Anna Salome from Salm-Reifferscheidt

Anna Salome from Salm-Reifferscheidt

Anna Salome von Salm-Reifferscheidt (* October 4, 1622 , † October 15, 1688 in Essen ) was from 1646 to 1688 princess of the imperial-liberal Catholic monastery Essen . Under their rather nominal rule, the monastery, damaged by the Thirty Years' War , was consolidated. Anna Salome promoted counter-Reformation interests in her domain and the interests of the imperial counts within the convent .

Descent and monastery entry

Anna Salome von Salm-Reifferscheidt's parents were former count Ernst Friedrich von Salm-Reifferscheid (1583–1639) and Maria Ursula († 1649), née Countess zu Leiningen . As early as 1628 she was accepted into Thorn Abbey together with her sister Sidonia Elisabeth . A year later, a preamble was added for each of them at the St. Ursula Abbey in Cologne , although the revolts were only presented there two years later. In December 1633 both sisters received prebends in Essen, with Anna Salome taking over that of her older sister Maria Sophia, who had left the monastery. She was released from her residence in Thorn in March 1637.

Collegiate career

In 1638 she was elected provess of the Essen monastery, in 1640 in Thorn she was elected dean . After the death of the Essen abbess Maria Clara von Spaur , who had lived in exile in Cologne since 1622, in 1645 the Archbishop of Cologne Ferdinand of Bavaria and the Count Palatine of the Rhine, Wolfgang Wilhelm , proposed Anna Salome as successor to the Essen chapter . Count Wilhelm Wirich zu Daun-Falkenstein , who resided at Broich Castle, campaigned for her choice, blatantly pointing out the canons' chapter of the wealth of the Salm-Reifferscheidt house and its high reputation in Kurköln and Bavaria. The reason for this was that the Essen Abbey suffered badly economically during the Thirty Years' War. Despite this advocacy, the decision was made in Essen for the papal nuncio's preferred candidate , Anna Eleonora von Staufen , who had headed the Thorner Stift as abbess since 1631. She was already an elderly lady when she was elected and died after less than a year in office, which made the abbess offices in Essen and Thorn vacant again.

Abbess election

In Essen, there were no fewer than four applicants for whom the chapter received letters of recommendation: Claudia Seraphica von Wolkenstein-Rodeneck, Erika Christina von Manderscheid-Blankenheim-Gerolstein, Anna Salome von Salm-Reifferscheidt and Anna Salome von Manderscheid-Blankenheim . Anna Salome continued to receive support from the Archbishop of Cologne in her candidacy, as well as from her brother Ernst Salentin von Salm-Reifferscheidt. Another recommendation came from the ruling Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel , with whom the Salm-Reifferscheidt family was related by marriage. The fact that troops from the House of Hessen-Kassel added to the monastery's possessions was conducive to the choice of Anna Salome, since it was to be expected that this impairment would end with the election of a princess abbess suitable for Hessen-Kassel. It is not certain whether Anna Salome actually aspired to the Essen Abbatiat. Wilhelm Wirich von Daun-Falkenstein, who had supported her the year before, this time stood up for Anna Salome von Manderscheid-Blankenheim and gave the reason that Anna Salome von Salm-Reifferscheidt would prefer to be elected in Thorn. Nevertheless, she was unanimously elected abbess in Essen on June 5, 1646, and two weeks later her sister Anna Catharina was elected in Thorn.

Despite the unanimous vote, it was not entirely certain that Anna Salome would be able to exercise the office of abbess. On the one hand, she was quite young at the age of 24; on the other hand, the House of Hessen-Kassel, which had campaigned for her election, was Protestant. The papal confirmation of Anna Salome was therefore not certain. At the end of July 1646, Anna Salome refused to resign from the economically lucrative office of provostess until she was confirmed as abbess. The informative process initiated by the papal nuncio in Cologne revealed through the sworn questioning of 15 witnesses from Essen and Thorn that Anna Salome was a pious and clever woman. This result evidently satisfied the Curia . Although there is no evidence of papal confirmation, Anna Salome served as abbess for over forty years.

Administration

Consolidation of the pen to the outside

Food during the reign of Anna Salome, engraving by Matthäus Merian (1646)

Anna Salome's term of office was marked by the aftermath of the Thirty Years War and the dispute between the Protestant city of Essen, which was supported by the Elector of Brandenburg, and the Catholic monastery. As abbess she was the sovereign, but the war had meant that Anna Salome first had to re-establish sovereignty. Her predecessor Anna Eleonora had ruled too briefly to change anything in the circumstances that had arisen as a result of Maria Clara's long absence from Spaur. This task was apparently carried out by her advisors alone; there are no comments from Anna Salome's hand in any Essen file.

Anna Salome had the monastery building in Essen, which was devastated in 1641, renovated, as did Borbeck Castle . The Brussels abbess catalog reports that she had the bell tower of the Essen minster re-covered and had a clock attached to it. In addition, the renewal of the organ in 1650 can be attributed to her. In 1652, at the instigation of the Jesuits, Augustinian choir women came to Essen. Anna Salome gave them the building of the Beginenkonvents am Alten Hagen and allowed them to run a girls' school until further notice, which is why she is wrongly assigned the initiative for the establishment. The Catholic school was not accepted by the Protestant townspeople and was soon closed. Anna Salome instrumentalized the missionary work of the Jesuits and Augustinian women choirs for their own purposes, the consolidation of sovereignty against the Protestant urban population of Essen.

Taler from Abbess Anna Salome with her bust

In 1656, Essen introduced its own currency based on the Reichstaler , using the abbesses' coin privilege, which had not been exercised since the abbess Sophia von Gleichen († 1489). In the same year, the abbess won a legal dispute with the city of Essen, which saw itself as a free imperial city and therefore believed that it could determine the coin rate. In 1661 Anna Salome also regained control of the Rellinghausen Abbey , which was a subsidiary founded in Essen, but had become independent in the course of the Middle Ages. In 1670, the Imperial Court of Justice finally ruled on the lawsuit initiated by Abbess Irmgard von Diepholz in 1567 against the city for violating the abbess's privileges and made it clear that the city of Essen was subject to the abbess, but added restrictively that her traditional rights should be retained. Anna Salome accepted the decision, but the city did not. The restriction with regard to the traditional rights ensured that the ongoing dispute between the abbess and the city continued for another hundred years until the decision in the revision was reached . The dispute between the monastery and the city was not always limited to legal arguments. In 1662 Anna Salome caused the Catholic monastery farmers to move into the Protestant city and occupy the city gates. During this action, some citizens of Essen were beaten so badly that they had to be taken care of in the hospital.

Professional politics inside the monastery

Life within the monastery was more peaceful, disputes within the chapter were settled with the help of common relatives. Anna Salome operated a to rich Count oriented interests professional policies by access to the pen for daughters of ennobled prevented nobility. Numerous prebenders went to the daughters of their brothers and sisters, but the ladies' chapter and they prevented the admission of their nieces from the House of Liechtenstein because this family was only prince in 1623 and was therefore not noble enough. Anna Salome had a new sexton building built in 1668 in Elten , where she had also been a canoness from 1654 and held the office of sexton from 1656 (her sister Maria Sophia was abbess there), which was connected to Salm-Reifferscheidt's blood or hereditary testers. Also on the coins that she had struck, next to the inscription Anna Salome D: G Prin: Essend: Comitissa Salmen ( Anna Salome D (ei) G (ratia) Princeps Essend (iensis) Comitissa Salmen (sis) , German Anna Salome by the grace of God, Prince of Essen, Countess of Salm ) the Salm family coat of arms.

Death and succession

Anna Salome died in 1688, despite treatment by Simon Leefmann, who - although of Jewish faith - was her personal physician. Leefmann was also the only doctor based in Essen. After her death, all of her rooms, the monastery archive and the monastery office were locked. In all the churches of the monastery the bells were rung three times for an hour for the next three days, and then for an hour a day for six weeks. Gambling was forbidden in the monastery area for just as long, and the canonesses - including those in the subordinate monasteries of Stoppenberg and Rellinghausen - had to bear mourning. Anna Salome was buried in the nave of the Essen Minster Church. Its epitaph , probably by the Münster sculptor Johann Mauritz Gröninger , is now on the wall of the north aisle in the organ gallery. In the will, which was laid down twelve days before her death, Anna Salome von Salm-Reifferscheidt stipulated that only the nephew who would marry a woman who was qualified for a noble imperial monastery could become her universal heir. At this point in time, her brothers were already dead, and the two nephews were still unmarried. The wife's qualification as a controlling body should ensure equality and thus the preservation of the status. The inheritance was taken over by Franz Ernst von Salm-Reifferscheidt, although he had married a princess von Thurn und Taxis, who, although not equal, brought a very high dowry into the marriage. Despite this unsuitable mother, the daughter Anna Luisa from this marriage was later accepted into the Essen monastery.

Anna Salome's successor as abbess of Essen Monastery was, after some election turmoil, Anna Salome von Manderscheid-Blankenheim , who had been a candidate for this office in 1646.

literature

• Ute Braun: women's wills. Canons, princess-abbesses and their sisters in testimonials from the 17th and 18th centuries. In: Essen contributions. Volume 104, 1991, ISSN  1432-6531 , pp. 11-99.
• Heinz Josef Kramer: The Essen Monastery, coins and medals. Royal and penal coinage in and for food. Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster 1993, ISBN 3-402-06242-9 ( sources and studies 3).
• Ute Küppers-Braun: women of the high nobility in the imperial-free-worldly ladies' monastery Essen (1605-1803). A constitutional and socio-historical study. At the same time a contribution to the history of the Thorn, Elten, Vreden and St. Ursula monasteries in Cologne. Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster 1997, ISBN 3-402-06247-X ( sources and studies 8), (also: Essen, Univ., Diss., 1995).
• Ute Küppers-Braun: Power in women's hands. 1000 years of rule of noble women in Essen. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2002, ISBN 3-89861-106-X .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Küppers-Braun, women of the high nobility, p. 324 f.
2. ^ Küppers-Braun, women of the high nobility, p. 140
3. ^ Küppers-Braun, women of the high nobility, p. 141
4. ^ Küppers-Braun, women of the high nobility, p. 324
5. ↑ Braun, Frauentestamente, p. 42f.
6. ^ Kramer, The Coins and Medals, p. 72
7. ↑ Kramer, p. 73
8. ^ Küppers-Braun, Macht in Frauenhand, p. 99
9. ^ Küppers-Braun, women of the high nobility, p. 142
10. ^ Küppers-Braun, Macht in Frauenhand, p. 54
11. ^ Küppers-Braun, Macht in Frauenhand, p. 185
12. ↑ This worked the very similar epitaph of Maria Franziska from Manderscheid-Blankenheim in the Vredener collegiate church. See Küppers-Braun, Macht in Frauenhand, p. 191
13. ↑ Braun, Frauentestamente, p. 39

Web links

• Illustration of the epitaph