Barbara von Wertheim

Grave slab in the Ev. Wertheim Collegiate Church

Barbara von Wertheim (* 1500 in Gaildorf ; † April 29, 1561 ) was born as a gift from Limpurg . She was the sister of Erasmus Schenk von Limpurg , Bishop of Strasbourg and married to Count Georg II von Wertheim . After his death she became guardian regent (from 1531) of the county of Wertheim and the rule of Breuberg . She was a supporter of the Reformation of the Church. She died on April 29, 1561 and was buried in the Protestant collegiate church in Wertheim , where her grave slab can still be seen today. The inscription reads: In the year after the birth of our Lord / Jesus Christ 1561 on April 29, the well-born fraw Barbara Graui [n] and fraw / zu Wertheim / Born freifraw von Limpurg which / After the blessed departing of the well-born [ n] / Hern Jorgen gray to Wertheim / To Brewberg of your beloved husband / Praiseworthy Gedechtnus one and thirty days / In their widweleid who creates Wertheim / Christian and well ruled their God / A happy uffererstanding bestow Amen CWR.

The portrait is framed by five coats of arms: on the left are the coats of arms of Limpurg and Werdenberg , on the right those of Oettinger and Baden-Sponheim . The coat of arms of Wertheim-Breuberg can be seen above the inscription .

Parentage and years of youth

Barbara von Wertheim was born in 1500 as a gift from Limburg. Her father was Schenk Christoph von Limpurg and the head of the Gaildorfer line ( Schenken von Limpurg ). Her mother was Countess Agnes von Werdenberg (noble family) .

Barbara was brought up in the traditional piety of the old church and, like all children of her noble class, she must have been prepared for her secular tasks according to the motto: "Learn to serve in order to rule." Barbara was destined for a secular career that was the marriage to an imperial count at the time. The young “Fräulein” were also raised for this, because a “noblewoman” had to be able to run the “household” as a “mistress”, raise the children according to their status and properly represent the “landlord” when he was absent .

Schooling should have been important for the Limpurg taverns, because their canons and bishops provided them with academic staff to support them.

At the age of 15 Barbara lost her father, Schenk Christoph, the head of the Limpurg-Gaildorf family. He was a valued and respected knight.

His wife Agnes, Countess von Werdenberg, stayed behind with 12 children, five sons and seven daughters. The role of the mother in relation to guardianship is not known, but the male representatives from the kinship. These were Schenk Georg von Limpurg and Count Christoph von Werdenberg , the mother's brother. In this responsibility as "curator vnd fermunder" they appeared together with Barbara's brother, Wilhelm von Limpurg, in the later official "marriage letter" from Georg II and Barbara von Limpurg.

Of the daughters, only Barbara was married. Her brother and Bishop of Strasbourg, Erasmus Schenk von Limpurg , took on an advisory role , to whom she addressed with so-called "grief letters".

In the Zimmerische Chronik there is also a kind of vision of Barbara, which she is said to have seen in 1523 as a “wonderful face”. A headless rider is said to have ridden “through the cooking” ( cooker flowing past Gaildorf) and then disappeared. This vision was interpreted as an indication of the fall of the rule of the Limpurg-Gaildorf taverns after the death of their father. This vision also reflected the fate of the later Barbara von Wertheim, who had to experience the death of her husband and son and with it the extinction of the male line of Wertheimers.

Marriage to Count Georg II von Wertheim

At the age of 28, very late for the conditions at the time, Barbara married Count Georg II von Wertheim in 1528.

Barbara's marriage was probably not a romantic love marriage, but was part of the noble family planning and strategy of the time. Her deceased father, Christof von Limpurg, was friends with Count Michael II, the father Georg II. (“Many years and times”) and the marriage was supposed to consolidate as “the same friendship and a more reconstructive wish to establish between baiden benanten”.

In 1529 (probably in October) she had a son, Michael III. Barbara was pregnant with her second child when her husband, Count Georg II. Died unexpectedly on April 17th, 1530 (Easter Monday) at Breuberg Castle . A few months later, she gave birth to a daughter who was also baptized Barbara. Her 80-year-old father-in-law, Michael II, officially took over the reign for one year until his death in 1531.

Guardian regent during the Reformation

Already in 1531 it was the Imperial Reichskammergericht transfer the guardianship reign, while in a second step (24 May 1531) as Mitvormünder her brother Schenk Wilhelm von Limpurg and Count Wilhelm IV. Von Eberstein got found a cousin of her husband to the side .

Countess Barbara and the Reformation

As guardian regent, in 1531 she took over the guardianship of her two children as well as the spiritual inheritance of her husband Georg II. He had already introduced reforms step by step in the church under his rule from 1521 in consultation with Martin Luther . Even his father, Michael II, who had taken over the rule again after the death of George II (1530) until his own death in 1531, had not questioned the new intellectual positioning of the son.

Georg II and his theological advisor, the former Franciscan Johann Eberlin von Günzberg († 1533) laid the foundations together. Johannes Eberlin wrote a church ordinance in Wertheim in 1527/28, which was still valid there in 1531 after his departure after Georg's death. Countess Barbara is said to have ordered them to "seriously hold back on these days".

Barbara had met Johann Eberlin as a loyal advisor to her husband and was familiar with his reformatory efforts. It was also based on his church ordinance , which it also decreed to the pastors in the Breuberg rule in 1537 for information.

In her function as guardian regent, Countess Barbara was not allowed to make any decisions on important matters until she had discussed them with her co-guardians.

All the more surprising is the fact that in church matters she usually appeared as the contact person for the pastors in numerous letters and advocated the filling of pastoral positions with Reformation preachers. It is true that the decree of May 14, 1537 reads that this was made in consultation with “our co-guardians”, but her resolute and independent advocacy of the Reformation of the Church in the Breuberg rule was an integral part of her church policy.

In the period that followed, Barbara acted tactically in such a way that she filled the pastoral positions with pastors who were reformation-minded. In doing so, she proceeded cautiously, as there was still no legal basis to remove the legally appointed pastors who remained loyal to the old church.

During the Reformation renewal of the Breuberg rule, Countess Barbara had to struggle with problems that were typical of the 1530s and 1540s in the so-called “peripheral” areas of the country: lack of Reformation pastors, care for the parish families, training of the clergy, Establishment of appropriate schools and financing of teachers, poor and sick care.

In addition, the disaster caused by an epidemic in 1541/42 was dealt with. Pastors, like the rest of the rural population, were dependent on local agricultural yields, which could lead to famine due to drought or floods. Such a situation could quickly lead to an uproar among the rural population. Barbara had already experienced the peasant revolt ( German Peasant War ) in her hometown as a teenager and knew how unpredictable the rural population can be if they felt they were being treated unfairly.

But she must have managed to keep all the problems under control, because there are no known uprisings or even destruction of churches, church furniture and pictures in the Grafschaft Wertheim.

The school education was particularly important to Countess Barbara and she succeeded step by step in achieving "sufficient financial support for this institution".

In the 1540s Barbara was also active as the mother of her son, whom she was accompanied by his cousin, Christoph III. von Limpurg (1531–1574) sent to Wittenberg and Leipzig to study. In a received letter from her to the humanistic scholar, professor in Leipzig and friend of Melanchthon, Joachim Camerarius , we read that her son lived in the house with him in 1544. That was a special appreciation of the young count. Countess Barbara invited Joachim Camerarius to Wertheim, which he would hardly have followed. Michael III In early 1545 wrote a letter to his guardian, Count Wilhelm von Eberbach, to whom he informed that he would return to Wertheim in two months at the request of Wilhelm and his mother. The tension between the emperor and his Protestant opponents and the danger of war seemed to have been the reason for the count's recall.

A letter from the countess to Philipp Melanchthon in the same year shows that Barbara also stood up for the deacon Friedrich Freiyer from Wertheim. She asked Melanchthon to enable him to continue training in Wittenberg. In addition to her son and her nephew, the countess also tried to send other young people to Wittenberg to study theology.

Countess Barbara had to solve the most difficult church political problem after the defeat of the Protestant Schmalkaldic League in the war of 1547 against Emperor Charles V. The victorious emperor enacted an imperial law that was intended as a kind of interim solution ( Augsburger Interim ) for the entire church and also affected the county of Wertheim.

In this situation, Countess Barbara not only relied on her local advisors, but also wrote a “grief letter” to her brother, Bishop Erasmus of Strasbourg, asking him for relief. Erasmus advised his “born, friendly, beloved sister” to adopt the “keyserliche order” and to accept the sovereignty of the bishops of Mainz and Würzburg. Apparently the situation was completely opaque for him, too, since the Strasbourg bishop was unable to give his sister precise advice despite consulting his people.

After his return from Wittenberg and Leipzig, Michael III was. now also involved in the affairs by representing the county at the Augsburg Reichstag . In this context, on October 4, 1547, the old order and statutes of the county were confirmed by the emperor to the count, who was only 18 years old. A year later he was awarded the imperial fiefdom by the emperor, which also included the protective bailiwick over the monasteries and the patronage right for the parishes.

Already in 1550 Michael III. married Katharina von Stolberg, a daughter of Count Ludwig zu Stolberg .

Countess Barbara also succeeded in arranging her daughter Barbara in the “holy marriage” with Count Georg von Ysenburg-Büdingen in 1552 .

Barbara von Wertheim could now withdraw from the government and take over the reign of her son Michael III. left, to which the entire guardianship publicly transferred the government in 1551.

In 1552 Countess Barbara was once again active in church politics when, in the spirit of a self-confident co-regent, she enabled the troops of Margrave Albrecht II of Brandenburg-Kulmbach and his allies to pass through the county. She spoke of “our son brought here”, classifying the son as “the horror of the kingdom”. In doing so, she reminded the margrave of the son's position in the “kingdom of Teuscher nation” and combined this with the duty of an imperial count to participate in the welfare of the German Empire.

Unfortunately, she then had to experience the death of her son, who died on March 14, 1556 at Breuberg Castle. Barbara's granddaughter, who was baptized Barbara after her grandmother, died ten days (March 24th) after her father, so that Count Michael III. remained without heirs.

Barbara von Wertheim died on April 29, 1561 and was buried in the choir of the Wertheim collegiate church, where her tomb commemorates her.

The daughter Barbara von Ysenburg, b. After the death of her husband, Countess von Wertheim († 1600) married Baron Johann von Winneburg in 1577, who “resigned” as a canon and joined the Reformation movement. The discovered letters of the daughter Barbara indicate a profound Protestant piety, which is probably due to the upbringing and the example of her mother. Her daughter-in-law, Katharina von Eberstein, widowed von Wertheim and b. Shortly before her death, von Stolberg campaigned in her will in 1598 for the preservation of the “Augsburg Confession” in the tradition of her father-in-law Georg II, her first husband, Michael III, and her father, Ludwig von Stolberg. This indicates a historical awareness of the Reformation tradition in the Grafschaft Wertheim at the end of the 16th century, which would be unthinkable without the courageous, clever and convincing work of Countess Barbara von Wertheim. Even today she may be seen as role models for women who like to deal with the beginnings of the Reformation movement.

literature

• Joseph Aschbach: History of the Counts of Wertheim from the earliest times to their extinction in the male line in 1556 . Second part. Wertheim document book. With twelve coats of arms and seal plates. Frankfurt am Main 1843
• Hermann Ehmer: The Counts of Wertheim and the Reformation of the Breuberg rule , in: Churches in the Breuberger Land. Rai-Breitenbach, ed. on behalf of the Höchst Monastery Fund by Pastor Thomas Geibel, Höchst 1989, pp. 9–35
• Hermann Ehmer: Count Michael III. von Wertheim (1529–1556) , in: Churches in the Breuberger Land. Sandbach. Wald-Amorbach, ed. on behalf of the Höchst Monastery Fund by Pastor Paul Trupp, Höchst 1992, pp. 74–89
• Hermann Ehmer: Countess Barbara von Wertheim and the Reformation in Rai-Breitenbach , in: City of Breuberg. 1200 years of Rai-Breitenbach, ed. from the local advisory board Rai-Breitenbach, Breuberg 1997, pp. 139–145
• Gardis Jacobus-Schoof, good evening, Countess Barbara von Wertheim! A reading scene for three women on the life of Countess Barbara von Wertheim, née Schenkin von Limpurg (1500–1561), guardianship regent at the time of the Reformation, in: Courageous, intelligent and convincing - Women of the Reformation (not only) in the southwest, publisher Landesstelle for Protestant adult and family education in Baden (EEB), editor: Franziska Gnändinger, Landesstelle EEB, Evang. Oberkirchenrat, Karlsruhe 2016, pp. 7–34
• Erich Langguth: New building blocks for the Reformation history of the Breuberg rule , in: Churches in the Breuberger Land. Sandbach. Wald-Amorbach, ed. on behalf of the Höchst Monastery Fund by Pastor Paul Trupp, Höchst 1992, pp. 45–73
• Michael Weber: Barbara von Wertheim - Guardian Regent in the Reformation , in: "gelurt", Odenwälder Jahrbuch für Kultur und Geschichte 2017, published by the district archive of the Odenwald, editor Anja Hering, Erbach 2016, pp. 41–55
• Thomas Wehner: Development of the Lutheran church system and introduction of the Reformation in the reign of Breuberg under the countess widow Barbara (p. 222–225), in: Wertheim, Catholic life and church reform in the age of religious schism / Association documents of the society for the publication of the Corpus Catholicorum, ed . by Klaus Ganzer, Vol. 52: The Territories of the Reich in the Age of Reformation and Confessionalization. Land und Konfession 1500–1650, 4, Münster 1992, pp. 214–232

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hermann Ehmer: Countess Barbara von Wertheim and the Reformation in Rai-Breitenbach . Ed .: Rai-Breitenbach local advisory board on behalf of the city of Breuberg. City of Breuberg - 1200 years of Rai-Breitenbach. Breuberg 1997, p. 139 .
2. ↑ Gerrit Deutschländer: Learning to serve in order to rule. Courtly education in the late Middle Ages (1450-1550) . Berlin 2012.
3. ^ Michael Weber: Barbara von Wertheim - Guardian Regent in the Reformation . In: Kreisarchiv des Odenwaldkreises (Hrsg.): "Gelurt" Odenwälder yearbook for culture and history 2017 . Erbach 2016, p. 42 .
4. ↑ Gerd Wunder / Max Schefold / Herta Beutter: The taverns of Limpurg and their country . Sigmaringen 1982.
5. ^ Heinrich Prescher: History and description of the imperial county Limpurg belonging to the Franconian district . Stuttgart 1789, p. 195 ff .
6. ^ Josef Aschbach: History of the Counts of Wertheim . Part II, document book. Frankfurt 1843, p. 331 ff .
7. ↑ Karl August Barack (ed.): Zimmerische Chronik . 2nd Edition. tape III . Freiburg 1881, p. 66 .
8. ^ Josef Aschbach: History of the Counts of Wertheim ... 1843, p. 331 f .
9. ^ Hermann Ehmer: Count Michael III. von Wertheim (1529-1556) . In: Höchst Klosterfonds / Paul Trupp (ed.): The churches in the Breuberger Land. Sandbach. Forest Amorbach . Höchst 1992, p. 74 ff .
10. ↑ Michael Weber: Barbara von Wertheim ... 2016, p. 44 f .
11. ↑ Erich Langguth: Unanimous in the new teaching: Dr. Johann Eberlin - Count Michael II. - Dr. Andreas Hoffrichter. The change in the rectory in Wertheim in 1530 . In: Historischer Verein Wertheim in connection with the Wertheim State Archives (ed.): Wertheimer Jahrbuch 1983 . Historical Association Wertheim eV, Wertheim 1985, p. 73 ff .
12. ^ Christian Peters: Johann Eberlin von Günzberg (approx. 1465 - 1533). Franciscan reformer, humanist and conservative reformer . In: Gustav Adolf Benrath (ed.): Sources and research on the history of the Reformation . tape 60 . Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 1994, p. 299 .
13. ↑ Michael Weber: Barbara von Wertheim ... 2016, p. 48 .
14. ↑ Michael Weber: Barbara von Wertheim ... 2016, p. 99 ff .
15. ↑ Erich Langguth: New building blocks for the Reformation history of the Breuberg rule . In: Paul Trupp / Höchster Klosterfonds (ed.): Churches in the Breuberger Land. Sandbach. Forest Amorbach . Höchst 1992, p. 52 f .
16. ^ Thomas Wehner: Wertheim . In: Klaus Ganzer (ed.): Catholic life and church reform in the age of religious schism / The territories of the empire in the age of the Reformation and denominationalization. Country and confession 1500-1650, Central Germany . tape 52 , no. 4 . Aschendorff, Münster 1992, p. 223 .
17. ↑ Michael Weber: Barbara von Wertheim ... 2016, p. 52 .
18. ^ Friedrich Wecken: Two letters from Countess Barbara von Wertheim to Camerarius and Melanchthon . In: Journal of Church History . tape 30 , 1909, pp. 444-447 .
19. ↑ Give Erasmus von Limpurg, Bishop of Strasbourg: Letter . Wertheim State Archives, StWt G - Rep 47 No. 49, Wertheim.
20. ↑ Michael Weber: Barbara von Wertheim ... 2016, p. 53 .
21. ^ Josef Aschbach: History of the Counts of Wertheim ... 1843, p. 367 f .
22. ↑ Barbara Countess von Isenburg: Letters . Ed .: State Archive Baden-Württemberg / State Archive Ludwigsburg. StAL B 113 I_Buc 507.
23. ↑ Michael Weber: Barbara von Wertheim .... 2016, p. 47 .
24. ↑ Gardis Jacobus-Schoof: Good evening, Countess Barbara! In: State Office for Evangelical Adult Education in Baden (ed.): Courageous, clever and convincing - women of the Reformation (not only) in the southwest . Karlsruhe 2016, p. 7 - 34 .