Eyba

Eyba City of Saalfeld / Saale Coordinates: 50 ° 36 ′ 32 ″  N , 11 ° 20 ′ 11 ″  E
Height :	546 m above sea level NN
Residents :	170
Incorporation :	January 1, 1997
Incorporated into:	Saalfelder Höhe
Postal code :	07318
Area code :	036736
View of Eyba

Eyba is a district of the city of Saalfeld / Saale in the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district in Thuringia .

geography

Eyba is located south of the district town of Saalfeld on the Saalfelder Höhe at about 550 meters above sea level and is inhabited by 170 citizens. The agriculturally cultivated plateau around the place lies on the eastern roof of the Thuringian Slate Mountains at the transition to the Southeast Thuringian Slate Mountains .

Distant view of Eyba

history

According to the general history of settlement, assumptions that a manor already existed in the 9th or 10th century can be denied. The Lords of Koenitz , whose ancestral seat was Koenitz Castle , may have been the founders of the Siedelhof and the village of Eyba. Although members of this sex often appear as participants or witnesses in documents from the 11th to 13th centuries, no conclusions can be drawn about their place of residence, especially about Eyba. Nonetheless, the 12th century can be considered as the founding period, because some stylistic elements of the Marienkirche in Eyba suggest that building activity was already taking place at this time. When the church was rebuilt in 1719/20 , parts of the old church remained, including the Romanesque arched window and the sacrament niche in the chancel. The place was first mentioned and archived on February 14, 1332. Another source dates the first documented mention to 1348: Albrecht von Koenitz has a dispute with a Mr. Rüdiger: "... that is the Voyteye zu Ywe, the estate zue Arnoldisgereute zu Wicindorf zu Volcmanstorf and what goes from the aforementioned Mr. zue Lene, that Heinrichs von Beulwitz has been… ”.

Castle and landlords

After the Lords of Koenitz , several feudal families were later owners. In peaceful times, the trade route was always an asset. It had a negative effect on the village and the surrounding area when acts of war were in progress. The lords of Koenitz were feudal people of the Counts of Schwarzburg . In 1414 Heinrich von Koenitz and his wife Käthe sat on Eyba. The couple, who were probably childless, sold their property in 1420/21 to their relatives, the brothers Hartmann II. And Jürgen von Könitz zu Kaulsdorf . In 1435 they shared their property, which included Kaulsdorf and Eyba, among others, also Lichtentanne . At that time Eyba was a desert. In 1442 Jürgen, also known as Georg or Jörg, sat with "Ywe", which had come to him when the division was divided. He now also owned the Wickersdorf sub-plant, which is named for the first time in the “division slip”, but which was apparently also desolate. Jürgen should have repopulated Eyba and can therefore be considered its second founder. After his death in 1454 his son Michel von Koenitz was enfeoffed with Eyba and this was followed by his son Hartmann III in 1489. Because of his property in Saalfeld Stiftsdörfern he was also a vassal of the Benedictine Abbey Saalfeld, where he held the office of chairman of the feudal court. In 1499 he bought the village of Knobelsdorf from Ulfrich zu Schweinbach, thereby gaining more servants for his estate. The large mouthpiece was kept in Eyba until 1915, with which the Knobelsdorfer Anspänner were once called 2.5 kilometers across the Gißratal from a window of the castle to the Frone. The childless couple Harmann III. and in 1513 Elisabeth donated a chapel to the Franciscan Church in Saalfeld. As Hartmann III. died, inherited the property Peter I. zu Lichtentanne, and after his death in 1552 his son Peter II was enfeoffed with Eyba. His brother Hartmann IV was a co-lender.

Eyba Castle

In 1553–1555 they had a new castle built on the foundations of the old Siedelhof in Eyba, the main parts of which still exist today. Peter II died in 1558. His inheritance fell to his brother Hartmann IV. With that, the entire Koenitz property was now in one hand. Hartmann IV moved to Eyba around 1569 and gave up the Lichtentanne estate. In 1569 he established a parish office in Eyba. Until then, the church had belonged to Hoheneiche as a branch. The Eyba succession came in 1621, after the death of Veit Ulrich I, a son of Hartmann IV, his son Hans Adam. During the time of his reign one of the most terrible chapters in Eyba history fell, the Thirty Years War . While Eyba's location on the old Leipzig- Nuremberg trade route was a blessing in peaceful times, it turned the village into a curse in times of war. Hardly any other place in the Saalfelder Höhe has suffered so from looting, violence, murder and devastating epidemics. Most of the troop movements between Saalfeld and Graefenthal that have come down to us took place via Eyba. Friend and foe did not differ in their ruthless and brutal behavior.

In 1638 the plague raged in Eyba, and the vast majority of the population fell victim to it. The tradition that there were ultimately only two people left has been refuted by historical research, but the fact of mass extinction has been proven and even archaeologically verifiable. The Müller-Steinersche Chronik reports: “In 1868 two corpses were in the old plague hole, which was otherwise also a churchyard, now in the new cemetery,” and further “there were the bones, crosswise and one cubit high Lagen, not yet rotten in 1868. ”The latter statement was confirmed several times in the 20th century when digging graves. The few inhabitants who returned from their places of refuge after the epidemic was extinguished were largely deprived of their livelihoods. But the ascent went faster than you might think. Hans Adam's son, Bernhard Alexander, did everything in his power to repopulate the village, of course in his own best interest. As early as 1653, only two farm estates were unoccupied, as the great Fronrezess of 1653 proves. A nephew of Bernhard Alexander, Johann Ernst von Koenitz, inherited the property in 1681. He sold the Kaulsdorf property to his brother-in-law there and bought Knobelsdorf again, which had passed to his brother Hans Dietrich when an inheritance was divided. Eyba experienced a certain heyday under Johann Ernst. In 1686, after a number of requests from the count's authorities, he initiated the establishment of a school, after the pastor Andreas Bock had taught the children “of his own free will” in a winter school. The noble-thinking man of God did this, although the 41 years of his pastorate were marked by a constant fight with his patron saint to improve his pay .

In 1719/20, Johann Ernst also had the church built on the remains of a previous church. A new hereditary burial was built on the northern side for the rulership, as the crypt under the church had long been overcrowded. Two grandchildren of Johann Ernst von Könitz shared the property in 1740. Johann Adam Friedrich took over the Saxon part, ie mainly Wickersdorf, his brother Anton Ludwig Carl got the Schwarzburg part, ie Eyba and Knobelsdorf. This last gentleman was hard to beat in contentiousness, aristocratic pride and at the same time economic ineptitude. The burden of debt grew so that the Eyba manor had to be sold. Anton Ludwig Carl died in 1791 in Saalfeld in meager circumstances. The pastor of Eyba, Mahlis, tells us about the difficult years of the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) and what the village had to endure in the church book. Billing, looting, contributions and willful destruction drove the peasants and smallholders to the brink of ruin. 500, 600, even up to 1000 soldiers of the war camped at the same time for days and weeks in Eyba and had to be fed. To make matters worse, a major fire on April 23, 1762 destroyed eight farms. In 1719/20 the church of St. Mary was rebuilt. When the previous church was built is also unknown. In 1881 the church received an organ from the workshop of Carl Lösche from Rudolstadt. The manor was bought in 1781 by the Saxon-Hildburghausen court marshal and privy councilor Carl Friedrich von Stocmeier. This family was respected by their Eyba subjects, as they showed mildness and human affection, very different from their Koenitz predecessors. The legend of the kind family, especially the wife of the privy councilor, Isabell von Stocmeier, and the daughter Caroline, lived among the Eybaern in the oral tradition until the 20th century. It must have been a contemplative time in which the Eybaers endured the nonetheless persistent fiefs, interest and compulsory burdens without grumbling. That changed quickly when in 1803 the only daughter of the Stocmeiers married the Saxon-Meiningischen chamberlain Adolf von Fischern from Liebenstein. Uncompromisingly, he again increased the pressure on the villagers, who, however, had long since ceased to put up with everything. In the meantime, Napoleons had ravaged the country with war in 1806 , and the Saalfelder Höhe had to endure dire hardships and fears again, not to mention the economic consequences. It made no difference whether the troops passing through on the trade route were French or Prussians, Bavarians or Russians. Even the lord of the castle did not get off scot-free when mainly officers billeted in the castle. Caroline von Fischern died in 1849, her husband in 1861. For years a whole host of relatives fought over the inheritance of the childless couple.

When he passed away, Adolf von Fischern received bad marks in the Müller-Steiner peasant chronicle. Not surprising, since he had created enough opponents with his eternal quarrels and the insistence on feudal rights, the decline of which he had to watch quite powerlessly during his reign. After the front door had already fallen to the landlord in 1825 after the farmers had paid high transfer fees, he had to accept the loss of the hand front without compensation under the impression of the events of 1848. Finally, in 1856 the peasants' loan and interest obligations were redeemed.

In 1897 the fishermen on Eyba had run away. The manor was acquired by the state of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. Thanks to a large-scale exchange of land between the manor and the peasants of the village, princely officials succeeded in creating two contiguous state forest districts, the Schwarzer Berg forest district and the Mühlberg / Goldberg forest district, the land areas that came back into focus in 1945/46 Interest increased and in the course of the land reform were divided between poor and landless farmers in Eyba, Arnsgereuth and Reschwitz. The palace and the Herrengarten did not return to private hands until 1910. Until 1918 the place belonged to the sovereignty of the Principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt . It was the westernmost corner of the Leutenberg area.

The manor and the castle were always at the center of social development, even in 1945/46 when the manor and the forest were divided among resettlers and poor farmers. A little later, these followed the path of East German agriculture up to the present day.

literature

• Gerhard Werner: On the history and architecture of Eyba Castle (Part 1). In: Rudolstädter Heimathefte. Vol. 53, Issue 11/12, 2007, ISSN  0485-5884 , pp. 300-306.
• Gerhard Werner: On the history and architecture of Eyba Castle (part 2). In: Rudolstädter Heimathefte. Vol. 54, Issue 1/2, 2008, pp. 4-11.

Web links

Commons : Eyba  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Private website for the place

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wolfgang Kahl : First mention of Thuringian towns and villages. A manual. 5th, improved and considerably enlarged edition. Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza 2010, ISBN 978-3-86777-202-0 , p. 73.
2. ^ Copy book in the Thuringian State Archives in Rudolstadt.
3. ↑ Saalfelder Höhe # history