Bardengau

Ostfalen around the year 1000

The Bardengau is a historical landscape that in the Middle Ages extended roughly over the area of today's districts of Lüneburg and Uelzen as well as the adjacent parts of the districts of Harburg , Lüchow-Dannenberg and the Heidekreis . The main town was probably Bardowick . With the Old Salt Road from Lüneburg to Lübeck and its Elbe crossing at Artlenburg and the opposite Ertheneburg , an important medieval traffic route led from Bardengau to the Baltic Sea area .

According to the older opinion, the Bardengau is said to have been an administrative district. After that, the Bardengau would have been divided into the 6 Gogerichte Ebstorf, Schmarphe or Munster, Bertensen, Oldenbrügge or Modestorp, Barskamp and Dahlenburg or Wibeck. A breakdown into the 13 main and regional courts Amelinghausen , Eight Ramelsloh, Pattensen, Neuland, Masch, Bardowick, Artlenburg, Bleckede, Bleckeder Marsch, the court of Bruchdörfer, Land Ülzen, Land Bodenteich and court Suderburg was suspected. Most of the cited dishes are said to have been Gohe as well, because originally all areas in the tribal duchy of Saxony would have been divided into Gohe.

In historical science, however, there is now consensus that, unlike counties, Gaue do not represent jurisdictions or domains. From the medieval written sources it can only be inferred that the area and its inhabitants were perceived as independent by the Frankish annalists within Saxony and among the Saxons. A Bardengau is mentioned for the first time in 780. The Reichsannals note that omnes Bardongavenses et multi de Nordleudi were baptized in Orhaim, which is commonly identified with Ohrum . In the Annales Mettenses there is talk of a pagum quod dicitur Bordengavich . The next time Bardengau is mentioned in 785 in the Reichsannalen; At that time, Charlemagne marched there with army power and made the fugitive Widukind and his generous (brother-in-law or son-in-law) Abbio the proposal to be baptized and to stop the fighting. In 795, according to the Annales Petaviani , Charlemagne moved again to the Bardengau (paco Badinc) and camped either at Hliuni (Lüneburg?) Or Bardunwih (Bardowick), to join his army there with that of his ally, the Abodritian ruler Witzan , to unite. After the latter was slain by the Saxons while crossing the Elbe, the Franks devastated large parts of the Bardengau and returned to Aachen with a large number of hostages .

There is no evidence for the idea of the Bardengau as a unified Gaugrafschaft . Instead, Liudolfinger , Bardonen and the ancestors of the later Billunger counts seem to have exercised their possessions in Bardengau side by side. As the first count with possessions in Bardengau, Ekbert († before 932) becomes tangible in 892 . This is counted among the ancestors of the Billungers and received from King Arnolf of Carinthia in return for his support, first in the summer and then again in the winter of 892, a total of 66 Königshufen, each with 60 acres of arable land, including property in Wrestedt .

Next appear the two brothers Wichmann I. the Elder (* around 900–944) and Hermann Billung , the founder of the Billunger family, as counts in Bardengau in the documents and chronicles. You were probably related to Count Ekbert.

Via the Billungers and their successors, the Guelphs , the Bardengau became the core area of the Duchy of Lüneburg . In 1142, the name of the landscape as Bardengau was last used in a document from Bishop Thietmar von Verden.

literature

Wilhelm Carl Conrad v. Hammerstein-Loxten: The Bardengau. A historical study of its circumstances and the Billunger's property. Hahn, Hanover 1869 ( books.google.de ).
Jürgen Peter Ravens : From the Bardengau to the Lüneburg district: history, politics, economy, culture of the communities in the Lüneburg area. Nordlanddruck, Lüneburg 1969.

Remarks

^ Caspar Ehlers : Saxony as Saxon bishops. The church politics of the Carolingian and Ottonian kings in a new light. In: Matthias Becher , Alheydis Plassmann : Controversy at court in the early Middle Ages. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89971-884-3 , pp. 95–120, here p. 99.
^ Matthias Becher: Non enim habent regem idem Antiqui Saxones. Constitution and ethnogenesis in Saxony during the 8th century. In: Hans-Jürgen Häßler (Hrsg.): Studies on Saxony research . Volume 12, 1999, pp. 1–31, here p. 26.
↑ DD Arn 102 .
↑ DD Arn 106 .
^ Albert K. Hömberg : Westphalia and the Saxon Duchy. Aschendorff, Münster 1963, p. 18 f.

[1] Caspar Ehlers : Saxony as Saxon bishops. The church politics of the Carolingian and Ottonian kings in a new light. In: Matthias Becher , Alheydis Plassmann : Controversy at court in the early Middle Ages. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89971-884-3 , pp. 95–120, here p. 99.

[2] Matthias Becher: Non enim habent regem idem Antiqui Saxones. Constitution and ethnogenesis in Saxony during the 8th century. In: Hans-Jürgen Häßler (Hrsg.): Studies on Saxony research . Volume 12, 1999, pp. 1–31, here p. 26.

[3] DD Arn 102 .

[4] DD Arn 106 .

[5] Albert K. Hömberg : Westphalia and the Saxon Duchy. Aschendorff, Münster 1963, p. 18 f.