Agnes von Mansfeld-Eisleben

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Agnes von Mansfeld-Eisleben in a portrait

Agnes von Mansfeld-Eisleben (* 1551 ; † 1637 ) was Countess von Mansfeld and daughter of Johann (Hans) Georg I von Mansfeld-Eisleben and Katharina von Mansfeld-Hinterort. She is also called the beautiful Mansfeld woman. Historical sources describe her as a dark beauty with deep brown eyes. Out of love for her, the Archbishop of Cologne , Gebhard I von Waldburg, converted to the Protestant faith and thus conjured up the Truchsessian War , also known as the Cologne War .

Life

As a Protestant canoness of the Gerresheim Monastery (today a district of Düsseldorf ), who also held a preamble in the Essen Monastery, Agnes von Mansfeld-Eisleben caused a sensation through her liaison with the Catholic Archbishop and Elector of Cologne, Gebhard I Truchseß von Waldburg. The Agnes brothers tried to stop the two from dealing with them by threatening them, but they were unsuccessful in the long term.

In order to marry the lady of his heart, Gebhard I converted to Calvinism and thus lost the rights to his archbishopric . However, since he wanted to continue to rule as a secular elector, he made the Catholic estates an enemy, and Pope Gregory XIII. finished "renegade" with the anathema . The dispute between Gebhard and his opponents culminated in the so-called Cologne War.

In the midst of the turmoil of war, Agnes von Mansfeld and Gebhard I. Truchseß von Waldburg married in Bonn on February 2, 1583 , but had to flee soon afterwards when their refuge, the Godesburg , was conquered by Ferdinand von Bayern . This was followed by a multi-year odyssey of Agnes and her husband across Germany. In 1589 they settled in Strasbourg . The rumor that Agnes traveled to England in 1585 to ask Elizabeth I for support has been refuted by English scholars. When Gebhard died in Strasbourg in 1601, her husband's Catholic opponents - although the war had already ended - apparently still had not forgiven the beautiful Mansfeld woman. In his will, Gebhard designated Duke Friedrich I of Württemberg as his heir for the benefits he had done and entrusted him with the care and protection of his widow. Until her death in 1637, Agnes lived under the protection of the Württemberg dukes in Württemberg. She was buried in Sulzbach .

The life of Agnes von Mansfeld-Eisleben and the connection to Gebhard was the subject of various stories and novels in later years and is still the subject of historical research today (see literature ).

literature

  • Rafaela Matzigkeit: beautiful, pious, decent, virtuous ... Agnes von Mansfeld in the mirror of history and literature. In: Around the Quadenhof (Düsseldorf-Gerresheim). 47, 1996, pp. 9-17 and p. 1723.
  • Johann Baptist Durach : Gebhard the Second, Elector of Cologne, and Agnes von Mannsfeld, Canonical Sense of Girrisheim. An episcopal legend from the sixteenth century. Hochleiter, Vienna, Leipzig 1791.
  • Christoph Sigismund Grüner: Gebhard, Elector of Cologne, and his beautiful Agnes. Cause and prompting of the disturbed religious peace, the union and the thirty years war. A historical-romantic exhibition, freely based on historical sources. Goebbels and Unzer, Königsberg 1806.
  • Carl August Gottlieb Seidel: The unfortunate Constellation or Countess Agnes von Mannsfeld. A legend from the second half of the sixteenth century. Supprian, Leipzig 1796.
  • Eugenie Tafel: Countess Agnes from the Mansfeld house. Story from the 16th century. Schloeßmann, Gotha 1897.
  • Agnes von Mansfeld. A historical novel, from the English of Thomas Grattan, author of the "Jacqueline of Holland", the "Heiress of Bruges" etc. by Dr. Georg Nicolaus Bärmann. Imle and Krauss, Stuttgart 1836. (Translation in the year of the first edition by Thomas Colley Grattan: Agnes de Mansfeld an Historical Tale. 3 volumes. 1836.)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hermann Müller: Die Schöne Mansfelderin , accessed on March 1, 2013.
  2. ^ Eva Mabel Tenison: Elizabethan England . 1932, p. 128.
  3. ^ Heidemarie Wünsch: Agnes von Mansfeld , accessed on January 7, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Mansfeld-Eisleben, Agnes von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES The beautiful Mansfeld woman
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Countess von Mansfeld and wife of Gebhard I von Waldburg
DATE OF BIRTH 1551
DATE OF DEATH 1637