Adrian Wilhelm von Viermund

Coat of arms of the barons of Viermund zu Neersen

Adrian Wilhelm Freiherr von Viermund zu Neersen (* November 24, 1613 ; † July 15, 1681 ) was Baron von Neersen and a member of the Lower Rhine noble family Virmond-Neersen (1502–1744). As a diplomat and general, he received imperial honors. He is considered to be the builder of today 's Neersen Castle .

family

Adrian Wilhelm was the son of Baron Johann von Viermund and his wife Johanna Maria von Vlodrop. After the death of his father in 1632, Adrian Wilhelm was enfeoffed with his Electoral Cologne fief in 1633 , and on March 25, 1650 by Count Palatine Wolfgang Wilhelm with the Jülich fief. He was thus lord of Neersen, lord of the Free County of Schönau , hereditary bailiff to Anrath and pledgee to Hirschbach and Willich . He was also titular lord of Nordenbeck and Bladenhorst . He had renounced a cathedral preacher in Münster in favor of his youngest brother, Philipp Bernhard .

Adrian Wilhelm's first marriage was from 1639 to Johanna Katharina von Bongardt († 19 July 1660), the daughter of Werner von Bongardt-Winandsrath zu Pfaffendorf and his wife Johanna Katharina von Vlodrop, a sister of Adrian Wilhelm's mother. Second wife he married in 1662, the Neuss Stiftsdame Maria von der Horst , daughter of Johann von der Horst to house Horst and his wife Felicitas von Warendorf Milsen.

From his first marriage to Johanna he had three children:

• Johanna Alvera Alberta, ⚭ Jost Max von der Reven zu Lohmar, bailiff of Beyenburg
• Johanna Katharina Elisabeth, ⚭ Otto Heinrich Freiherr Kolff von Vettelhofen zu Hausen
• Ambrosius Adrian († 1688)

From his second marriage to Maria he had four children:

• Maria Ambrosiana Clara Alvara, ⚭ Constans Erasmus Bertram von Nesselrode on Hugenpoet
• Maria Emerentia Clara Sofia, ⚭ Johann Jobst Edmund von Reuschenberg -Setterich
• Karl Kaspar (⚔ 1690)
• Damian Hugo († 1722)

Thirty Years' War

Initially, Adrian Wilhelm was cathedral chapter in Münster from September 20, 1627 to June 25, 1637 . He renounced the benefice in favor of his brother. The last act of the Thirty Years War , the so-called Hessian War , took place during the first period of his reign . On January 17, 1642, the imperial troops were defeated by the Protestant Hessians and their French and Weimar allies in the battle on the Kempen Heide near St. Tönis . In the following "Hesse years" the villages and towns of the Lower Rhine were repeatedly plundered and destroyed. The castle Neersen fell out of enemy hands.

Adrian Wilhelm was entrusted by the Cologne elector Ferdinand of Bavaria , sometimes with diplomatic negotiations with the Hessian military leaders Rabenhaupt and Count Ernst Albrecht von Eberstein , sometimes with the military protection of the Cologne area against them, depending on the circumstances of the war .

Towards the end of the war Adrian Wilhelm was in Bavarian service and commanded a regiment that, like that of his father, was called the "Neersian". In 1648, as commander of Augsburg, he carried out the Peace of Westphalia in this imperial city and freed this city from the Swedes quartered here.

Palatinate-neuburgian services

After unsuccessful negotiations about joining the Venetian service, he joined the Palatinate-Neuburgian service in 1651 as a colonel over 1,000 foot soldiers .

Under the Count Palatine Philipp Wilhelm, he took an excellent and energetic position against the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm as diplomat, general and as defender of the estate rights in the Jülich-Klevischen succession dispute (in which his brother-in-law, Baron von Wylich zu Winnenthal , was arrested) from Brandenburg . He also led the preliminary negotiations on behalf of the Count Palatine, which led to the conclusion of the so-called first Rhine Confederation in 1658 between the Electorates of Mainz and Cologne , Hesse-Kassel , Braunschweig , Sweden , France and Palatinate-Neuburg “to preserve German freedom and the constant enjoyment of Peace of Westphalia ”.

In 1656 Adrian Wilhelm was commander-in-chief of the troops that were supposed to protect the Jülich area against the Condé troops and drove them out of the Dalenbruch rule (near Roermond ) in a battle that was bloody for both parties .

In the disputes between the Count Palatine and the Siegburg Abbey, which was directly under the Empire , he conquered the town and monastery fortress as Jülich's Field Marshal in 1670 , disarmed the inhabitants and monks, drove out the Abbot Johann von Bock and his followers and subjected them to the rule of the Count Palatine and his successors.

Imperial services and attempts to regain lost family property

As early as 1644 he was imperial commissioner in matters relating to the rule of Kaltenborn in the Eifel and was also to be raised to the rank of imperial count .

Like his father, Adrian Wilhelm also opened up the four-mouth question of goods from all sides. He also obtained some feudal fiefs with former Viermund fiefs from the feudal lords and also asked for re-feudation with the half court of Viermünden . He even got a new imperial commission from Kurköln and Pfalz-Neuburg for the restitution of Viermund's ancestral estates. The Cologne elector Friedrich Wilhelm had already settled the estate of the last Viermund zu Bladenhorst between the female Viermund descendants in 1649. However, the elector saw the restitution as a circumvention of the first instance. He forbade to obey the imperial commission, but left the baron the judge's decision (February 16, 1668). In a settlement of 1672, the latter renounced the Brandenburg goods in favor of the female descendants, in return for which they ceded their alleged rights to Burg Nordenbeck and the associated lands. He had more luck with acquisitions in the Lower Rhine area of ​​Neersen, namely the Gladbacher Herrschaft Donk , with which Philipp Wilhelm enfeoffed him in 1666 with subsequent confirmation. In 1667 he also owned half of the Nesselrode estate .

Emperor Leopold I appointed him imperial field marshal in 1674.

Foundations and buildings

With his first wife, in whose family church foundations were a family tradition, Adrian Wilhelm also made several foundations:

On March 25, 1652 he donated a church in Neersen. He reserved the right of patronage for himself and his descendants. From then on the church served as a burial place for his family. In 1657 he asked the Bonn Minorites to establish a religious establishment at the church and to look after the new church. The buildings were handed over to the Minorites in 1658, and in the same year Archbishop Max Heinrich gave his permission. The Minorites developed an important pastoral activity until the dissolution of the monastery in 1802. Baptisms and funerals continued to take place in the Anrath Church.

In 1653 he gave the church in Anrath a house as a sexton and school.

Thanks to the benevolent support of Adrian Wilhelm, his art-loving house priest, Gerhard Vynhoven , who as field chaplain Jan von Werths suffered the devastation and suffering of the Thirty Years' War, was able to build the pilgrimage chapel Klein-Jerusalem near Neersen after a trip to the Holy Land of the principal places of the Holy Land, 1654–1661 accomplish.

On April 3, 1661, Adrian Wilhelm had the conversion of Neersen Castle started into a palace. The several centuries old castle was dilapidated and also militarily outdated; Medieval castle walls were no longer an obstacle for modern bronze cannons. In addition, the renovation was to do justice to the increased reputation of the family, which Adrian Wilhelm and his father Johann had gained in the war, both of whom had also amassed considerable wealth during the war. The effort for the conversion was considerable. 1,709,253 bricks for 5,469 Reichstaler were walled up. On September 27, 1669 Adrian Wilhelm commissioned the Jülich building scribe Schramm to assess the building of the palace. This came to the result that a total of 18,139 Reichstaler were spent on wages and materials.

Death and succession

Adrian Wilhelm died on July 15, 1681 and was buried in the Neersen church he founded.

Of his sons, Ambrosius Adrian Adolf followed him in the Neersen reign. Of the sons from his second marriage, Karl Kaspar was killed in the Battle of Fleurus (1690) , the other, Damian Hugo , helped the family to become an imperial count in 1706. His daughter from his second marriage, Maria Ambrosia Alvara , married Constans Erasmus von Nesselrode zu Hugenpoet .

literature

• August Heldmann:  Virmont . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 55, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1910, pp. 332-341. (Family item)
• Johann Peter Lentzen, Franz Verres: History of glory Neersen and Anrath. Lentzen, Fischeln 1883, p. 284 ff.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wilhelm Kohl (arrangement), Max Planck Institute for History, Göttingen (ed.): The Diocese of Münster, Part 4.2: The Cathedral of St. Paul in Münster. ( Germania Sacra NF 17.2) Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1982, ISBN 978-3-11-008508-2 , p. 677
2. ↑ ^{a b} Herbert M. Schleicher (Ed.): Ernst von Oidtman and his genealogical-heraldic collection in the University Library in Cologne. Volume 5, West German Society for Family Studies, Cologne 1994, p. 738.
3. ^ Konrad Eubel: History of the Cologne Minorite Order Province. J. & W. Boisserée, 1906. pp. 159 ff. Here online
4. ↑ Lentzen, p. 287
5. ^ Anton Fahne: Research in the field of Rhenish and Westphalian history. Genders and seats. Heberle / Lempertz, Cologne 1866, p. 32.

predecessor	Office	successor
Johann II of Viermund	Lord von Neersen 1632–1681	Ambrosius Adrian von Viermund