HZAN GA 90
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Bestand
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16.-19. Jh.
Teil von State Archive Baden-Württemberg, Hohenlohe Central Archive Neuenstein (Archivtektonik)
- about sermons on corpses: There have been sermons on corpses as eulogies or sermons in the church since the Middle Ages. There are already approaches to this in pre-Christian antiquity. The custom of writing them down and later printing them, however, did not emerge in Lutheran Protestantism until shortly after the Reformation. The Catholic Church opposed - above all the lavish - funeral orations to prohibitions. After all, there is also evidence of sermons on corpses for Zwinglians, Calvinists and Catholics, albeit to a lesser extent. Because of the financial expenditure corpse sermons were printed above all for wealthy aristocrats and citizens. The heyday of printed funeral sermons was the decades before the 30 year war and the turn from the 17th to the 18th century. Around the middle of the 18th century, the custom of printing sermons on corpses declined sharply. There are also sermons on corpses from the 20th century, but these are much simpler than specimens from the heyday. Depending on the time of origin, but also on the social status of the deceased, the sermons can be more or less lavish. They range from the simple printed sheet with a maximum of four pages to the large folio-format volume with 200 or more pages, decorated with several copper engravings, notes and many different mourning texts. Some funeral sermons are also divided into several volumes, e.g. the Epicedia or only certain Epicedia separately bound. Such sumptuous writings are, of course, only conceivable in the heyday of sermons on corpses and only for people from high social status. Sermons on corpses contain different components. The actual sermon on the dead, i.e. the sermon at the funeral, forms the core of Scripture. Often it is based on a specific biblical passage as a leitmotif which the deceased could determine for himself or which has a relation to the activity of the deceased. A scripture may contain several such sermons which may have been delivered at the funeral, funeral service or other funeral service. In comparison, sermons on corpses often contain a curriculum vitae of the deceased (referred to as "Personalia" or "curriculum vitae"), which was read out during the celebrations and cannot describe the person of the deceased too negatively for reasons of piety. The third component is Epicedia, the mourning poems of relatives, friends or - in the case of aristocrats - high-ranking servants. Elaborate copper engravings - quite a majority - can decorate a funeral sermon. Often the deceased is depicted with a portrait, sometimes also in an allegorical representation. With several copper engravings the funeral procession (= corpse procession) can be represented or the coffin in different views. Music is relatively rare. The lyrics of sung mourning songs can be found more often, notes of such songs or even other musical performances at mourning ceremonies are already a precious rarity (cf. the separate list in the appendix). The present collection comprises a total of 2098 funeral sermons. Without consideration of the duplicates there are 797 different pieces. They can be divided into three groups, into sermons on corpses of members of the House of Hohenlohe (188 without duplicates), into sermons on corpses of other aristocrats who were frequently either related, in-laws or neighbours (332), and into sermons on corpses of commoners (277). Among the latter group, servants and other employees of the various high-wage houses predominate. Also included are - albeit with a rather small proportion - other personal writings, such as poems on the occasion of a birthday, a wedding or an anniversary, "Leichenge poems" (identical with Epicedia) and also writings on the occasion of celebrations in Hohenlohe on the occasion of the death of the emperor, etc. The collection of sermons represents a selection of material from several Highlohic archives. The origin of the individual funeral sermons can usually no longer be determined. Naturally, the funeral sermons must be seen as a relevant source of sepulchral culture. They are also indispensable for genealogical and other research, not least because of the often included curriculum vitae. The contained genealogical information is absolutely reliable, even if the evaluations in a funeral sermon cannot be too negative. General expressions about piety, lifestyle and virtues of the deceased, on the other hand, are not to be taken too literally. Sermons on corpses are also valuable sources for the history of art, literature and music as well as for theology, and social and economic history is increasingly devoting itself to them. Because of the biographies of counts and princes of the House of Hohenlohe, their wives and children and because of the copper engraved portraits they are valuable sources on the history of the House of Hohenlohe. Servants and other servants of Highloh courts are also documented by them, as are friends, relatives and neighboring nobles. The materials about funeral ceremonies at Highloh courts, which contain some of the collected funeral sermons, touch on Highloh cultural history. The funeral sermons show the social circle that was involved in the funeral ceremonies in an exposed way. Literature: Rudolf Lenz: Leichenpredigten als Quelle historischer Wissenschaften, 3 vol., Cologne Vienna 1975-1984, especially: Rudolf Lenz: Gedruckte Leichenpredigten, vol. 1, p. 36 ff. 2. Zur Bearbeitung des Bestandes: As part of a project of the Historical Commission that also included sermons on corpses of other archives and libraries, Dr. Elisabeth Zimmermann recorded the Neuenstein sermons for the first time between summer 1948 and summer 1949. The drawing was done according to the model of Stollberg's catalogue and was comparatively detailed. The result was a card index, which was incomplete at the beginning of the 70s (when the Hohenlohe Central Archive was taken over by the state). The stock had become considerably disordered. In the meantime, further Hohenlohische archives had been relocated to Neuenstein, whose sermons on corpses were also to be integrated into the collection. As a result, the size of the collection had increased considerably. In 1987 the employee Fritz Kempt began a new indexing under the guidance of Oberarchivrat Dr. Moegle-Hofacker, which took into account the entire material at hand. The title recordings were largely completed by Kempt until his retirement in December 1988. The final work including the editing of the find book was done by the undersigned in winter 1994/95. In the present find book the sermons of the corpses are described according to the following scheme. In the upper right corner, the relevant lift-out number for storage in the magazine is indicated. If this is marked with an asterisk (), several copies are available which are listed as duplicates at the end of the description. Alternatively, a duplicate can also be used. The excavation number can be divided into 6, 6 a and 6 b or 6.1 and 6.2. In such a number assignment there should normally be two funeral sermons bound together to form a volume. Bold highlighted, the excavation number is followed by the order number relevant for the arrangement in the finding aid book and then the name of the deceased person as the most important information, as this is used to classify the funeral sermon. As far as known, the "personal data" are added in a separate block: Birth name, Date and place of birth, date and place of death, funeral dates, marriage date, spouse, place of marriage and details of status, occupation, offices and memberships. The second block contains the data for the funeral sermon. This includes the presignature, all sermons for the corpse in the narrower sense (i.e. sermons for the funeral service, burial and other funeral ceremonies) with details of the author and, if applicable, the Bible quotation used. It also contains information on other components of the funeral sermon such as personalia (curriculum vitae), epicedia with information on the authors, copper engravings with picture descriptions, painters and engravers, notes, coats of arms and information on the print and scope of the script. At the end of this block there may be references to literature (autobiographies, lists of writings, etc.). The duplicates may be listed in a third block. The characterization of the persons involved in the creation of the funeral sermons, i.e. the authors of sermons or Epicedia or the artists, is usually taken from the funeral sermon and refers to the time at which it was written. The designations of their functions have sometimes been modernised, especially in Part I. In the second part, which comprises various regions of the former empire, the functional designations are often reproduced as in the sermon on the corpse (abbreviated), since the dissolution and modernization would have required too much special knowledge. The order of the sermons was according to the three groups: Hohenlohe, other aristocrats and commoners. Within these groups, the name alphabet is authoritative. The classification is determined by the name that the person used when he or she died. Married daughters from the Hohenlohe family are therefore no longer to be found under Hohenlohe. However, such references are taken into account in the index by means of references. For emperors and kings the first name is decisive for the classification, for other aristocrats the sex name. The order of the index cannot agree with the storage order for several reasons. Some funeral sermons are bound together with others to form thick volumes, the format of the funeral sermons changes too often. The collection shall also be kept open for further access. Therefore the storage in the magazine takes place according to numerus currens. The stock, which received the designation "GA 90 Leichenpredigten", comprises 2098 volumes in 17.5 linear metres. m.The files in the relevant stocks are to be consulted about funeral ceremonies in the house Hohenlohe beside the funeral sermons also, which can contain also funeral sermons or parts of it.Neuenstein, in December 1996Dr. Schiffer