Veringen County

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Coat of arms of the Counts of Veringen in the Zurich coat of arms roll , approx. 1340

The County of Veringen was a rulership that arose in the late Middle Ages on the Swabian Alb in what is now Baden-Württemberg . Around 1535 it was composed as follows:

At that time, the territory came into the possession of the Counts of Zollern and later became part of the Principality of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen .

Coats of arms of Veringen, Württemberg and Nellenburg

The coats of arms of Veringen , Nellenburg and Württemberg each show three stag poles lying on top of each other in a golden shield and differ only in the colors of the stag sticks. The coats of arms testify to their family relationships.

(Details on the pages: Coat of arms of the Counts of Veringen and seal of the Counts of Veringen )

  • The coat of arms of the Counts of Veringen, which can be traced back to 1216, shows red deer sticks in the first colored depiction in 1330.

  • The coat of arms of the Württemberger first shows three black stag poles in 1228. This coat of arms was probably adopted by the Veringen at the end of the 12th century when Count Hartmann married the heir to the Counts of Veringen.

  • In 1216, Count Mangold von Veringen founded the 3rd line of the Nellenburg family by marrying the Nellenburg heir and took over their name. Since then, the people of Nellenburg have had three blue stag poles in their coat of arms.

The Counts of Veringen

In the High Middle Ages, new forms of rule developed. The royal mandate was replaced by permanent possession, which on closer inspection turned out to be a bundle of different rights. Each one could be traded like a material good, that is, sold, bequeathed, lent or pledged . It was only this new type of construction that made it possible to establish territorial rule.

The Earl of Altshausen , Gaugrafen in Eritgau in northern Upper Swabia , occurred in the 11th century and in the neighboring county Appha in appearance. A descendant moved his residence to the middle Laucherttal , where he built a residence ( Burg Veringen ) near the village of Veringen .

From then on he called himself Count von Veringen . With their extensive holdings on the Danube and Upper Swabia (see list of the possessions of the Counts of Veringen ), the Counts of Veringen were among the most powerful count families in Swabia and founded the cities of Veringenstadt, Hettingen, Gammertingen, in the 2nd half of the 13th century. Isny and Riedlingen. Their possessions were, however, widely scattered and do not correspond to today's idea of ​​a contiguous county in the sense of a state rulership or an administrative district. This form emerged later. Marquard von Veringen proved his inheritance claims to rights in the Appha-Grafschaft in 1134, albeit with a forged document from the Reichenau monastery , whose abbot was on friendly terms with the Veringern.

Marquard, who died before 1172, left three sons. Ulrich was abbot of the St. Gallen monastery , and Heinrich probably also died childless. Mangold, known as Count von Veringen from 1150 to 1186, married an heir to the Count of Nellenburg and took over the Nellenburg coat of arms. His son of the same name founded the male line of the Nellenburg family, which became extinct in 1422, and his brother Wolfrad (the elder) stayed on the ancestral property.

Around 1195, Count Hartmann von Württemberg married a daughter (Agathe?) Of Mangold's younger son Eberhard. Their dowry brought the Württemberg people along the Danube, who had previously been particularly wealthy on the central Neckar. The Württemberg-Grüningen sideline, founded around 1227 on this, took over the coat of arms of the three stag sticks from their Veringen ancestors, but in the changed colors gold-black instead of gold-red. Since around 1240 Hartmann's grandson, Count Ulrich the Stifter , the progenitor of the Württemberg main line, had this coat of arms instead of an older one with three towers. The Nellenburg line chose the coat of arms colors gold-blue.

A renewed marriage connection with Württemberg further reduced the Veringen property in 1252, as did various sales and larger donations to the Heiligkreuztal monastery . On the other hand, the area in the Lauchert valley could be rounded off by parts of the Gammerting estate - although it is unclear whether this happened through marriage or inheritance.

Around 1250, Count Wolfrad (the younger) founded the city of Riedlingen . The settlement below the ancestral castle in the Lauchert valley, later called Veringenstadt , was also expanded at that time . It received market rights in 1285 and had its own seal since the first half of the 14th century .

Heinrich (the younger), a son of Wolfrad, had Neuveringen Castle built on the site of today's Vöhringer Hof, east of Riedlingen , around 1270 . From his uncle Heinrich (the elder) he inherited the possessions in the Swabian Alb: Veringenstadt, Veringendorf, Deutstetten , Harthausen and Benzingen , which were later abandoned except for the church .

The sale to Habsburg

Because the Veringer were apparently in dire financial straits, Heinrich (the Younger) sold what was now known as the county in 1291 to Rudolf von Habsburg . The king set himself the goal of acquiring strong domestic power in Upper Swabia, but died that same year. His successors, also in financial difficulties, quickly lost interest and only a few years later pledged the county back to the Veringer.

Under changing masters

Count Heinrich von Veringen, a grandson or great-grandson of the above named, was forced to sell the pledge to his distant Württemberg relatives in 1344 and 1359. The decline of his family could not be averted, the Veringen main line died out in 1415. In Stuttgart there was little to do with the rule located outside the heartland and in 1399 it was pledged to Count Eberhard von Werdenberg, who lived in Trochtelfingen . In 1459, after a marriage between the two families, Württemberg waived all claims, whereby Count Johann von Werdenberg became the direct pledgee of Habsburg Austria .

The Lower County with Enslingen (today: Langenenslingen ), Billafingen and the lower Hof Warmtal also came from the Veringern to Habsburg at the end of the 13th century, but by way of a detour via the related Grüninger. After several changes of ownership, the two villages also came to Württemberg as pledge and from then on shared the fortunes of the Upper County.

Christoph von Werdenberg died in 1534 without leaving any male descendants. In the inheritance dispute over Werdenberg's property , his son-in-law, Friedrich II von Fürstenberg , prevailed. As far as the County of Veringen and the County of Sigmaringen were concerned, Austria did not enter into any discussion and immediately took the pledge in order to give it to Count Karl I of Hohenzollern as a fief in 1535 . When the Zollerische inheritance was divided in 1576, the county of Veringen came to the Sigmaringer line , which could only shake off the Austrian fiefdom with the dissolution of the empire in 1806. The Veringers themselves, however, were often happy about the protective hand of Front Austria , which again and again protected them from inappropriate demands of the princes. As part of the Principality of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the area became Prussian in 1850 .

Since the Baden-Württemberg district reform in 1973, the former Veringer Grafschaft has been divided into three districts. It belong

literature

  • Joseph Kerkhoff: The Counts of Altshausen-Veringen . In: Hohenzollerische Jahreshefte 24 (1964), pp. 1–132.
  • Hans Jänichen: On the genealogy of the older counts of Veringen . In: Zeitschrift für Württembergische Landesgeschichte 1968, pp. 1–30.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thomas Fink: Collection of materials on the history of the city of Veringen Volume 13: Coats of arms of the Counts of Veringen and related coats of arms.
  2. ^ Coat of arms of Württemberg
  3. ↑ http://www.nellenburg.de/?page_id=4
  4. ↑ http://www.sg.ch/home/kultur/stiftsarchiv/geschichte/abtei_st_gallen/aebte/ulrich_von_veringen.html
  5. ↑ Winfried Schulze: The peasant resistance and the "rights of humanity" in: In: Journal for Historical Research, Vol. 6, 1979, pp. 63-80. [1]