Aldersna

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Aldersna (also called Alderes ) is the name of an East Frisian noble family that had its ancestral seat in a castle in Westlintel near Norden . The Aldersna were of regional importance at a time when the egalitarian structures of the Frisian Freedom were falling apart. They were replaced by chiefs who came from the ranks of the large landowners, who owned fortified houses and who sought to expand their sphere of power and influence through marriage policies and armed conflicts.

Surname

Aldersna is a patronymic clan name that refers to an ancestor named Alder [t] (derived from Adalhart ). The -s- in the family name probably indicates a shortened genitive ending ( -es > s ; compare the alternative spelling Alderes ), while the ending -na in the East Frisian area expresses affiliation. Aggo Aldersna , a descendant of the northern family, would therefore be one of those named after Alder [t] .

meaning

The sources are silent about the origin of the noble Aldersna family. It only comes into the light of East Frisian regional history from the second half of the 13th century. Her relatives were related to numerous aristocratic families in the Norderland, including the family tho Wicht (e) and Lintel . Their headquarters were in Lintel, the oldest settlement area on the North Geest Island. While the noble Idzengas family had built their hearth in the east of the peasantry, the Aldersnas were based in Westlintel. Their fortified ancestral seat was part of a ring of castles that had been placed around the Norder Marktplatz and whose "early development [...] is primarily due to an increased need for security, because both the north and Leer had no fortifications such as ramparts, walls, and gates ".

Three representatives of the Aldersna family were consules on the governing bodies of the Norderland from the middle of the 13th to the beginning of the 14th century. Probably the best known among them was Aggo Aldersna. In 1255 he and other co-signers signed the North Treaty , in which commercial relations between the city ​​of Bremen and the East Frisian Gauen Norderland and Emisgonien were given their legal basis. The contract is also the first documentary mention of the north. Around 1277, Edo, another consul from the Aldersna family, found himself in the north magistrate. Around 1300, Consul Martin Aldersna and his colleagues Keno Kenesna and Meno Mogena were guests at an order meeting of the Dominicans taking place in the north monastery .

Westlintel Castle

The construction of castles in and around the north began towards the end of the 13th century. The Olde Borg - probably the earliest facility of its kind in the north - was built around 1285. Behind the building, however, there was presumably no special noble family, but the three so-called Vreedmannen (= justice of the peace) with their spokesman (“orator”), who from 1277 formed the “new magistrate” and thus the administrative head of the Norderland alongside the consules . The Aldersnas followed only a little later. They were among the first families in the Norderland to own a "castle". However, one should not think of an ensemble of buildings that was protected by defensive walls, wide moats and high towers, but rather of a stone house , such as can still be found in Bunderhee today . The aristocratic seat of the Aldersna was located south of today's Norder Parkstrasse, where it joins Norddeicher Strasse. Extensive fields and pastures belonged to it. The area around the castle "was full of houses". The historian Tileman Dothias Wiarda writes about this period of castle building: “Now the power of the nobles in East Friesland increased everywhere. Solid houses were built everywhere; but no sooner were they erected than they were often underfoot again. ”For him, evidence in this context was the fate of the Aldersna Castle. This was in 1353 - only a few decades after its establishment "conquered and razed in a feud with the neighboring nobles". A reconstruction did not take place. Ubbo Emmius reported towards the end of the 16th century in his Frisian History : "The place and the ruins, covered with earth, are still shown today."

literature

  • Gretje Schreiber: The peasant-bourgeois class subject to full service and its representatives in Norderland / East Friesland . Issue 9 of the East Frisian Family Studies. Contributions to genealogy and heraldry . East Frisian landscape: Aurich 1992. ISBN 3-925365-61-3 . P. 12ff; 22; 26; 41; 77; 148
  • Hemmo Suur: The history of the chiefs of East Friesland . Rakebrand: Emden and Aurich 1846. P. 68f; 77
  • Tileman Dothias Wiarda: East Frisian History . Volume 1 to 1436. August Friedrich Winter: Aurich 1791. p. 273; 316

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In West Frisian we find the ending [s] -ma with the same meaning .
  2. ↑ See Adolf Bach: Die Deutschen Personalennamen . Walter de Gruyter & Co: Berlin 1943. S. 157f
  3. ↑ For the history of settlements in the north, see Hajo van Lengen: Friesische Landes- und Stadtgemeinde im Mittelalter. The case of the north / East Frisia . In: Bünde - Cities - Municipalities (edited by Werner Freitag and Peter Johanek). Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2009, pp. 165–201
  4. ↑ Eberhard Rack: Settlement and settlement of the old district north . Volume 15 in the SPIEKER series . Regional studies articles and reports (published by the Geographical Commission for Westphalia: Wilhelm Müller-Wille and Elisabeth). Self-published by the Geographischeommission: Münster / Westfalen 1967. S. 34f
  5. ↑ In Hemmo Suur ( History of the Chiefs of East Friesland . Fr. Rakebrand: Aurich und Norden 1846. P. 68) he is called Agga Alderes .
  6. ↑ See Hemmo Suur: History of the Chiefs of East Friesland . Fr. Rakebrand: Aurich and Norden 1846. P. 68f
  7. ↑ Gretje Schreiber: The peasant-bourgeois class subject to compulsory horse service and its representatives in Norderland / East Friesland . Issue 9 of the East Frisian Family Studies. Contributions to genealogy and heraldry . East Frisian landscape: Aurich 1992. ISBN 3-925365-61-3 . P. 12
  8. ↑ Ufke Cremer (Ed.): North through the ages . Heinrich Soltau Publisher: Norden 1955. P. 28
  9. ↑ Ufke Cremer (Ed.): North through the ages . Heinrich Soltau Publisher: Norden 1955. P. 29
  10. ↑ Ubbo Emmius: Frisian History (Rerum Frisicarum historiae libri LX) [Groningen 1598]. Volume II (translated from Latin by Erich von Reeken). Verlag Jochen Wörner: Frankfurt am Main, 1981. Section 203
  11. ↑ Quoted from Tileman Dothias Wiarda: Ostfriesische Geschichte . Volume 1 to 1436. August Friedrich Winter: Aurich 1791. S. 316
  12. ↑ Ufke Cremer (Ed.): North through the ages . Heinrich Soltau Publisher: Norden 1955. P. 29
  13. ↑ Ubbo Emmius: Frisian History (Rerum Frisicarum historiae libri LX) [Groningen 1598]. Volume II (translated from Latin by Erich von Reeken). Verlag Jochen Wörner: Frankfurt am Main, 1981. Section 204