Office of Babenhausen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Coat of arms of the County of Hanau until 1480
Coat of arms of the County of Hanau-Lichtenberg since 1606

The office of Babenhausen was an office of the counties of Hanau , Hanau-Lichtenberg , the Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel , the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt and the Grand Duchy of Hesse .

function

In the early modern period , offices were a level between the municipalities and the sovereignty . The functions of administration and jurisdiction were not separated here. The office was headed by a bailiff who was appointed by the rulers.

history

origin

Adelheid von Munzenberg , daughter of Ulrich I von Munzenberg , married Reinhard I von Hanau before 1245 (the exact year is not known) . Among other things, she brought the Babenhausen office with her, which has belonged to Hanau since then . The main place of the office was the city of Babenhausen .

In the county of Hanau

Solmser Landrecht , title page of the edition from 1571

In 1275, Boppo and Rudolph von Wertheim , who apparently had shares in Babenhausen Castle , waived it in favor of Reinhard I. and Adelheid.

In 1372 the office of Babenhausen was assigned to the King of Bohemia as a fief . This meant that Hanau transferred its ownership of the office to Bohemia and that Bohemia immediately entrusted Hanau with it again. Such a deterioration in the law could z. B. be offset with a cash payment or rights elsewhere. Bohemia's interest in this fiefdom was that the King of Bohemia, who was at the same time elector of the German Empire , took about a day's journey from the place of election (and later also the coronation ) of the German kings , in Frankfurt am Main , to a fortified place received. This was important for a safe journey between Prague and Frankfurt.

The villages of Hergershausen and Sickenhofen were assigned from the Babenhausen office as Hanau fiefdoms to the Lords of Groschlag , but were no longer part of the office.

The Babenhausen office represented the “hinge” between the County of Hanau-Münzenberg and the County of Hanau-Lichtenberg : In 1458, the uncle of the 4-year-old “reigning” Count Philip I, the younger , the Count Philip I, the elder , contrary to the primogeniture rules of the house, permitted to marry because the family feared that Philip the Younger might die before he could father a successor who would continue the family and his uncle might then be too old to father any more children. In order for Philip the Elder to marry, he had to be equipped accordingly. For this purpose, a secondary school diploma was formed for him from the office of Babenhausen , and he was then able to acquire part of the Lichtenberg dominion in Alsace through marriage and inheritance (1480) . This was the basis for the County of Hanau-Lichtenberg. The home countries led to the differentiation of the name Hanau-Munzenberg .

In 1521 the County of Hanau-Lichtenberg left the Umstadt condominium as a result of the Landshut War of Succession and was compensated with 12,000 florins and the towns of Harpertshausen, Kleestadt, Langstadt and Schlierbach. These places now belonged to the Babenhausen office.

Count Philipp IV. Von Hanau-Lichtenberg decreed with an ordinance of August 24, 1579 that the Solms land law should also apply to the Babenhausen office. The Common Law was only when regulations contained the Solmser common law for a state of affairs no provisions. The Solmser Landrecht retained its validity when the office of Babenhausen fell to Hesse after the inheritance in 1736 and also when it belonged to the Grand Duchy of Hesse in the 19th century . The Solmser land rights was until 1 January 1900 by the same across the whole German Reich current Civil Code replaced.

The end of the county of Hanau

Coat of arms of the Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel
Coat of arms of the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt

When the estate of Count Friedrich Casimir von Hanau between his heirs, Count Johann Reinhard III. and his older brother, Count Philipp Reinhard , was divided in 1686, the office of Babenhausen, later finally sealed by a contract in 1691, came to the Hanau-Munzenberg region.

This position of the Babenhausen Office between the Hanau-Munzenberger and the Hanau-Lichtenberg part of the state led to a dispute between the heirs of the County of Hanau-Munzenberg , the Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel , and the heirs of the County of Hanau in the run-up to the extinction of the Hanau Count House in 1736 -Lichtenberg , the Landgrave of Hessen-Darmstadt . It was controversial as to which inheritance the Babenhausen office now fell into.

Johann Reinhard III. tried the position of his daughter Charlotte , who had been married to the Hereditary Prince Ludwig (VIII.) of Hesse-Darmstadt, and his grandson of Hesse-Darmstadt, Hereditary Prince Ludwig IX. to strengthen. Hessen-Kassel initially appeared willing to cooperate on this issue. Various agreements were made about this in 1714, 1718 and 1720.

However, when Landgrave Friedrich I took office in Hesse-Kassel in 1730, politics turned around. First, Landgrave Friedrich I secured his Hanau inheritance through the Hessian military (Buchsweiler punctuation on April 17, 1730), which he relocated to Hanau, which, however, during the lifetime of Count Johann Reinhard III. was sworn in on this. In order to avoid the binding of the ruling Landgrave to the promises made in the Treaties of 1714, 1718 and 1720, Landgrave Frederick I, who was also King of Sweden and had to reside in Stockholm , waived in advance in favor of his brother, the later one Landgrave Wilhelm VIII of Hesse-Kassel on the Hanau inheritance. Hessen-Kassel now claimed that the treaties of 1714, 1718 and 1720 only bound the ruling landgrave. Wilhelm (VIII.), On the other hand, could now inherit unencumbered by the contracts and on the basis of the inheritance contract of 1643, which, in the opinion of Hessen-Kassel, also included the Babenhausen office.

The heirs

After the death of Count Johann Reinhard III. von Hanau In 1736 there was almost a military conflict when Hessen-Darmstadt occupied the rest of the office in Dietzenbach , Schaafheim and Schlierbach, and Hessen-Kassel with the military already carefully stationed in Hanau.

The dispute could only be ended by a settlement ( Celler Treaty ) in 1762 after a long-standing legal dispute before the highest imperial courts . According to this, assets and liabilities as well as the territory of the office should be shared equally between the two landgraves. It took another nine years until everything was cleared up enough for this to happen. In the meantime, the office was administered as a condominium between the two landgraves. In 1771 there was finally the so-called participation recess , which carried out the real division of the office. Then fell

  • in Hessen-Darmstadt the places Altheim , Dietzenbach , Harpertshausen , Schaafheim and Schlierbach. Hessen-Darmstadt incorporated these places into its Schaafheim office .
  • Hessen-Kassel formed the Babenhausen Office out of the parts of the office that it had received from the settlement. In 1810 it was added to the Grand Duchy of Hesse , which Hesse-Darmstadt had meanwhile advanced to.

In 1806 the office of Babenhausen came under French administration, when France occupied the Electorate of Hesse because it refused to join the Confederation of the Rhine . On May 11, 1810, the Grand Duchy of Hesse and France signed a state treaty with which France passed on to the Grand Duchy territories that it had taken from Kurhessen in 1806. The treaty concluded in May was not signed by Napoléon until October 17, 1810. The Hessian occupation patent dated November 10, 1810 and also included the Babenhausen office .

From 1820 there were administrative reforms in the Grand Duchy of Hesse. In 1821, jurisdiction and administration were separated at the lower level and all offices were dissolved. For the previously perceived by the offices administrative tasks were district districts created for the first-instance jurisdiction district courts. The previous tasks of the Babenhausen office with regard to the administration were transferred to the district of Seligenstadt , the jurisdiction tasks to the Steinheim district court . In 1835 the district court was also moved to Seligenstadt . Kleestadt and Langstadt were exempt from this rule. They were assigned to the district of Dieburg and the district court of Umstadt .

As early as 1832, the districts of Seligenstadt and Offenbach were merged to form Offenbach. In 1852 Babenhausen, Harreshausen, Sickenhofen and Hergershausen came to the Dieburg district .

Components

The Babenhausen office therefore included - sometimes only temporarily - the locations and areas:

Lordship of Babenhausen

The rule of Babenhausen is not identical to the office of the same name . Although the Babenhausen rule was administered from Babenhausen, it included a number of rights, authorizations and shares in the area that were not included in the Babenhausen office.

Babenhauser Mark

Part of the Babenhausen office, but with a special legal status, which was summarized in a Märkerweise from 1355, is the Babenhausen mark . They included (shown in the old spelling):

"Obermärker", the head of this cooperative , were the Count of Hanau, the senior of the Lords of Groschlag and the abbot of the Seligenstadt monastery . The Märkerding met once a year on the market square in Babenhausen. The march court also met once a year. The Babenhäuser Mark was dissolved in 1818.

Officer

  • [1787] Joh. Friedrich Ringhöbel (bailiff)

See also

literature

  • Regenerus Engelhard: Description of the earth of the Hessian Lands Casselischen Antheiles with notes from history and from documents explained. Part 2. Cassel 1778. (Reprint 2004, p. 806ff)
  • Ludwig Ewald: Historical overview of the territorial changes in the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt and the Grand Duchy of Hessen. Darmstadt 1862, pp. 452–456.
  • Max Herchenröder : Babenhausen. The art monuments in Hessen, district of Dieburg. Darmstadt 1940.
  • HH Hofmann: Charles IV and the political land bridge from Prague to Frankfurt. In: Between Frankfurt and Prague. 1963.
  • Günther Keim: A sketch of the administrative and judicial structure of the Dieburger Land over the past 200 years. In: Festschrift of the district court in Dieburg on the occasion of the 75th anniversary and the inauguration of the new court building. Pfungstadt 1981, p. 21ff.
  • Kreissparkasse for the district of Dieburg in Groß-Umstadt (Hrsg.): The district of Dieburg. Landscape, history, art, administration, economy. For the 125th anniversary. 1960.
  • Christian Leonhard Leucht: European State Canzley. Vol. 72-92.
  • Fried Lübbecke: Hanau city and county. P. 72ff.
  • Wilhelm Müller: Fate of the office of Babenhausen during the Thirty Years War. Babenhausen 1934.
  • Peter Murmann: Groschlag and Hanau - an 18th century source on the Hanau fiefs of the Groschlag von Dieburg family. = Dieburger kleine Schriften 10/1992.
  • Regina Schäfer: The Lords of Eppstein. Wiesbaden 2000, pp. 369, 394. (= publications of the Historical Commission for Nassau)
  • Arthur Benno Schmidt : The historical foundations of civil law in the Grand Duchy of Hesse. Giessen 1893, especially p. 33, note 104.
  • Helmut Walter: Altheim - Harpertshausen - Babenhausen and the Gayling von Altheim. Altheim 1987.
  • Richard Wille: The last counts of Hanau-Lichtenberg. Hanau 1886.
  • Georg Wittenberger: Stadtlexikon Babenhausen. Babenhausen 1995.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Arthur Benno Schmidt : The historical foundations of civil law in the Grand Duchy of Hesse . Curt von Münchow, Giessen 1893, p. 73f. as well as the enclosed card.
  2. ^ Text (in French ) in: Schmidt, p. 30ff, note 100.
  3. ↑ Schmidt, p. 30.
  4. ↑ Schmidt, p. 33.
  5. ^ Ordinance on the division of the country into districts and district courts of July 14, 1821 . In: Hessisches Regierungsblatt No. 33 of July 20, 1821, pp. 403ff.
  6. ^ Ordinance on the division of the country into districts and district courts of July 14, 1821 . In: Hessisches Regierungsblatt No. 33 of July 20, 1821, p. 405.
  7. ^ Ordinance on the division of the country into districts and district courts of July 14, 1821 . In: Hessisches Regierungsblatt No. 33 of July 20, 1821, p. 405.
  8. ^ Ordinance on the division of the country into districts and district courts of July 14, 1821 . In: Hessisches Regierungsblatt No. 33 of July 20, 1821, p. 406.
  9. ↑ Is only mentioned in a notarial instrument on the seizure of places in the Babenhausen office by Hessen-Kassel (excerpt), printed in: Johann Adam Kopp: Well-founded counter-deduction from the true nature of the Hanauian primacy law, and on it with well-founded Hessen- Casselian hereditary succession in the Hanau-Müntzenberg Graffschaft in general, and the Babenhausen, as well as the Mobilar-Abandoned, in particular, including their legitimately seized possession, whereby at the same time the Hesse-Darmstadt documentirte facti species, together with those about the two imprints on this side sub rubr. irrefutable reasons, etc. and reasons based on rights, etc., are refuted in detail . Marburg 1737, p. 164ff. It is probably a mistake. Otherwise the place is not mentioned and cannot be identified.
  10. ↑ Hochfuerstl. Hessen-Casselischer Staats- und Adreß-Kalender (1787), p. 165/7 ( digitized version )