Office Steinheim (Hesse)

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The seat of the bailiffs of Steinheim: the Steinheimer Schloss

The Steinheim office was an office that existed for over 500 years, almost 400 years of which belonged to the Mainz Archbishopric .

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.

Duration

The area of ​​the Steinheim office on an engraving by Matthäus Merian

In 1371, as stated in a document from the Eppsteiner, the office comprised the following villages:

With the exception of Hörstein and Wilmundsheim (later Alzenau ), which formed the Alzenau office around 1500 , and Hausen and Obertshausen, who supplemented the Schönborn office Heusenstamm in 1664 , the composition remained that way until the Steinheim office was dissolved. The numbers in brackets indicate the number of households in 1576 (Jurisdictional book of the Hochstift Mainz)

history

Steinheim Castle - Excerpt from the Topographia Hassiae by Matthäus Merian the Younger 1655

Middle Ages and early modern times

At first the office belonged together with the Steinheimer Burg to the domain of the Lords of Eppstein and formed a closed domain south of the Main . From 1371 half of the office was held as pledge by the Counts of Katzenelnbogen and the Lords of Hanau . In 1393 it came to the Lords of Cronberg as pledge . In 1425 Gottfried von Eppstein sold it to the Electorate of Mainz for 38,000 guilders . From then on, the Archbishop and Elector of Mainz was sovereign. To the south of the Steinheim district was the district of Seligenstadt , which had previously been owned by Kurmainz. The bailiff of Steinheim was, among other things, Obervogt der Biebermark .

In the Steinheim office, the Mainz land law , which was last formally reintroduced in 1755, was considered a particular law . The common law also applied, as far as the Mainz land law did not contain special regulations for a matter. This special rights retained its validity and throughout the 19th century during the affiliation of the area to the Grand Duchy of Hesse and was only on January 1, 1900 by the same across the whole German Reich current Civil Code replaced.

During the Thirty Years' War the Steinheim office was confiscated by King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden and in 1631 the descendants of Hanau Count Heinrich Ludwig (* 1609; † 1632) and Jakob Johann (* 1612; † 1636) , who were allies with him, for their support of Left to the Swedish matter. However, that only lasted until the battle of Nördlingen .

The territorial restructuring of the Napoleonic era brought the Steinheim office predominantly to the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt , while the right-Main parts of the Main finally fell to Bavaria .

Hessian part

In Hesse, the office was continued with the Hessian part as the district bailiff. In the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt, the judicial system was reorganized in an executive order of December 9, 1803. The “Hofgericht Darmstadt” was set up as a court of second instance for the Principality of Starkenburg . The jurisdiction of the first instance was carried out by the offices or the landlords . The court court was the second instance court for normal civil disputes, and the first instance for civil family law cases and criminal cases. The superior court of appeal in Darmstadt was superordinate .

On August 14, 1806, in the course of the founding of the Rhine Confederation , promoted by Napoleon I , against the provision of high military contingents to France, the elevations to the Grand Duchy of Hesse took place for Hesse-Darmstadt , accompanied by the withdrawal of Hesse-Darmstadt from the Holy Roman Empire Nation . The end of the old empire was sealed by the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss and the foundation of the Rhine Confederation and ceased to exist with the laying down of the imperial crown on August 6, 1806 by Emperor Franz II . After Napoleon's final defeat, the Congress of Vienna in 1814/15 also regulated the territorial situation for Hesse, and in 1816 provinces were established in the Grand Duchy. The area previously known as the “Principality of Starkenburg” was renamed “Province of Starkenburg” .

After the Grand Duchy had received a new constitution in 1820, the administrative reform in 1821/22 saw a separation of jurisdiction and administration for the first time at the lower level of offices. District districts were formed for administrative tasks and the places of the "Office Steinheim" were assigned to the newly created district of Seligenstadt . Regional courts were created for jurisdiction in the first instance. Steinheim became the seat of the Steinheim Regional Court, whose area of jurisdiction was congruent with that of the Lindenfels district.

After another administrative reform in 1832, Steinheim belongs to the Offenbach district . Due to the regional reform in Hesse in the 1970s, Steinheim came to the city of Hanau .

See also

literature

  • Günter Hoch: Territorial history of the eastern Dreieich . Marburg 1953, p. 121f.
  • Wilhelm Müller: Hessian place name book . 1st volume (Starkenburg). Darmstadt 1937, pp. 254-260, 395f.
  • Karl Nahrgang: City and District Offenbach aM , Atlas for settlement studies, traffic, administration, economy and culture, Frankfurt a. M., 1963
  • Regina Schäfer: The Lords of Eppstein = Publications of the Historical Commission for Nassau , Wiesbaden 2000.
  • Johann Wilhelm Christian Steiner : History and antiquities of Rodgau in old Maingau . 1833, p. 53 ff . ( read online in Google Book Search [accessed September 26, 2010]).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gisela Rathert u. a .: Nieder-Roden 786-1986, Arbeitskreis für Heimatkunde, 1986, p. 64
  2. ^ Alfred Kurt: City and District of Offenbach in History, Offenbach 1998, p. 45
  3. ↑ Arthur Benno Schmidt : The historical foundations of civil law in the Grand Duchy of Hesse . Curt von Münchow, Giessen 1893, pp. 15, 109.
  4. ^ Richard Wille: Hanau in the Thirty Years' War. Alberti, Hanau 1886, p. 91, 593f.
  5. ^ Ordinance on the division of the country into districts and district courts of July 14, 1821 . In: Hessisches Regierungsblatt No. 33 of July 21, 1821, pp. 403ff.