Adam von Schwarzenberg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Adam Graf von Schwarzenberg , also Schwartzberg (* 26. August 1583 in Gimborn , Bergisches Land ; † 14. March 1641 in Spandau ), was an influential advisor to the Elector Georg Wilhelm of Brandenburg and 1625-1641 Herrenmeister the Bailiwick of Brandenburg of the Order of St. John .

Contemporary painting by Adam von Schwarzenberg
Adam Graf von Schwarzenberg, engraving by Peter Rollos after a painting by Matthias Czwiczek (around 1635)
Count Adams coat of arms on his birth castle

Life

The Catholic imperial count Adam von Schwarzenberg was born at Gimborn Castle in the county of Mark in the Bergisches Land. As the son of Adolf von Schwarzenberg, he came from the old noble Schwarzenberg family from the Franconian Seinsheim , which was first mentioned in 1172 and raised to the rank of imperial count in 1599. His mother was Margaretha Freiin Wolff von Metternich.

In 1600 the sixteen-year-old took over the title and property of his father, who had died in the Turkish war . His political ambitions on the part of Brandenburg , whose country stands, the Schwarzenberg counted, he put down in 1609 in the succession dispute Jülich-Kleve first demonstrated, in which he openly took the side of Elector Johann Sigismund of Brandenburg presented what he though the ostracism by brought in the imperial court.

In 1613 Adam married Margaretha Freiin von Pallant , who died two years later with the birth of their second son Johann Adolf . Schwarzenberg did not remarry, but instead joined the Order of St. John , whose army master he was elected in 1625, although he was Catholic.

In the following years he served as a Privy Councilor in the service of Brandenburg, from where he soon exerted considerable influence on the entire college of the council and thus had a decisive influence on politics, especially in the Lower Rhine region. In the Bergisches Land, too, he used his power in his own interest. There he had Johann Sigismund von Brandenburg and Wolfgang Wilhelm von Pfalz-Neuburg declare his home estate Gimborn to be subordinate to the County of Mark in 1610, and in 1614 he extended this rule to the neighboring parishes of Gummersbach against the sharp protests of the Brandenburg knighthood by donating Georg Wilhelm von Brandenburg and Müllenbach and in 1630 achieved the spin-off of the entire Neustadt office from the county of Mark as "free imperial rule", which was recognized by the emperor in 1631 as imperial direct rule Gimborn-Neustadt .

In the first twenty years of the Thirty Years' War, Adam Graf von Schwarzenberg became one of the most influential personalities among the Brandenburg advisors and reached the high point of his career under the Calvinist Elector Georg Wilhelm von Brandenburg. Under his influence, Brandenburg often changed sides (depending on the luck of the war), which can be explained by his policy, which was aimed at territorial growth. In doing so, he proceeded without regard to Protestant concerns, which made him unpopular not only with his Bergische subjects.

Schwarzenberg had amassed a large fortune in the course of his governorship, from which he was able to grant the Elector Georg Wilhelm credits and in return received further privileges. Private things were interwoven with official ones and it became very confusing, especially since written documents were mostly missing.

When Elector Friedrich Wilhelm came to power in 1640, he left Schwarzenberg in office for the time being, but showed him strength and assertiveness. With the influence of Schwarzenberg's adversary, the Brandenburg Privy Councilor Samuel von Winterfeld , on the young elector, Schwarzenberg's power waned. Only a month after the death of his father, Friedrich Wilhelm had transferred command of the Küstrin Fortress and the cavalry there to Konrad von Burgsdorff . Schwarzenberg protested, as it was tradition under Elector Georg Wilhelm that these two commandos were manned separately. However, the young elector was not interested in the protest. Furthermore, he continued to curtail Graf von Schwarzenberg's competencies in the areas of foreign policy and the military. After all, he even had to answer for his policies in recent years.

The steady disempowerment by the young elector and hostility because of his politics under his predecessor must have hurt the now almost sixty year old more and more. On the day before his death, six officers from the Rochow Regiment complained about outstanding pay, so that, after a heated discussion, he paid them from his private box. Finally, he received a letter from a Brandenburg colonel who reproached him further. In the morning hours of March 14, 1641, Schwarzenberg died of a stroke.

His son and heir Johann Adolf von Schwarzenberg only received his father's movable property. Privileges and domains left to him, such as the Huyssen domain in the Klevischen Land, were stripped from him and confiscated.

Due to persistent rumors that Adam von Schwarzenberg did not die of natural causes, but was secretly beheaded by order of Friedrich Wilhelm, Frederick the Great had the body exhumed in 1777, but the integrity of the cervical vertebrae and thus the untenability of the rumor emerged. Ernst Ludwig Heim investigated the remains of Schwarzenberg . The report on the investigation is in the archive of the St. Nikolai Church in Berlin-Spandau.

Bust in Berlin's Siegesallee

For Berliner Siegesallee , the sculptor Cuno von Uechtritz-Steinkirch created monument group 24 with Elector Georg Wilhelm in the center, flanked by the busts of Colonel Konrad von Burgsdorff (1595–1652) and Adam von Schwarzenberg.

The inclusion of Schwarzenberg in the Monumental Gallery was controversial in the historical commission of the Allee under Reinhold Koser , since the Chancellor had only recently been rehabilitated by the historiography of the accusation of treason . When designing the bust, the sculptor followed closely the portrait of Matthias Czwiczek shown above . A cross on the chest marked Schwarzenberg as master master and “ a loosely draped, wrinkled cloth, the end of which hangs over the base plate, frames the work of art and increases the decorative effect. “The monument group was unveiled on December 23, 1899. (See von Uechtritz-Steinkirch, Siegesallee .)

literature

Web links

Commons : Adam von Schwarzenberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In detail, the work by F. J. Burghardt (see Ref.). The rule of Gimborn-Neustadt remained a Brandenburg man fief even in the 18th century, which was only accepted into the Westphalian Imperial Count College in 1702; W. Fabricius : Explanations of the historical atlas of the Rhine Province , Volume 2: The map of 1789, Bonn 1895, p. 355.
  2. ↑ a b c d Ludwig Hüttl: The great Elector , Heyne Biographien, Süddeutscher Verlag GmbH, 1981, ISBN 3-453-55119-2 .
  3. ↑ Constantin von Wurzbach : Schwarzenberg, Adam Graf . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 33. Part. Imperial and Royal Court and State Printing House, Vienna 1877, p. 10 ( digitized version ).
  4. ↑ Uta Lehnert: The Kaiser and the ... , p. 189.
predecessor Office successor
Adolf Count of Schwarzenberg
1600–1641 		Johann Adolf
Joachim Sigismund of Brandenburg Master of the Balley Brandenburg of the Order of St. John
1625–1641 		Moritz of Nassau
personal data
SURNAME Schwarzenberg, Adam von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schwarzenberg, Adam Graf von; Schwartzenberg, Adam Graf von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Advisor to Elector Georg Wilhelm von Brandenburg and Lord Master of the Order of St. John
DATE OF BIRTH August 26, 1583
PLACE OF BIRTH Gimborn , North Rhine-Westphalia
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 1641
Place of death Spandau