Office of Nidda

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The castle in Nidda was the seat of the officials of the office of Nidda

The Office Nidda (also Oberamt Nidda ) was an administrative unit in the late Middle Ages and in the early modern times in the Landgraviate of Hesse , the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt and finally in the Grand Duchy of Hesse until 1821. The office emerged from the County of Nidda , which from 1450 onwards was landgrave Hessian property was. The official seat was in the city of Nidda in the local castle .

structure

The office of Nidda extended over parts of the Wetterau into the high Vogelsberg . Organizationally, it was divided into three districts and a total of ten courts. According to the wording of the deeds of lending, the organization of the office goes back to the time of belonging to the Counts of Ziegenhain . The area of ​​responsibility included:

Court of Nidda

Courts on the Vogelsberg

Dishes in the Fuldische Mark in the Wetterau

history

With the death of the last Count of Ziegenhain and Nidda, Johann II. , In 1450, the County of Nidda fell to the Hessian Landgrave Ludwig I. Hereditary claims of the House of Hohenlohe were rejected. The dispute was settled in favor of Hesse at the Worms Reichstag in 1495 . After the death of Ludwig I, the Landgraviate of Hesse under his sons Ludwig II (Niederhessen) and Heinrich III. ( Upper Hesse ) and the Hessian office of Nidda, which was the successor to the county, fell to Heinrich III. His son Wilhelm III. died on February 17, 1500, falling from his horse while hunting, leaving no legitimate heir. As a result, Upper Hesse and with it the office of Nidda fell to his cousin Wilhelm II from Lower Hesse .

Under Landgrave Philip I, "the Magnanimous" , a new record and determination of the landgrave's holdings in the office of Nidda took place in several books in 1537 and 1555 . When Hesse was divided after the death of Philip I on March 31, 1567, the office of Nidda fell to his son Ludwig IV of Hesse-Marburg . Since he remained without an heir, it came to his nephew Ludwig V in 1604 and thus to the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt.

From the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) the office was first affected in June 1622 when Christian von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel's troops passed through . There were massive attacks on the population and looting and pillaging . The material damage in the entire county of Nidda amounted to over 344,000 guilders. From 1634 troop passes, billeting and looting hardly stopped. In 1648 large parts of the Nidda office were devastated.

In the marriage contract of Hereditary Count Ludwig VI. from 1649 the castle, town and office of Nidda were temporarily intended as a Wittum for his wife Marie Elisabeth . The Landgrave, who was in financial difficulties, pledged the county of Nidda temporarily to Duke Ernst I of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg from 1668/69 . Only his son Ernst Ludwig was able to redeem the pledge in 1692.

During the War of the Palatinate Succession , the landgrave's court sought refuge in Nidda, which is why Prince Karl Wilhelm of Hesse-Darmstadt was born here on June 17, 1693 .

The passion of Landgrave Ernst Ludwig and his son Ludwig VIII. Led to the temporary use of the castles in Nidda and Bingenheim as hunting castles . The Zwiefalten hunting lodge near Eichelsachsen in the court of Burkhards was built in 1723 especially for the lavish par force hunts . The landgrave subjects in the office of Nidda were additionally burdened by the temporary occupation by French troops in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) and the forage deliveries that were forced by them . It was only with the accession of Louis IX. In 1768 the expensive landgrave hunting in Vogelsberg came to an end. Shortly before, there was a mass emigration to the Russian Empire (→ Volga Germans ), including 52 people from the area of ​​today's city of Nidda.

The land commission headed by Friedrich Karl von Moser recorded a number of 2,327 households for the combined offices of Nidda and Lißberg in 1774 . The improvement of the economic situation served, among other things, the expansion of the saltworks in Salzhausen 1776–1786. Further progress was thwarted by the start of the coalition wars. In 1792 Prussian troops marched through, and from 1794–1795 Austrian troops moved into winter quarters. In September 1796 the French Sambre and Maas armies marched through the offices of Nidda and Lißberg on their retreat from the Austrians. The city of Nidda was plundered, and Glashütten and Lißberg were set on fire in response to resistance from the population. In 1797 the office was partially occupied by French and Austrian troops.

The elevation of the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt to the Grand Duchy and the exit of the state from the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation on August 12, 1806 did not affect the Office of Nidda, which initially remained in existence. Only after the Congress of Vienna (1815) was there a fundamental reorganization of the administration of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, which had received its own constitution on December 17, 1820 .

On July 14, 1821, the announcement was made about the division of the Grand Duchy of Hesse into district districts and district courts. This also dissolved the office of Nidda. In its place, the district council of Nidda was formed, but with a different area layout. The district court of Nidda was now responsible for the jurisdiction . Nidda was the seat of a Hessian district administrator until July 1, 1874, when the Nidda district was dissolved. Initially, the function of the court was retained. The district court of Nidda was not dissolved until January 1, 2012.

administration

At the head of the administration of the Office of Nidda by Landgrave stood bestallte bailiff . As a rule, he came from the nobility. Often the bailiffs also held other landgrave offices. Not infrequently they were absent for a long time as a result of being drawn to military or diplomatic services. The bailiff was on horseback and was accompanied by a crowd of twigs . He was responsible for protecting the office externally, including regulating border conflicts and ensuring the subservience of the subjects internally.

Responsible for the economic management of the Office who was treasurer , who is also perceived its competence in the absence of the bailiff. In particular, he raised the Landgrave cash income, and natural history as the Bede , the Gerichtsbußen, customs fees or wine purchases and the imperial taxes such as the commons penny or the Turks control . He also supervised the landgrave's possessions and rights such as goods, mills and forest smiths .

The rent clerks and servants were attached to the rent master to support him. These included the twigs and farmhands, the toll collectors, the turnpike keepers, the foresters and the chicken servants . The mayors presided over the individual courts, the village chiefs or home burghers presided over the villages .

literature

  • Karl Ernst Demandt : The Hessian administrative center Nidda in the 15th and 16th centuries , in: Otto Dascher: Nidda. The history of a city and its surroundings , Nidda 2003, pp. 83–122
  • Jürgen Rainer Wolf: Between the pleasure of hunting and the danger of war: City and Office of Nidda in the 17th and 18th centuries , in: Otto Dascher: Nidda. The history of a city and its surroundings , Nidda 2003, pp. 141–165

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Demandt, Das Hessische Verwaltungszentrum Nidda, p. 85
  2. ↑ Demandt: Das Hessische Verwaltungszentrum Nidda, p. 85
  3. ↑ Wolf: Between Hunting Pleasure and War Danger, p. 142
  4. ↑ Wolf: Between Hunting Pleasure and War Danger , p. 144f
  5. ↑ Wolf: Between Hunting Pleasure and War Danger, p. 147
  6. ↑ Wolf: Between Hunting Pleasure and War Danger, p. 149
  7. ↑ Wolf: Between Hunting Pleasure and War Danger, p. 151
  8. ↑ Wolf: Between Hunting Pleasure and War Danger, p. 156
  9. ↑ Wolf: Between Hunting Pleasure and War Danger, p. 157
  10. ↑ Wolf, Between Hunting Pleasure and War Danger, pp. 158f
  11. ↑ a b Demandt, Das Hessische Verwaltungszentrum Nidda, p. 86
  12. ↑ Demandt, Das Hessische Verwaltungszentrum Nidda, p. 88