This is the history of what is now known as the “House of the Protestant Clerk”.
The first known owner of the house was the baker Jörg Meroldt. The house was destroyed by the great fire of 1536. We can find Meroldt’s name in documents and tax lists from 1533 until 1566.
His son Caspar Meroldt is mentioned in the tax lists until 1572. Caspar Meroldt’s profession is unknown, but he can be found in numerous official functions in Weiden. For example, he was mayor from 1570 until his death in 1574.
The following owner Sebastian Kastner dealt in iron and wine. In 1567 he married Ursula Dürnhuber from Landau in the Palatinate. Between 1568 and 1581 the couple had nine children.
Their son Kaspar Kastner, born 1570, married in 1592 to the neighbor’s daughter Katharina Weiß. Together, they had a son Sebastian born in 1593 and another son, Christoph, in 1594. Their grandfather, Mayor Hans Weiß, bequeathed them with three houses at the lower market, properties and the tithe at Theisseil.
After the death of Katharina, Kaspar married a second time. The sons Christoph and Sebastian traveled much and visited Weiden often only to attend marriages of friends and relatives.
Christoph died in 1619 at the beginning of the 30-years-war in Bohemia. His main-heir was his brother Sebastian. He married in Weiden in 1617 to the widow Kunigunde of the pastor Stephan Hopfner from Luppburg. He had been the son of a citizen from Weiden.
In 1629, Sebastian Kastner left Weiden because he and his family before him were Protestants. Maximilian the elector of Bavaria had “recatholised” Bavaria by force. So with his cousin Wolf Kastner, he went to Creussen near Bayreuth. About his further life nothing is known.
In 1636, Benedikt Erhardt from Siegritz, who had married Kunigunde Kaufmann, daughter of a wagoner from Weiden, bought the house. With his brother-in-law he tried to keep on wagonning in the troubles of the 30-years-war. Four in hand they go first of all to Nürnberg and Salzburg, but in 1638 they lost their horses in Franconia and could only save their lives.
When Benedikt Erhardt died in 1663, the family with seven children was still very poor.
In 1663, the “Simultaneum” was established in Weiden. That meant that that Catholics and Protestants had equal rights. One consequence of this was that all departments in the town were manned double with a Protestant and a Catholic from mayor to midwife. Therefore, it became necessary to get a second clerk/lawyer (syndic) and for him an official residence.
So the widow Kunigunde Erhardt sold the house at the lower market for 500 gulden. In 1664, it was renovated with new doors, windows and a water pump.
From that time on the house has been called the “House of the Protestant Clerk” of the town, who not only had to write the municipal documents, but he also had to be a lawyer.
From 1750 onward, the Upper Palatinate became more and more impoverished as a result of the wars of that time. The same happened to the town of Weiden. Consequently, much of the town’s municipal possessions had to be auctioned, even the old wall around the town.
The House of the Protestant Clerk was sold for 3.261 Gulden to the trader and former linen weaver, Michael Busl from Beidl. He married in Weiden to Margareta Zunner miller’s daughter from Hitzelmühle near Sulzbach. For the citizenship Busl had had to pay 50 Gulden (in comparison: the son of a citizen had to pay 5 Gulden).
Busl became a very wealthy man. He and his wife had eight children. When his son Anton Urban and his daughter Barbara married, each received a dowry of 2.000 Gulden.
The trader Busl, who had bought more houses in Weiden, died in 1835.
Busl’s widow sold the house at the lower market in 1839 for 2.800 Gulden to the butcher Andreas Baier.
Baier’s second wife Anna Katharina and his children sold the house in 1858 for 3.385 Gulden to the tawer Emanuel Zembsch, born in 1818 in Weiden and married since 1865 to Mathilde Margarete Luise Wunderlich from Krummenaab, daughter of the owner of a brewery. Her first son died as a baby and her second one was born shortly after the early death of his father in 1867. The widow married in 1869 to the train driver Karl Friedrich Hott, born in 1838 in Kaiserslautern.
In 1889, the house was sold to the butcher Bernhard Roscher and his bride-to-be Margareta Schlosser from Neunkirchen. Roscher died in 1914, but his widow continued the business. She kept the house for her tenant, Georg Mädl, who was a grocer at first but later became the owner of a car hire firm.
After World War II, Georg Mädl owned the house. Family Mädl sold it in 1984 to Rosa Forster from Schirmitz.
