Office Schönstein (knowledge)
The office of Schönstein was an administrative unit in the Electorate of Cologne and in the Duchy of Nassau .
origin
The office emerged from the original possession of the nobles of Arenberg an der Sieg around Schönstein Castle in Wissen ( Altenkirchen district , Rhineland-Palatinate ). This property had probably come to the family through the marriage of the Cologne burgrave Eberhard von Arenberg with Aleidis von Molsberg, heiress of the noble lords of Freusburg . Eberhard's sons shared ownership of the Sieg in 1250 with the consent of the Archbishop of Cologne, Konrad von Hochstaden : Heinrich III. von Arenberg, burgrave of the Electorate of Cologne, received the area south of the river with Schönstein Castle and the goods for knowledge, Gerhard received the possessions north of the Sieg and was now called "von Wildenburg ".
Electoral Cologne Office
After the Lords of Arenberg and Heinrich's grandson Johann died out in 1281, the Archbishopric of Cologne moved in the parish of Wissen left the Sieg with Schönstein Castle as a completed fief . (The part of the parish to the right of the Sieg remained with the Lords of Wildenburg.) Since then, the castle has been the seat of an Electoral Cologne office.
Since Kurköln had not succeeded in establishing a land connection between the Kurlanden on the Rhine and the Electoral Cologne Duchy of Westphalia through the Siegschneise, only individual exclaves such as Merten , Schönstein and half of Siegen remained as bases in this area. Due to financial difficulties, however, the Schönstein rule - with the castle, the associated farms and forests, the villages of Wissen, Schönstein and Selbach , as well as abundant mineral resources - was repeatedly pledged to financially strong fiefs. Deposit holders were u. a. Wilhelm and Syrert von Selbach (1411), Albert von Gevertshahn (called Lützgerode) (1435), Wilhelm von Nesselrode zum Stein (1455), Johan von Gevertshain called Lützerode zu Vorst (1529), Count Bernhard von Nassau (1543) and Dahm (Damian) Spies (1557). After the Truchsessian War (1582–1589), however, the coffers of the electoral state were so exhausted that the pledges on the Schönstein reign could not be redeemed.
Reign of Schönstein
The new Archbishop Ernst of Bavaria and the cathedral chapter transferred the Schönstein Castle with the associated courtyards and forests to Hermann von Hatzfeld-Wildenburg-Werther's contract of July 27, 1589, and the Schönstein rule as a hereditary fief. Kurköln only retained the sovereignty and the mountain shelf . As part of Ernst von Bayern's partisan, Harzfeld, as Drost von Balve and Amtmann zu Bilstein and Schönstein holder of important governorships in the Electorate, raised considerable sums of money to support troops during the Truchsessian War, and the deposed Archbishop Gebhard Truchsess therefore had his Wocklum Castle burned down in August 1583 to let.
When Hermann von Hatzfeldt died childless in 1600, the castle, rule and office of Schönstein were inherited by the Hatzfeld-Merthen-Schönstein line. When this line died out in 1681, Schönstein came back to the Hatzfeld-Wildenburg line.
Prussia
From 1803 to 1815 the area came to the Duchy of Nassau , then by resolution of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to Prussia . The southern part of the parish of Wissen, which had belonged to another branch of the Hatzfelder since 1418, had fallen to the Grand Duchy of Berg in 1806 , but also came to Prussia in 1815, which merged the two areas north and south of the Sieg and in 1821 the possessions of the The Hatzfeld family was raised to the status of Wildenburg-Schönstein. The area is now part of the district Altenkirchen in Koblenz Region of the Grand Duchy of the Lower Rhine , from 1822 the Rhine province . The lordship of Wildenburg on the right bank of the Sieg, the mayor's office of Friesenhagen and half of the mayor's office in Wissen belonged to the district court district of Bonn as the Wildenburg court of justice, while the Schönstein on the left bank of the Sieg and half of Wissen belonged to the district of the Ehrenbreitstein Justice Senate as the Schönstein justice office .
Extent of office or rule Schönstein
| places | 1640 (houses) |
1853 (resident) |
1919 (resident) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Selbach (part) | 7th | 301 | 402 |
| Valley and Schönstein Castle | 40 | 381 | 844 |
| Knowledge, house knowledge | 40 | 726 | 3789 |
| Blickhauserhöhe: Blickhausen, Katzenthal, Mittel-, Nieder- and Oberdurwittgen, Mittelhof, Nieder- and Oberkrombach, Quadenhof, Roddern, Röttgen, Steckenstein, Vosswinkel |
49 | ... | 388 |
| Köttingerhöhe: Ende, Glatteneichen, Hahn, Köttingen, Mühlenberg, Niesterstein, Paffrath | ... | ... | ... |
| Elbergrund: Altenbrendebach, Bodenseifen, Dohm, Dorn, Grabig, Loche, Neubrendebach, Nieder- and Oberhombach, Struth |
... | 291 | 297 |
Notes and individual references
- ↑ In fact, the fiefdom was given to a total of eight members of the Hatzfeld family. On August 24, 1589, Hermann von Hatzfeld-Werther, Georg von Hatzfeld zu Schweckhausen, Heinrich von Hatzfeld-Wildenburg, Franz von Hatzfeld-Merten, Johann and Wilhelm von Hatzfeld-Weisweiler, Georg and Sebastian von Hatzfeld-Crottorf and Heinrich von Hatzfeld signed up -Oedenthal and Uffeln, a Lehnsrevers of the receipt of the castle and Office Schönstein issue as a hereditary fief.
Web links
- Hatzfeld residents receive Schönstein as a fiefdom from the Electorate of Cologne , in the commemorative publication 600 years of St. Sebastianus Schützenbruderschaft 1402 vom Heister zu Schönstein V. , pp. 32-35 (PDF; 5.8 MB); accessed on February 22, 2018
literature
- Jens Friedhoff : The von Hatzfeldt family: Noble living culture and lifestyle between Renaissance and Baroque , grupello, Düsseldorf, 2004, ISBN 3-89978-025-6