Siegfried von Feuchtwangen
Siegfried of wet cheeks († May 3, 1311 ) was the 15th Grand Master of the Teutonic Order of 18 October 1303 to his death. He came from wet cheeks in Franconia, and from the same lineage as Conrad of wet cheeks.
He was Commander of Vienna and from 1298 to 1303 German Masters.
To the Grand Master he was in October in the Prussian Elbing (Polish: Elblag ) elected by the General Chapter, after his predecessor Gottfried von Hohenlohe was forced to abdicate. The Order was in a state of internal disarray after 1291 the last bastions had been lost in the Holy Land. To avoid a split, Siegfried traveled immediately to the headquarters of the Order to Venice, where it Konrad of wet cheeks had mislaid. In 1307 the Knights Templar was dissolved, which was also a signal to other Knights.
After the Kuyavian Piastenherzog and later Polish King had Władysław I the Elbow-, called the Order against the Brandenburger who besieged Danzig to help, it came in November 1308 takeover of Danzig by the Teutonic Order, as the Duke did not pay the agreed wage. From this grew the increasing hostility between the Order and Poland. Meanwhile, the Grand Master had relocated its headquarters in 1309 for a few months to Marburg. Conversations with the Duke on a sale of its claims to Pomerania also failed, but the Margrave of Brandenburg began their competing legal claims to Pomerania on September 13, 1309 contract against payment of 10,000 silver marks from.
Probably just a day later, on Kreuzerhöhungstag, Siegfried moved during a General Chapter in the Malbork castle. Siegfried shifted so that finally the headquarters of the Order of the Prussian Order of the country. The dispute over the relocation of the main house ended with the excommunication of the Grand Master and his followers by the papal legate Francesco di Moliano.
In Prussia he ordered the administrative divisions and newly codified Prussian law ( " 40 - Article Code").
He died in 1311 and was in the cathedral at Kulmsee (Polish: Chełmża ) buried.
The figure of Siegfried's wet cheeks was distorted by Polish historians like and disfigured in the blackest colors than that of a cruel tyrant.
Monuments
- Monument in the Malbork Castle ( pictured) near Gdansk
- For the Berlin Victory Boulevard designed Reinhold Bega's a marble bust of Siegfried as a side figure of the monument group 8 to the central statue for Waldemar ( the Great), unveiled on 22 March 1900.