bavarikon4UPetition by organist Paulus Klotz (1652)
Petition by organist Paulus Klotz to the magistrate to employ his son (1652)
Dinkelsbühl VA 7003
The two-page supplication (petition) is dated 24 June 1652. In it, the Protestant organist Paulus Klotz (1596-1668) asks the mayor and the Protestant part of the town council in Dinkelsbühl to employ his 22-year-old son Hanns Paulus Klotz (1631-1700) as a musician.
He had received job offers from several places, but would prefer to work in his hometown. As his ancestors have been working as church musicians in Dinkelsbühl for 66 years.
Due to the "now introduced parity", there would surely be a vacancy for his son in the Protestant Latin school to be built with a “cantorate”; and as with the Catholics, a quarterly salary could be paid by the Protestant part of the town council.
The father also promises that his son will behave and conduct himself in such a way that the council "shall not regret" its decision.
This letter is an outstanding historical record due to it mentioning "parity".
Parity means the religious and political equality of both denominations, regardless of the actual proportions of Catholics and Protestants in a town. After the Thirty Years’ War, parity was introduced in 1648 in the four imperial cities of Augsburg, Biberach an der Riß, Dinkelsbühl and Ravensburg, which came to an end in 1803 with the Imperial Delegation Act and the resulting dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.