Anna of Oldenburg

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Anna of Oldenburg

Anna von Oldenburg (born November 14, 1501 in Oldenburg ; † September 24, 1575 in Emden ) was Countess of East Friesland and since 1542 guardian regent of the country.

Life

Anna was the daughter of Count Johann V. von Oldenburg and Anne von Anhalt-Zerbst . When she was young, her parents sent her to the Kurbrandenburg Hof in Cölln to be educated . On March 6, 1530 she married the ruling Count of East Friesland , Enno II from the house of Cirksena . After the untimely death of her husband on September 24, 1540, Anna took over the guardianship regency for her underage children in 1542 . She sent her two younger sons to Strasbourg to the Johannes Sturm high school , and her daughters grew up at the court of Friedrich II in Heidelberg .

Her reign , which lasted until 1561 and was supported by the estates , pursued a denominational coexistence system during the complicated Reformation period in an effort to find a balance: Although she personally leaned toward the Reformed denomination , she clearly recognized that, compared to the East Frisian nobility, in which Lutheranism like the Zwinglianism was equally widespread and neither of the two Protestant denominations could be enforced as a territorial denomination. Even Catholics and Spiritualists were still tolerated in her reign in the land and not prevented from doing their religious practice. In 1549, under pressure from the emperor, they forbade the Anabaptists to stay in the county. Her brother, Count Christoph von Oldenburg, was an important advisor and confidante in all matters until his death in 1566 .

Countess Anna issued police regulations in 1545 , in which the judicial system in East Frisia was also reorganized. In addition to administrative tasks, the court chancellery was assigned even more pronounced judicial powers. Councilors and scholars specially appointed for this purpose now formed the chancellery court. It was active in the second or third instance, but also represented the first instance for court servants and the nobility.

Under Anna's rule, the armed conflict with the Harlingerland flared up one last time in 1556 , when the lord of the Harlingerland, Count Johann II von Rietberg, known as “the mad”, seized a stretch of land near Accumer Tief. Anna then sued the Reich Chamber of Commerce and the Lower Rhine-Westphalian Empire . Johann, who had made many enemies in other ways, finally died in 1562 in captivity of the Reichskreis.

Countess Anna made a very serious political decision for the further development of East Frisia when she abolished the first primogeniture introduced by her father-in-law Edzard I by stipulating in 1558 that the government would take over the territory after her reign of her three sons Edzard, Christoph and Johann should be run together. With this move, she presumably wanted to curb the impending influence of the Wasa family in the county, which was established through the marriage of her eldest son Edzard to Katharina Wasa , the eldest daughter of the Swedish King Gustav I. Wasa . However, she took away Edzard's right to sole rule over the county, which de facto resulted in a division of East Frisia - including confessional - because Johann, like his mother, represented the Calvinist , Edzard II the Lutheran faith.

After the death of the second-born son Christoph in 1566, the power struggle that had already arisen between the brothers Edzard and Johann intensified, which on the one hand significantly blocked the exercise of sovereign power and strengthened the nobility and the Emden bourgeoisie. On the other hand, the fratricidal struggle ultimately formed the basis for the coexistence of the creeds in East Frisia: Since neither of the two could prevail against the other, the Lutheran Edzard did not succeed in setting up a Lutheran regional church.

Menso Alting had only been a preacher in Emden for a short time when Countess Anna died on September 24, 1575. At her burial in the family crypt of the Great Church in Emden , the "Moederkerk" of the Reformed Church, he held his first important, Calvinist-influenced funeral sermon .

After Johann's death in 1591, Edzard II was the sole ruler of the county of East Friesland, but his authority had suffered greatly due to the constant disputes. The weakening of the Count's House was a major influencing factor with regard to the differences that led to the so-called " Emden Revolution ".

family

Anna's marriage with Count Enno II had six children:

  • Elisabeth, born January 10, 1531, † September 6, 1555, married Count Johann V von Schaumburg-Pinneberg (1531–1560) in 1553
  • Edzard II. * June 24, 1532, † September 1, 1599
  • Hedwig, born June 29, 1535, † November 4, 1616, married on October 8, 1562 Duke Otto II of Braunschweig-Harburg (1528–1603)
  • Anna, born January 3, 1534, † May 20, 1552
  • Christoph, born October 8, 1536, † September 29, 1566 (in Komárom (Hungary))
  • Johann , born September 29, 1538, † September 29, 1591.

literature

Footnotes

  1. ^ Pauline Puppel: Forms of widow rule . In: Martina Schattkowsky (ed.): Widowhood in the early modern times. Princely and noble widows between foreign and self-determination . Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2003, ISBN 3-936522-79-0 , pp. 139–161, here p. 144.
predecessor Office successor
Enno II. Regent of the county of East Friesland
1540–1561 		Edzard II and Johann
personal data
SURNAME Anna of Oldenburg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION by marriage countess and later regent of East Friesland
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1501
PLACE OF BIRTH Oldenburg
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1575
Place of death Emden