Eine unbekannte Quelle zur Geschichte der Stadt Schäßburg. Chronik der Familie Kürschel
An Unknown Source on the History of the Town of Sighișoara. The Chronicle of the Kürschel Family (1662–1745)

Summary/Abstract: This chronicle is to be found in a typed copy transcribed to A3 format in the “Czoppelt” collection of the Transylvanian library with archive in Gundelsheim/ Neckar. It probably comes from the priest family Kinn in Reghinul Săsesc. Initially it was written on several scatterred pages in a notebook which priest Martin Guist gave to the Kürschel family. During his student years spent in several towns of the German-speaking countries, Guist had his fellow students make him dedications in a notebook, for the greater part religious quotes, most of them in Latin, but also in Ancient Greek, French, Hungarian and Italian. While being a student in Toruń (today in Poland) he meets Johannes Kirschel, a German journeyman who was improving his craft as a clockmaker in the hometown of Copernicus. He invites him to Sighișoara, Transylvania, where the craftsman settles down, changes his name to Kürschel, becomes a master through marriage and introduces the striking of the quarter hours on the town-hall tower clock. Kürschel takes over Guist’s notebook and then one of his sons, Johannes, continues his father’s trade as well as the family chronicle, just like his own son Hartwig. Both register events concerning the family, business matters, the town and the surroundings of Sighișoara, in German (Hochdeutsch) as well as in the Transylvanian Saxon dialect of Sighișoara. Thus, the document contains plenty of information on wandering students, their family relationships, gender history and military, environmental and astronomical history.

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