Our Lehnsstiftung

About 600  years ago during the Middle Ages our family foundation (Wulhase-Busse'sche Lehnsstiftung) took place.

What is it that characterizes this epoch in which our ancestors lived?

The life of the people in the Middle Ages was overshadowed by life threatening catastrophies: wars, starvation, natural catastrophies and epidemics. This produced a farreaching uncertainty in the people's life and moved them to look for a safe place in the world hereafter. Because they worried about their spiritual salvation they daily participated in a religious life.

Therefore, everybody felt the need and at the same time the duty to pray, to go to church in order to gain the protection and support of as many saints as possible. To expand religious life almost 50 church holidays in addition to regular Sunday services existed during the year. All pious offerings created by the church were taken advantage of. It was customary, for example, to hurry from church to church to participate in the consecration each time. This was regarded the highlite of the church service.

People neither belonging to the aristocracy nor to the clergy obtained their social status through their work. It was therefore completely understandable and consequential for these people to reach heaven via religious efforts. With this in mind donations of altars were not rare. They expressed like other bequests and donations the tension in which the people of this time lived. They were also an expression of their fear of God's wrath and their own imagination of the purgatory during the Middle Ages. With the increase of church services, merits, donations, and valuables one hoped to make God lenient.

In accordance with this thinking our family foundation was created. Our ancestors, Hermann and Hans Wulhase, „had the intention to establish and support an eternal religious foundation“. They donated estates so that their legacy might be fulfilled. With the rent a side altar was supposed to be built „in the parish church outside the city of Lüchow“ and the education, employment and support of a priest be paid. Hermann and Hans Wulhase reserved the rights for themselves to designate for this position a clergymen, if possible, from the ranks of their own families. With this act the donators secured „two advantages for themselves: they conscientiously took care of their spiritual salvation and supplied a descendant with a religious sinecure“.

For more information read the published chronicle of our family member:
Die Wulhase-Busse'sche Lehnsstiftung zu Lüchow von 1401 bis 1901 / Otto Bussenius (1901)