Knight's Canton of Odenwald

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Codex diplomaticus equestris cum continuatione, or Reichs-Ritter-Archiv, 1721
Of the Holy Roman Empire without knight = Freyer knight creates the six place in Francken, 1720
Imperial chivalrous Franconian canton calendar, Hornberg Castle archive . Engraving, 167 × 85 cm
With this certificate in 1788, Emperor Joseph II authorized the knightly canton of Odenwald to award medals, intended to raise funds for the establishment of a noble women's foundation, but not realized until mediatization.

A community of knightly noble families in the Odenwald is referred to as the knightly canton of Odenwald , who had risen to the ministerial level as servants of various imperial princes since the high Middle Ages and until the mediatization of the knighthood or the regional principalities at the beginning of the 19th century the feudal lordship over numerous towns and properties in Odenwald and adjacent areas, bounded by the cities of Frankfurt am Main, Heilbronn, Crailsheim and Würzburg. The canton of Odenwald had the largest number of members and the richest of the Franconian towns with around 150 families. The imperial knighthood territories and thus also the knightly canton of Odenwald were dissolved in 1806.

Until its dissolution, the knight's canton had its seat in Kochendorf, today's Bad Friedrichshall .

history

Since the 16th century, the free imperial knighthood in Germany was divided into a Rhenish , a Franconian and a Swabian knight circle, which in turn consisted of different cantons. The knight canton Odenwald belonged to the Franconian knight circle . In the north and east it was adjacent to the Franconian knight cantons Rhön-Werra, Steigerwald and Altmühl . To the south and west it was adjacent to the Swabian knight cantons Kocher and Kraichgau . The canton had its roots in older knightly regional forms of socialization, especially the society with the donkey . From the middle of the 16th century, a knightly canton was organized in the Odenwald area for the purpose of independent administration of the taxes that had been demanded from the knightly aristocracy since 1542, until several cantons came together in the Franconian imperial knighthood by 1562 (with a delay in the previously established Swabian cantons) .

Confessionally keeping a low profile until the Peace of Augsburg (since most of the areas of the Odenwald knighthood were subject to the central sovereignty of neighboring princes), the great majority were then Lutheran . Through conversions occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries to mixing (a branch of Adelsheim pleaded for Calvinism , the Stetten to Kocherstetten were in the 16th century followers of the theologian Matthias Flacius , the Aschhausen to Aschhausen were back to 1581 Catholic ) but the majority remained of the Lutheran faith.

The canton's first seat was Mergentheim . Around 1720 the knightly canton of Odenwald received permission from the city council of Heilbronn to relocate its archive and its office to the imperial city , where the administration of the knightly canton of Kraichgau had been located for around 100 years . As a result of the relocation of the canton administration under knight captain Reinhard von Gemmingen-Hornberg (1677–1750), who had headed the canton since 1715, knightly servants lived in the imperial city and had, like the servants of the canton Kraichgau, initially four, later eight guilders protection money to be paid per family. The legal adviser August Wolfgang von Kinckel (1710–1768) was one of the high cantons of that time . Until it was moved to Kochendorf, Adelsheim was also the venue for several meetings and at times the seat of the cantonal administration, as there were repeated conflicts with the Imperial City Council in Heilbronn.

Under canton director Meinhardt Friedrich Franz Rüdt von Collenberg (1720–1789), the knightly canton acquired property in Kochendorf in 1762 and relocated his office there in 1764. The knight's canton sought to achieve the blood spell in Kochendorf, ie high jurisdiction , which the emperor, however, gave to the owners of the castle fief there , the descendants of Reinhard von Gemmingen-Hornberg.

Associated with the relocation of the knight's canton to Kochendorf, the Syndikus Jägersche Bau , named after the cantonal syndic Georg David Jäger (1712–1779), was built there to accommodate the 30 to 50 Imperial Knights who stayed at the site for several weeks of convents from 1761 to 1764 . Jäger became involved in the financial misery of the canton captain Rüdt von Collenberg, who resigned in 1777, and then published the text Teaching to the Public , in which he exposed intrigues and bribery within the knight's canton.

Under Rüdt von Collenberg's successor Philipp von Gemmingen (1702–1785) from the Guttenberger branch of the barons of Gemmingen , the knight's canton in 1784 succeeded in gaining high jurisdiction over Kochendorf. Philip's nephew Karl Friedrich Reinhard von Gemmingen (1739-1822) was the last canton director and general director of the imperial knighthood from 1785 until the mediatization of the imperial knighthood.

organization

At the top was usually a knight elected for life. This was assisted by a council of six knights, who were also appointed for life. Two so-called chest masters (collectors) took care of the collection of taxes. The staff, called Syndici, were usually servants. Temporary committees were formed for special tasks. The knight days or local days, the ordinary meetings of the knighthood, initially took place at the chancellery, later in different locations, twice a year.

End of the imperial knighthood

As early as the winter of 1802/1803, the large territorial states of Bavaria and Württemberg (1804 also the princes of Leiningen, Hohenlohe and zu Löwenstein) had tried to seize the neighboring mostly fragmented and small areas of the Imperial Knights in the so-called Rittersturm . From 1806, although the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss did not provide for this, the final mediation took place . The Rhine Confederation Act sanctioned these unilateral measures in Article 25.

The archive and registry of the knight canton were confiscated by Württemberg and are now in the Ludwigsburg State Archives .

Knight captains

Term of office Surname Life dates
1542 Count Philipp von Rieneck
before 1559 Sebastian Rüdt from Bödigheim
1560-1572 Albrecht von Rosenberg around 1519–1572
1574-1585 Sebastian von Crailsheim zu Morstein
1584-1613 Bernhard von Hutten , Konrad von Vellberg , Hans Georg von Berlichingen (alternating) (Hutten) † 1613
1613-1618 Albrecht Christoph von Rosenberg † 1619
1622-1628 Hans Philipp of Crailsheim
1628-1629 Wolf of Crailsheim
1629-1632 Albrecht Christoph von Rosenberg * February 15, 1561 - January 11, 1632
1632-1633 Valentin Heinrich Rüdt von Bödigheim and Collenberg
1640-1651 Johann Kaspar von Herda zu Domeneck and Züttlingen
1652-1680 Weiprecht from Gemmingen to Hornberg 1608-1680
1678-1686 Hans Christoph von Adelsheim
1686-1694 Hans Christoph Wolfskeel
1694-1715 Albrecht Ludwig von Eyb † 1715
1717-1750 Reinhard von Gemmingen-Hornberg 1677-1750
1750-1777 Meinhard Friedrich Franz Rüdt von Collenberg 1720-1785
1777-1785 Philipp von Gemmingen -Guttenberg 1702-1785
1786-1806 Karl Friedrich Reinhard von Gemmingen , Bonfeld-Oberschloss line 1739-1822

Noble families in the canton of Odenwald

The following noble families belonged to the knightly canton of Odenwald until 1806:

literature

  • Johann Gottfried Biedermann : Gender = register of the Reichs Frey immediate knight creates land to Francken praiseworthy place Ottenwald… Kulmbach 1751. ( Online )
  • Cord Ulrichs: From the feudal court to the imperial knighthood - structures of the Franconian lower nobility at the transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period (list of the canton Odenwald from 1550, StAL B 583 Bü 191.) . Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-07109-1 . Pp. 214/215.
  • Helmut Neumaier: "That we have no other head or temporal authority appointed by God" - Odenwald place of the Frankish imperial knighthood from the beginning up to the Thirty Years' War . W. Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-17-018729-5 .
  • Helmut Neumaier: The building land as an imperial knight landscape. From the beginnings of the imperial knighthood to the eve of the Thirty Years War (lecture at the Historikertag of the Neckar-Odenwald district on October 14, 2011)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Places were the names of the knightly cantons at the beginning of the formation of the knighthood.
  2. ↑ Possibly a mistake and identical to the ACvR, who died in 1632; possibly due to the family tables drawn up by the genealogist Johann Gottfried Biedermann , who is to be viewed critically ; s. Biedermann's book Gender = Register of the Reichs Frey immediate knight creates land to Francken laudable place Ottenwald… . Kulmbach 1751. Plate CCCL. B. to CCCCXIII.
  3. ↑ cf. http://www.geneall.net Albrecht Christoph von Rosenberg
  4. ↑ see also Domeneck Castle
  5. ↑ see von Hettersdorf s. Explanations of gender and coat of arms
  6. ↑ see under section Kleinwallstadt history