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The historical Kohlhase

ellauri109.html on line 321: The merchant Hans Kohlhase lived in Cölln on the Spree (now incorporated into Berlin) in the Margraviate of Brandenburg in the 16th century. In October 1532 he set out on a trip to the Leipzig Trade Fair in the neighboring Electorate of Saxony. On the way two of his horses were seized, at the command of the Junker von Zaschwitz, as a supposed fee for passage through Saxony. Kohlhase sought redress in the Saxon courts but failed to obtain it. Outraged, he issued a public challenge in 1534 and burned down houses in Wittenberg. Even a letter of admonition from Martin Luther could not dissuade him, and Kohlhase and the band he collected committed further acts of terror. In 1540 he was finally captured and tried, and was publicly broken on the wheel in Berlin on 22 March 1540. From this history Kleist fashioned a novella that dramatized a personal quest for justice in defiance of the claims of the general law and the community.
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