Office Linn

Linn Castle with adjoining hunting lodge

The Amt Linn was an administrative and judicial district in the Electorate of Cologne from the end of the 14th to the end of the 18th century . After the death of the last Count of Kleve , after years of disputes and with great financial outlay, it was possible to reacquire the arch-monastery fief.

Owner before transfer to Kurköln

Around 1170/80 the Lords of Linn owned a stone residential tower ( Motte ) with ancillary buildings on an artificially created mound of earth . After Archbishop Philipp I von Heinsberg acquired the allodium (before 1188) , who returned it as a fief, the castle complex was further expanded. After the Lords of Linn died out in 1264, the property went to the Counts of Kleve as an arch donor fief in the second half of the 13th century. The castle was further expanded with a wall, gate and corner towers. At a meeting between Archbishop Wigbold and Dietrich von Kleve in 1299 at Linn Castle , the castle was referred to as castrum and Count Dietrich as the archbishop's liege. Linn Castle became the official residence of the bailiff , who had held this title since 1304. The city immediately adjoining the castle received city ​​rights and a jury in 1314 . The organization and administration of the Linn Office was carried out by Johann von Kleve around the middle of the 14th century . A bailiff was appointed to represent the sovereign and a waiter was responsible for managing the income.

Electoral Cologne Office Linn

acquisition

When, after the Count's death in 1368, Linn Castle and the Linn Office fell back to the Archbishopric, the Countess, supported by her bailiff Heinrich von Strünkede, refused to hand them over. Only after long armed conflicts on the Countess Linn, but Heinrich refrained from Strünkede, the pledge Mr. Linn, was only willing to surrender if the expenses incurred in the service of the Countess would be reimbursed him. In 1388 the Archbishop of Cologne, Friedrich von Saar Werden, acquired the castle, town and country of Linn. He undertook to pay the bailiff Heinrich von Strünkede his expenses that he had suffered in the service of the deceased Countess von Kleve and appointed him bailiff von Liedberg . As guarantor for the money to be paid to Heinrich von Strünkede, he appointed his officials, including Tilgin von Brempt, the bailiff of Uerdingen , who became the first bailiff in Linn in 1388. 1392 the affiliation of the office Linn to Kurköln was determined in a contract with the count of Kleve. Since then, the castle, town and office of Linn have finally been in Electoral Cologne ownership.

Official territory

The official area included the town of Linn with the castle, honors and parishes on both sides of the rupture, which since the 17th century have been referred to as the honors over Busch, summarized under the great honors, and honors this side of the Rhine.

• Great honors:

Willich parish with Hardt, Streithoven and Kraphausen, Osterath parish , Bösinghoven and Ossum parish, Bockum parish (Gertrud-Bockum) with the villages of Bockum and Glindholz, which formed one honor, Oppum parish, parish and Fischeln parish ,

• Honors this side of the Rhine:

Honschaft Stratum , with Gellep, Heulesheim, parish Lank and Latum, Honschaft Langst and Kierst, Honschaft Strümp , Honschaft Ilverich , parish Büderich , parish Heerdt .

In the administrative district there were several originally Klevian knight seats that were fiefdoms from the Archbishop of Cologne. House Sollbrüggen and House Neuenhoven, House Latum and House Gripswald , formerly Gut Ossum, were fiefdoms of the Archbishop of Cologne. In Fischeln there were at least five free yards, called Plattenhöfe, which were referred to as service yards. Two of them, Hof Grafschaft and Buscher Hof, like the Hengsthof in Lank and the two city towers Bakenhof and Issumer Turm, belonged to the Linner Burglehen.

In Nierst , the Meer monastery owned a manor.

Linn Castle as the official residence

The heavily fortified castle, which was directly connected to the city fortifications, remained the seat of the bailiff, the winery and the court . The layout of the city, surrounded by walls and moats, with three gates and the two towers on the eastern corner of the city wall shows its military task, which consisted of defending the castle.

Duties of the bailiff

The duties and obligations of the bailiff as a representative of the sovereign were laid down in the appointment document. In 1388 the bailiff committed himself

• Protect the castle, town, district and residents
• to respect the rights of residents and to order only necessary services
• protect the streets
• to take care of the occupation and defense of the archbishop's castle, to entertain and feed the castle and the city gates, for which income from the office was allocated to him
• by order of the waiter to collect the sovereign taxes that he was not allowed to keep
• to take only what is due to him of the court sentences.

Waiter's duties

The waiter, who lived in the castle, was responsible for the administration of the sovereign income in kind and taxes such as treasure money and bede , he was responsible for the maintenance of the castle staff as well as the maintenance of the castle and the farm buildings. He created an annual register of the sovereign income. The oldest surviving waiter's invoice is from 1432.

dish

The mayor, as chairman of the court, spoke to the lay judges . After the transfer to Kurköln, the court with lower and high court had a new jury seal since 1391, which was also used as a seal for the Dingstühle Lank, Büderich, Heerdt, Willich and Bockum, which did not have their own seal.

Pledges

In 1446 Archbishop Dietrich von Moers appointed Johann von Hoemen as bailiff and pledged the castle, town and office of Linn to him hereditary. In 1469 he waived a severance payment. Archbishop Ruprecht of the Palatinate pledged treasures that Edward Vogt zu Bell redeemed in 1469 in order to be able to pay his palliative money to the Pope . The repayment of the debt was made from the income of the Linn Office.

Double office in Linn-Uerdingen from the 16th to the 18th century

After Linn was acquired, the office was administered several times with other offices. 1388, 1401 and 1406 together with Uerdingen, 1409 together with Kempen, 1415 with Uerdingen and Kempen. In the following decades the offices had different pledges . Since the middle of the 16th century, the offices of Linn and Uerdingen were usually linked in personal union. Three electoral officials with separate residences, bailiff, waiter and mayor, administered the two offices. In a few cases they took on joint tasks. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the border inspections for the offices of Linn and Uerdingen were carried out and recorded by the bailiff, waiter, mayor and aldermen. They also appeared together when navigating the Rhine to check the bank reinforcement and the dikes. The honors had to perform the required services. In the Linn district bordering the Rhine, the main task was to reduce the damage caused by the Rhine floods, flooding with large land losses. The dykes were repaired, cribs were created and the banks were planted. Other manual and tensioning services had to be carried out, including the transport of firewood to Linn Castle, the transport of the elector's luggage to Linn Castle and the transport of goods by ship with horses that the elector had shipped from the Linn office. In the Honschaft the Honnen took over the collection of the Simplen, which had to be paid since the 17th century, as a sovereign tax and settled accounts with the waiter. The bailiff, who was responsible for enforcing the electoral orders, lived in his private residence and was mostly represented by an administrator who lived in Uerdingen. Since the 16th century, official interrogations for civil disputes were carried out by bailiffs, which took place in the Uerdingen-Linn office at various locations. The mayor lived in Uerdingen. There the court met for both offices, which was filled with mayor, lay judges and a clerk. Three armed country messengers who exercised police force worked for both offices. In the 18th century the mayor family Erlenwein had an important position of power, since they had also held the position of administrator from 1731. The waiter lived in the outer bailey of Linn Castle. The waiter's invoices from Linn and Uerdingen were presented together to the Hofkammer in Bonn .

At the beginning of the 18th century, several fires made the castle uninhabitable. As a result, the military value of the castle fell sharply. As a starting point for hunts in the extensive forests of the Linn Office, Elector Clemens August had a building built in the outer bailey around 1740 that served as a hunting lodge. The Linn office retained importance for the elector only because of the sovereign income.

After the French revolutionary troops marched in in 1794, the Electorate of Cologne was abolished and a civil administration for the occupied territories was set up by the French authorities .

List of officials

• 1388 Tilmann von Brempt
• 1401 Friedrich von Moers
• 1404 Johann von Reifferscheid
• 1415 Wilhelm Sohn zu Wevelinghoven
• 1446 Johann von Hoemen
• 1469 Edward Vogt to Bell
• 1520 Johann Haes von Konradsheim
• 1528 Ambrosius von Viermund
• 1545 Degenhard Haes von Konradsheim, Johann's son
• 1586 Ludwig von Lülsdorf
• 1607 Heinrich von Lülsdorf
• 1611 Werner Quad zu Buschfeld
• 1625 Ludwig von Lülsdorf, son of Heinrich
• 1654 Wilhelm Christoph von Linzenich zu Schakum
• 1668 Wolfgang Günther von Norprath
• 1686 by Doubt, Administrator
• 1687 Franz Friedrich von Norprath
• 1690 Heinrich Ferdinand von Bernsau administrator
• 1693 Franz Friedrich von Norprath
• 1703 Heinrich Ferdinand von Bernsau administrator
• 1705 Franz Friedrich von Norprath
• 1705 Heinrich Ferdinand von Bernsau
• 1715 Franz Arnold von Hersel
• 1747 Clemens August von Hersel

literature

• Reinhard Feinendegen and Hans Vogt (eds.): Krefeld. The history of the city. Volume 1. From the early days to the Middle Ages. Krefeld 1998. ISBN 3-9804181-6-2
• Reinhard Feinendegen and Hans Vogt (eds.): Krefeld. The history of the city. Volume 2. From the Reformation to 1794. Krefeld 2000. ISBN 3-9804181-7-0
• Kurköln. Land under the crook. Series of publications by the district of Viersen, Volume 35a. Publication of the state archives of North Rhine-Westphalia, Series C, Vol. 22, Kevelaer 1985. ISBN 3-7666-9431-6
• Georg Dehio (Gre.): Handbook of German art monuments. North Rhine-Westphalia I, Rhineland. Munich, Berlin 2005. ISBN 3-422-03093-X

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Reinhard Feinendegen and Hans Vogt (eds.): Krefeld. The history of the city. Volume 1. From the early days to the Middle Ages, Krefeld 1998. pp. 423–429
2. ↑ Reinhard Feinendegen and Hans Vogt (eds.): Krefeld. The history of the city. Volume 2. From the Reformation to 1794, Krefeld 2000. p. 377
3. ↑ Krefeld. The history of the city. Volume 1. pp. 429-433 and pp. 443-462
4. ↑ Norbert Andernach (arrangement): The Regesta of the Archbishops of Cologne. Ninth Volume, 1381-1390. Düsseldorf 1983, no.1670
5. ↑ Krefeld. The history of the city. Volume 1. pp. 432-438
6. ↑ Krefeld. The history of the city. Volume 1. p. 378
7. ↑ Krefeld. The history of the city. Volume 2., p. 379
8. ↑ Krefeld. The history of the city. Volume 2. pp. 502-514
9. ^ Norbert Andernach: The sovereign administration. In: Kurköln. Land under the crook. Series of publications by the district of Viersen, Volume 35a. P. 247
10. ^ Norbert Andernach: The sovereign administration. In: Kurköln. Land under the crook. Series of publications by the district of Viersen, Volume 35a. P. 260
11. ↑ Krefeld. The history of the city. Volume 2., pp. 491-497
12. ↑ Krefeld. The history of the city. Volume 2. pp. 491-517
13. ↑ Zwolle (NL), Rijksarchief Overijssel, Archief Kasteel Rechteren, reg. No. 31, reg. No. 33