Adam Wenzel

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Adam Wenzel

Adam Wenzel von Teschen (* December 12, 1574 ; † July 13, 1617 ) was Duke of Teschen from 1579 to 1617 . He came from the Teschen branch of the Silesian Piasts . A few months before his death he was the King of Bohemia Matthias to the upper governor of Silesia appointed. To underline his claim to the lost Duchy of Glogau , he also carried the title Duke of Groß-Glogau .

Origin and family

Adam Wenceslas parents were Duke Wenceslaus III. Adam and his second wife Sidonie Katharina, daughter of Duke Franz I of Saxony-Lauenburg , Adam Wenzel was related to the Hohenzollerns through his paternal grandmother and to the Wettin family through his maternal grandmother .

On September 17, 1595 Adam Wenzel married Elisabeth († 1601), a daughter of the Courland Duke Gotthard Kettler . The children came from marriage:

Life

Adam Wenzel was five years old when his father died. Therefore he was initially under the guardianship of his mother, who had taken over the reign of the duchy and the guardianship of Adam Wenzel. She involved the legal scholar Eleasar Tilisch ( Tilesius ) from Hirschberg in the upbringing of Adam Wenceslas. Tilisch later became the ducal secretary and wrote a history of the Princely House of Teschen. Since the Bohemian sovereign, King Rudolf II , was probably not satisfied with Sidonie Katharina's guardianship, he appointed the dukes Georg II of Brieg and Charles II of Münsterberg and Oels as well as Hans von Würben as co- guardians in 1584 . Although Sidonie Katharina was married to the Hungarian nobleman Emmerich Forgách in 1586, who was the chief provost of Trenčín as well as royal councilor and captain of Hungary, she still retained the reign of the duchy.

In January 1587 Adam Wenzel was sent to the Dresden court of Elector Christian I , who was a cousin of his mother. There he received basic training, which also included the military. After the death of his mother at the end of December 1594, he returned to Teschen and took over the independent government of his duchy. In the same year he married. Due to his Lutheran education, he decreed in 1596 for the city of Jablunkau that only Protestant teaching would be tolerated there. Two years later he issued a privilege with which he guaranteed the city of Teschen, among other things, the exercise of the evangelical faith for all time.

Although Emperor Rudolf II wanted to accommodate the Silesian estates with the letter of majesty issued on August 20, 1609, and thereby strengthening the Evangelical Church, Adam Wenzel converted to Catholicism at Christmas 1609 as the first Silesian prince. The conversion to the Catholic Church only became public knowledge in the spring of 1610. Adam Wenzel was now the only Catholic in the Silesian Prince's Day, alongside the Breslau bishop Karl of Austria, and promoted the Counter-Reformation . The evangelical pastors appointed by him were expelled, and the evangelical educators of his children were replaced by Catholics. The chief educator of the Hereditary Prince Friedrich Wilhelm was the court master Balthasar Exner from Hirschberg .

Adam Wenzel also gained political influence through the conversion. In 1611 the new Bohemian King Matthias gave him supreme command of the Silesian troops. Since Adam Wenzel was looking for a political turn to the Duchy of Bavaria and Habsburg Spain, he sent his son and successor Friedrich Wilhelm to the Munich court in 1614, where he was handed over to the Jesuits for training. The Spanish King Philip III took over the training costs. At the end of 1614 Adam Wenzel went on a trip to Italy and spent the Christmas days in Rome. On January 13, 1616 he entered the register of the German nation in Siena , on May 18, 1616 in the register of Padua . In November d. J. he married his daughter Anna Sidonia with Jakob Hannibal von Hohenems , who was a nephew of the Salzburg Archbishop Markus Sittikus IV. Von Hohenems . With the imperial appointment as governor of Silesia after the death of Duke Charles II of Münsterberg , he achieved a significant rise. A few months later he died at the age of only 43. Adam Bysinsky then accused the three evangelical nobles Erazm Rudzky, Wenzel Pelhrzim von Trzenkowitz ( von Pelchrzim ) and Peter Guretzky von Kornitz of having poisoned Adam Wenzel. On December 21, 1622, the parties reached a settlement and the allegations were dropped.

Illegitimate descendants

In addition to his legitimate descendants, Adam Wenzel also left behind the illegitimate son Wenzel Gottfried, who was born around 1612. His mother was Margarete Kostlach von Krems (* 1580/85), who came from a wealthy, middle-class Protestant family in Brno and after her divorce around 1609 became the duke's court master. The duke gave her a house in the city, the chamber villages of Ober Marklowitz and Brzezuwka, and land. Margarete, who presumably converted to Catholicism, died on January 3, 1617 and was buried in the Teschen Dominican Church, which served as the burial place of the Teschen dukes. Wenzel Gottfried was legitimized in 1640 and raised to the baron status as von und zu Hohenstein . With his grandson Ferdinand II von Hohenstein, this branch of the family died out in 1706.

literature

  • Rafael Sendek: Adam Wenzel, Duke of Tschen (1574–1617) . In Karl Borchardt (Hrsg.): Schlesische Lebensbilder. Volume X, Degner, 2010, ISBN 978-3-7686-3508-0 , pp. 77-89.
  • Norbert Conrads : The politics of recatholization in Teschen. In: Joachim Bahlcke (Ed.): Silesia in early modernity: On the political and spiritual culture of a Habsburg country. (New research on Silesian history). Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-412-20350-4 , pp. 21-38.
  • Rudolf Žáček: Dějiny Slezska v datech . Praha 2004, ISBN 80-7277-172-8 , pp. 150f. and 451.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joachim Bahlcke , Winfried Eberhard, Miloslav Polívka (eds.): Handbook of historical sites . Volume: Bohemia and Moravia (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 329). Kröner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-520-32901-8 , p. 608.
  2. ↑ Hugo Weczerka (Ed.): Handbook of historical sites. Volume: Silesia (= Kröner's pocket edition. Volume 316). Kröner, Stuttgart 1977, ISBN 3-520-31601-3 , p. 532.
  3. ^ Claudia Zonta: Silesian students at Italian universities. (PDF) A prosopographical study on the early modern history of education. Archived from the original on December 27, 2008 ; accessed on August 23, 2019 .
  4. ↑ In earlier research, this name is erroneously as Kosch Linger indicated
predecessor Office successor
Wenceslaus III Adam Duke of Teschen
1579–1617 		Friedrich Wilhelm
personal data
SURNAME Adam Wenzel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Adam Wenzel von Teschen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Duke of Teschen (1579–1617)
DATE OF BIRTH December 12, 1574
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 1617