Christoph von Rantzau

Christoph von Rantzau (* ~ 1623 on Gut Schmoel ; † January 16, 1696 in Cologne ) was a landowner who led witch trials against his peasants in 1666 and 1686 and freed them from serfdom in 1688 as the first landlord in Holstein .

Life

Christoph von Rantzau was the only son of Heinrich von Rantzau (1590–1644) and Ida von Pogwisch (1605–1659) who survived his parents . His father was governor of the Danish king in Glückstadt and owner of the noble estates Schmoel, Hohenfelde and Övelgoenne in Holstein, as well as Højbygård and Hvolgaard in Denmark. Övelgönne and Hvolgaard had brought their mother into the marriage. After the death of her husband, she had sole control over all of his property.

Rantzau first attended the Sorö Knight Academy and in 1645 went to Leiden to study . On the way there, he witnessed the peace talks in Munster that were supposed to end the Thirty Years' War , and established first contacts with Jesuits . After a short time he continued his studies in Amsterdam , where he devoted himself above all to the Church Fathers . In the Netherlands he was impressed by the religious tolerance practiced there . In 1647 he returned home. In 1649 he went to the University of Helmstedt , where the Irishman Georg Calixt , who was decried as a syncretist in Lutheran orthodoxy, taught.

In his first marriage, Rantzau married Salome Rantzau from Knoop († around 1675). The marriage remained without offspring.

Conversion to Catholicism

In the autumn of the same year 1649 Rantzau went to Rome to participate in the jubilee year 1650. Like his cousin Elisabeth von Rantzau a few years earlier, he converted to Catholicism under the influence of Lukas Holste . Calixt tried to prevent his pupil from taking this step with a letter, which Rantzau justified with Catholica epistola responsoria ad Georgii Calicti ... dehortatoriam à fide catholica . Certainly because of this conversion, Rantzau was on August 20, 1651 in Vienna by Emperor Ferdinand III. raised to the rank of count and probably appointed to the Reichshofrat with a seat and vote on the Austrian Herrenbank on August 29, 1651, even before his departure.

In the following years Rantzau was mostly traveling. Since his imperial offices were not very profitable, he was denied a career as a Catholic in Denmark and he was also financially dependent on his mother, he tried to find a canon - benefice in Heidelberg , but in vain. After the death of his mother, he litigated his sister Lucia Ölgard von Burchersroda nee for years. Rantzau (1635–1705) for the Holstein goods. Only after these were awarded to him in 1672 did he return to Holstein. Thanks to his skillful management, he was able to support needy converts as well as the Catholic mission in Schleswig-Holstein and Scandinavia with numerous charitable foundations.

In 1679 Rantzau married Hedwig Dorothea of ​​Schleswig-Holstein-Norburg (1636-1692), a daughter of Duke Friedrich of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Norburg from his second marriage to Eleonore von Anhalt-Zerbst . She was canon in the Protestant monastery in Gandersheim from 1651 and abbess and thus imperial princess from 1665 . However , she had to give up the position of abbess , which she had held for 12 years, when she converted to Catholicism in July 1678. She was therefore completely without possessions because her father's duchy had gone bankrupt in 1669. The lavish lifestyle she was used to did not match his frugality. Therefore, they did not live long together, but went on trips separately. In November 1681, Hedwig Dorothea, now 45 years old, reported the birth of her son Alexander Leopold Anton († 1747) from Rome . He received his first name in honor of his godmother, the former Swedish Queen Christina from the House of Vasa, who also lived in Rome and who called herself Maria Alexandra after her conversion. Despite the assurances of his brother-in-law Anton Ulrich von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel , Rantzau remained suspicious of whether the child was his son. Although Hedwig Dorothea swore on her return from Rome that the child was legitimate, he did not believe her. The couple fell out. Dorothea Hedwig moved with her son to Hamburg, where she died in 1692. In 1695 Rantzau officially denied paternity and excluded the boy from inheritance.

Witch trials and serf liberation

In 1686 Rantzau sentenced a total of eighteen serfs to death for witchcraft in three sensational trials (two in Schmoel, one in Övelgoenne) . The starting point of the trials was a disease that had killed several residents of the villages belonging to Gut Schmoel in March 1686. Two women, Mette Schlan and Margrethe Harder, accused each other of causing the disease through magic. When the husband of Margrethe Harder, who was meanwhile also ill, brought charges against Mette Schlan, Rantzau ordered the arrest and questioning of the accused. According to the minutes of this hearing, he had already carried out witch trials 20 years earlier , which resulted in several people being burned. Mette Schlan had already been "said" back then, but was released because nothing could be proven to her. This time she "confessed" that she had caused the disease by spreading ergot and named six other accomplices, including her own father. Four of the accused were tortured and confessed. One of them managed to escape from prison after being interrogated. The other four defendants had Rantzau strangled and burned at the stake on the day the judgment was pronounced on April 23, 1686 , although they revoked their confessions in front of the Giekau pastor Johann Christoph Linekogel.

Only a few days later, residents of the villages belonging to Rantzau's estates appeared at the landlord and charged around 20 people with damaging magic . These included relatives of those who had already been executed and people whom one of the accused had named in the first trial. Some of the accused fled the manor, while others were arrested and tortured. On May 10, Rantzau finally sentenced eleven women and men witches, including those who escaped after the first trial, to death and had them strangled and cremated the following day. Pastor Linekogel and Pastor Claussen von Lütjenburg at least asked in vain for the lives of those who declared themselves innocent despite torture, including Siecke Sehmer, a pregnant woman whose execution was forbidden even in the Hexenhammer . Three weeks later, villagers from Övelgönne estate accused two neighbors of witchcraft. These were subjected to the water test. Further arrests were made in the course of the negotiations. Finally, on June 30, 1686, three alleged witches were burned.

At the beginning of June 1686 at the latest, Pastor Linekogel Rantzaus reported witch trials to the general superintendent for the royal share of Holstein, Hermann Erdmann. Rantzau tried to vilify the pastor with his patron Cai von Rantzau von Gut Neuhaus and with the general superintendent. Based on the information provided by the pastor, however, the sovereigns, Duke Christian Albrecht and the Danish King Christian V , started an investigation into "informal procedures" because, as the landowner, Rantzau had high jurisdiction over his serfs, but he would have legal counsel for them have to ask. Above all, executions without a confession and without interviewing witnesses were illegal according to the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina . His Danish estate, Højbygård, was confiscated from the Crown.

Fearing the consequences of his breach of the law, Rantzau left Holstein in September 1686 and went to Cologne to end the process from there. He even appealed to the Reich Chamber of Commerce because, as a Catholic, he was allegedly disadvantaged by the evangelical councils. In 1688 he finally gave all his subjects a charter which freed them from serfdom , probably in the hope that his leniency would move the government to a gracious judgment. However, in 1690 he was sentenced to a fine of 20,000 Reichstalers and lost jurisdiction. Rantzau did not return to Holstein. Since he did not pay the fine, the Danish king and the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf brought legal proceedings against him again, so that Rantzau was finally forced to sell his Holstein goods. He bequeathed his property to a number of foundations for poor Catholics and religious institutes, some of which he set up in the last days of his life.

The license to the farmers was revoked as early as 1695 when Rantzau sold his goods to Johann Georg von Dernath. Although the peasants went to court several times, they received no law in 1741 or 1768–1777. Serfdom did not end on Schmoel until around 1800.

Inheritance dispute

In 1695, Christoph von Rantzau had denied the paternity of Alexander and excluded Alexander from the inheritance. After Christoph's death there were trials due to the considerable inheritance that dragged on until 1705. Christoph's sister Lucie Ölgard von Burckersroda tried to prove with bribed witnesses that Alexander was not Christoph's biological son, but a foundling from the hospital for foundlings Santo Spirito in Rome , where every new foundling carries the "Cross of the Holy Spirit" on its foot get tattooed. The Jesuits of Cologne also tried with all possible means to gain full access to Christoph's immense fortune, although he had already given them "several million", as Alexander's son Georg Ludwig Albrecht von Rantzau reports in Volume 2 of his memoirs. Alexander's guardian Johannes Arragoni sent him to the reformatory in Koudekerke for his own protection in May 1698 . It was not until April 1699 that Alexander was left to the education and care of the Duke of Braunschweig. Although an investigation in January 1699 allegedly showed that the aunt's suspicions were justified, Arragoni managed to get the Dutch court in 1706 provisionally awarding Alexander the Dutch possession of Count Christoph Rantzau. In 1713 the property was finally transferred from Christoph Rantzau to Alexander.

progeny

Alexander was taken in and raised by his aunt on his mother's side at the Wolfenbüttel court in April 1699. In his 1699 letter to the Electress Sophie, Leibniz described his conversation with Duke Anton Ulrich about Alexander, who had just arrived in Wolfenbüttel. Leibniz concluded the letter with the assessment that the whole story about the young count was full of strange and fictional things. From then on Alexander was considered the son of the duke's sister-in-law and Count Christoph Rantzau and thus a family member. After receiving his appointment as ensign of the body company on December 13, 1700 in Wolfenbüttel, he did not make it to general, as is claimed in many places, but in 1707 he received his departure as captain.

In 1702 Alexander married Catharina Sophia von Hoym (1684–1748). One of his six sons, Christoph Ferdinand Anton von Ranzow (1711–1802), made a career as a Dutch lieutenant colonel and Landdrost of Ceylon and left behind numerous descendants. His grandson Ludvig Carl von Ranzow (1787–1865) was resident secretary in Madoera on Java; his great-grandson Ferdinand Heinrich von Ranzau was governor of Java .

Alexander's son Georg Ludwig Albrecht Graf von Ranzow (1714–1786) became a French field marshal and, with his memoirs, especially the first volume, left posterity a rich historical original source for further research.

Literature / sources

• Wolfgang Prange : Christoph Rantzau on Schmoel and the Schmoel bondage trials. Neumünster 1965 (sources and research on the history of Schleswig-Holstein 49).
• Wolfgang Prange: Rantzau, Christoph Graf von . In: Biographical Lexicon for Schleswig-Holstein and Lübeck 3, 260f.
• Jürgen Stillig: Jesuits, heretics and converts, studies on religion and education in the Hildesheim monastery in the early modern period . Hildesheim 1993; Pp. 273-298.
• Manfred Jacobsen: Christoph von Rantzau and his witch trials. Good Schmoel in the dark . Self-loss of the Home History Working Group in the Panker Office, Hohenfelde 1996 (pdf, accessed on September 26, 2017).
• Georg Ludwig Albrecht von Rantzau: Mémoires du Comte de Rantzow . Pierre Mortier Amsterdam, 1741 and translation of vol. 1 into German by Renate Ricarda Timmermann: Die Memoiren des Graf von Rantzau , Profund-Verlag 2015, ISBN 978-3-932651-14-4
• Louis Bobé : Stamtavle over Slaegten Rantzau . Saertryk af Danmarks Adels Aaarbog JH Schultz Bogtrykkeri, Kjobenhavn, 1930, p. 150
• Ernst Heinrich Kneschke: German count houses of the present 2nd part . Printed by JB Hirschfeld in Leipzig, 1853, p. 244
• CC van Valkenberg, Koninklijk Nederlandsch Genootschap voor Geslacht- en Wapenkunde: Alexander Leopold Anthon von Ranzow, a person of princely blood in the house of correction at Koudekerk, lecture Sept. 1980, in English by Otto Schutte, publisher De Nederldsche Leeuw, Internet version by William Addams Reitwiesner
• Werner Vollmar, The Counts of Ranzow in Holzminden and some of their descendants , in: Archive for Family History Research (AfF), issue 1/2014, pp. 9-26
• Same. The family of the stable master Michael Gebauer in Wittenberg and Leipzig (died 1723) , in the same place, SS. 26-29
• www.online-ofb.de (Holzminden: Ortsfamilienbuch)
• Plas, NN van der, Rantzau and other descendants: Dutch Rantzau's (sic!); http://home.hccnet.nl/vdplas/doc/ef.htm

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stillig (Lit.), p. 275
2. ↑ Stillig (Lit.), p. 278
3. ^ Salome Rantzau
4. ↑ Vollmar, p. 9
5. ↑ Lucia Ölgard married Hans Friedrich von Burckersroda
6. ^ Jacobsen: Christoph von Rantzau and his witch trials. Gut Schmoel in dark times , p. 29
7. ↑ Rolf Schulte: Witch persecution in Schleswig-Holstein from the 16th to the 18th century , Heide 2001, p. 122, p. 133, p. 138f, p. 142; s. a. Rolf Schulte: Witch persecution Holstein, Duchy
8. ^ Description of the trials in Schmoel near Jacobsen: Christoph von Rantzau and his witch trials. Gut Schmoel in dark time , pp. 34–74
9. ^ Jacobsen: Christoph von Rantzau and his witch trials. Gut Schmoel in dark times , p. 84
10. ^ Gut Schmoel belonged to the jointly governed noble estate districts.
11. ^ Jacobsen: Christoph von Rantzau and his witch trials. Gut Schmoel in dark times , p. 97
12. ↑ Hvolgaard had already sold Rantzau in 1680.
13. ^ Jacobsen: Christoph von Rantzau and his witch trials. Gut Schmoel in dark times , p. 99
14. ↑ Prange: Serfdom Processes (Lit.), p. 81.
15. ^ History of Schwartbuck
16. ↑ Mémoires du Comte de Rantzow from 1741 , Pierre Mortier Amsterdam, Vol. 2, p. 175
17. ↑ Valkenberg discovered in the Amsterdam City Archives, "not. (Ariats) arch. (Iv)", Inv.Nr. 6181, fo. 137, dd January 21, 1699, a protocol of the public notary Pieter Schabaelje from Amsterdam, admitted to the State Court of Holland, the statements of Mr. Licentiate Christiaen Granardt, Kgl. Danish inspector of the High Justice of the Rivers (?) At Oldenskloin (in) Stormarn, around 50 years at the request of Baroness Lucia Oligard (sic) von Burckersrode (sic) testifies, attests and declares that a certain boy, Alexander Leopold Anton von der The wife of the late Count Christoff (sic) von Rantzau was brought from Rome in 1682, who was not the son of the husband Count Christoph or his wife, but a foundling of the Hospital Santo Spirito.
18. ^ Valkenberg could not find the reasons for the judgment. Processes that Alexander operated from Cologne continued to run with regard to the German possessions.
19. ^ Leibniz to Electress Sophie, April 18 (28), 1699
20. ^ Prange: Rantzau, Christoph , p. 260
21. ↑ Kneschke (Lit.), p. 244
22. ↑ Bobé (lit.), p. 150
23. ↑ Rantzau family tree see line 3 (Schmoel) (pdf - accessed January 13, 2013)