Place of death Breitenbrunn