Adolph Hans von Holsten

Adolph Hans von Holsten (born July 16, 1630 in Lübeck , † January 2, 1694 in Langesø ) was a German landowner and a royal Danish judiciary.

Live and act

Descent and youth

Adolph von Holsten was a son of the officer Claus von Holsten († in December 1643 in Böternhöfen near Hohenwestedt ) and his wife Elsabe, born von Hoen (en) († before 1660). The father served as an officer to several princes and most recently to the Danish king. The ancestors on the father's side were, as far as documented, also military. The ancestors on her mother's side, including her father and officer Evo von Hoen (en) on Nortmoor , belonged to the Frisian landed gentry. He had three siblings, including Hieronymus Christian von Holsten , who was nine years his junior .

Adolph von Holsten founded the Danish noble family von Holstens as the actual progenitor. His descendants, especially the son Gosche Detlev, tried hard to reconstruct the noble ancestry and family history, but were only partially successful. The alleged descent of the Holstens from the Franconian von Wernfels family is only based on the tables and sketches made by Adolph Hans von Holsten himself about the origin of the family.

Von Holsten's father had a dubious reputation and is said to have instigated two soldiers in 1630 to murder an enemy. During this time he served as a commanding officer in the city ​​military in Lübeck, where Adolph von Holsten was born. His godparents were the Mecklenburg Dukes Adolph Friedrich von Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Hans von Mecklenburg-Güstrow . Shortly after Adolph was born, his father switched to Brandenburg services. Von Holsten and his siblings grew up with Detlev von Rantzau , the bailiff of Steinburg who lived on Gut Drage . Von Holsten later noted that von Rantzau had treated him like his own son. In his will, he stipulated the von Holstens 6,000 Reichstaler for each child. Detlev von Rantzau died in 1639. The Holsten children remained in the care of his widow Dorothea until they moved in 1641 to their parents at their Böternhöfen Meierhof, which was leased in 1639 . There Holsten received lessons from a private teacher. During the Torstensson War in 1643, Swedish mercenaries shot and killed his father. The penniless widow moved to Hamburg with the children and was again supported by Dorothea Rantzau. It is not known why both families, between which no relationship can be proven, had such close relationships.

After the Peace of Brömsebro in 1645, von Holsten went to the knight academy in Sorø with three other nobles from Holstein, where they were educated for several years. He then studied law at the universities of Helmstedt and Wittenberg , where he matriculated on May 1, 1649. After completing his studies in 1651, he accompanied the royal governor Christian zu Rantzau von Breitenburg, the son-in-law of his sponsor Detlev von Rantzau, to the emperor's court in Vienna , where he was commissioned by the Danish king Friedrich III. the Duchy of Holstein should accept as a fief. Holsten stayed in Vienna for about nine months, during which time he traveled to Turkey . He then studied for nine months in Leipzig and Jena and accompanied Christian Rantzau to the Reichstag in Regensburg in 1653. Then he returned to his homeland and went on a two-year Grand Tour . He traveled to the Netherlands, England and France and studied for a long time at the University of Leiden and the Saumur Knight Academy. Von Holsten thus received a professional and contemporary training. However, it was clearly different from that of his siblings and clearly exceeded the financial possibilities of his parents.

In ducal and royal service

Christian Rantzau advised von Holsten to enter the service of Duchess Eleonora of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Norburg . She sent him as counselor and court master to her son Christian August (1639–1687) in Alsen . At the end of 1655 he traveled to Sorø with Christian August and lived here until 1658 or 1659. In 1660 he began a long educational journey with his pupil. It began in northern and central Germany and ran through the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, all of Italy and Sicily. They visited the Pope in Rome and climbed Mount Vesuvius twice with Athanasius Kircher . The journey ended in Norburg at the end of May 1662 . In the meantime Duke Friedrich had died and Christian August's older half-brother Johann Bogislaw had been appointed the only heir. Holsten accompanied Christian August and his younger brother Rudolf Friedrich to Copenhagen . It did not succeed in enforcing the participation of the younger half-siblings in the rule of the already almost bankrupt divided duchy . The younger siblings were only promised an annual contribution, but this could not be paid out regularly. Christian August, initially accompanied by Holsten, went on further journeys.

In 1664 von Holsten left the run-down duchy of Norburg and joined the king as a councilor. In November 1665 he married Anna Margareta von Podewils, a daughter of the Danish privy councilor Dionysius von Podewils . After her untimely death in August 1666, he traveled to Celle , Kassel and Hanover with the ambassador extraordinary Friedrich von Ahlefeldt . Then he went to Spa for a cure and visited the Rhine Valley as far as the Netherlands. In 1667 he bought the Gelskov estate on Funen , where he moved his residence, and in September 1668 married Ide Rathlou, with whom he had five children.

During the Northern War he joined the entourage of Friedrich von Ahlefeldt in Skåne, who was appointed Grand Chancellor ( Storkansler ) in 1676 . After King Christian V had occupied the Gottorf stake in the Duchy of Schleswig , von Holsten administered the offices of Tondern , Aabenraa and Lügumkloster on an interim basis from 1677 to 1679 . In 1683 he took part as government commissioner at the land survey in the offices of Koldinghus and Stjernholm . Because of this, he was likely appointed to the Council of Justice three years later. Overall, his career was rather modest in view of the educational path.

Landowner

In 1684, Holsten, the main believer in his late brother-in-law Bendix Hans von Buchwald, husband of Ides sister Øllegård, got the noble Langesø estate on Funen, where he moved his residence. His work as a landowner is well documented in a surviving business book. He found his goods in poor condition, optimized them constantly and improved the yields in such a way that they clearly exceeded the average value that can be achieved on Fyn. After his death, his wife managed the estate. She went down in legend as a cruel landlady. The estate is still owned by their descendants today.

Von Holsten wrote his autobiography around 1686.

family

Holsten married Anna Margareta von Podewils on November 10, 1665 in Itzehoe (* June 2, 1645 - August 14, 1666 in Copenhagen ). Her father Dionysius von Podewils auf Gram was a royal Danish Privy Councilor.

On September 25, 1668 he married Ide Rathlou (1644-1700), the daughter of Wolf Sivert Rathlou von Karlsburg . From this marriage came a daughter Anna Margrethe and four sons:

• Christian Adolph (1669–1710), colonel in the Danish cavalry, was killed in the battle of Helsingborg
• Wulf Sievert (1672–1713), Danish major.
• Gosche Detlev (1674–1745), Danish colonel.
• Friedrich (1682–1752), court marshal of the Lübeck prince-bishop in Eutin .

literature

• Eckardt Opitz: Holsten, Adolph Hans von . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 6 - 1982. ISBN 3-529-02646-8 , pages 129-132.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Eckardt Opitz: Holsten, Adolph Hans von . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 6 - 1982, p. 130.
2. ^ Eckardt Opitz: Holsten, Adolph Hans von . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 6-1982, pp. 129-130.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Eckardt Opitz: Holsten, Adolph Hans von . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 6 - 1982, p. 131.
4. ↑ CR Rasmussen, E. Imberger, D. Lohmeier, I. Mommsen: The princes of the country - dukes and counts of Schleswig-Holstein and Lauenburg. Wachholtz Verlag, 2008, pp. 260-262.
5. ↑ Thomas Freller: Nobles on tour: The invention of the educational journey . 2013.
6. ↑ Langesoeslot (Danish)
7. ↑ ^{a b} Ide Rathlou (Danish ,; there also a picture of Ide Rathlou)
8. ^ Eckardt Opitz: Holsten, Adolph Hans von . in: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck . Wachholtz, Neumünster 1982–2011. Vol. 6 - 1982. ISBN 3-529-02646-8 , pages 131-132.