Colloredo (noble family)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Family coat of arms of those of Colloredo
Coat of arms of the princes Colloredo-Mansfeld

Colloredo is the name of an originally Italian noble family that originated in Friuli, came to Bohemia in the 16th century and was accepted into the Bohemian-Austrian nobility . As a mediatized princely house it belongs to the high nobility .

history

According to tradition, the family comes from the Lords of Waldsee , of whom the brothers Liebhard (Liabordo) and Heinrich allegedly accompanied Salier Konrad II on his procession in 1026 for the coronation of the emperor in Italy. Liabordo should then by Patriarch Poppo of Aquileia in 1031 with the castle Mels in Udine invested have been.

His descendants were able to continuously expand their fiefdom during times of ongoing battles between aristocratic lords, feudal lords and the larger powers such as the Republic of Venice, the Papal States and the countries belonging to the empire. Glizoio de Mels appears in a document on October 25, 1247 with his brothers, of whom Glizoio founded the Colloredo line and Heinrich the Mels-Colloredo line .

On December 4, 1302, Wilhelm von Mels received permission from Patriarch Ottobono of Aquileia to build the Colloredo di Monte Albano castle in Friuli near Udine , after which the family was named. The three sons of Wilhelm established three lines of the sex (Asquinian, expired in 1693, Bernardine and Weikhardic line).

In addition to Mels Castle from 1200 to 1336, the possessions included the town of Venzone , the castles Albana and Prodolone with the fortresses Sattimberg and Monfort, Colloredo and the fiefs of Susans and Sterpo, Castel Dobra (Dobrovo, Slovenia), Fleana (Fojana, Slovenia ), Sezza (Seča, Slovenia), Latisana and Sutrio . Outside of Friuli, the Colloredo owned palaces in Mantua and Recanati and in Santa Sofia Marecchia (Tuscany).

  • Colloredo di Monte Albano Castle near Udine

  • Susans Castle

  • Dobra Castle (Dobrovo, Slovenia)

On 19 March 1588, the brothers Louis and Laelius Colloredo acquired the for (and the rest of the descendants of William of Mels) from Prague baron confirmation with the arms of the Lords of Waldsee. In 1591 the Colloredo merged with the Swabian von Waldsee family, also known as Walsee or Walseer . The tracing back of their origin to the Walseer is doubted today.

Opochno Castle in Eastern Bohemia

In 1629 the Asquin line and in 1724 the entire house was raised to the rank of imperial count . The brothers and imperial generals Rudolf and Hieronymus von Colloredo-Wallsee received the Opočno Castle in Eastern Bohemia from Emperor Ferdinand II after 1634 . The emperor had previously confiscated it after the previous owner, Field Marshal Adam Erdmann Trčka von Lípa and his ally Wallenstein were murdered in Eger in 1634 . At the end of the 17th century, after a fire, the castle was redesigned in the Baroque style by Giovanni Battista Alliprandi , whereby the core of the Renaissance castle was preserved.

In Styria, the family owned Liebenau Castle (Graz) from 1681 to 1756 .

In 1763, Reich Vice Chancellor Rudolph Joseph was made Imperial Prince . In 1756 he acquired Sierndorf Castle in Lower Austria. In 1775 the castle and the Opočno manor came to him. Of his sons, the elder Franz de Paula Gundakar also became Imperial Vice Chancellor in 1789, the last until the end of the Empire in 1806. He was the founder of the Colloredo-Man (n) sfeld line, with a focus on Eastern and Central Bohemia, where the family had owned the property since around 1635 Opočno had because he married a daughter of Prince Heinrich Franz von Mansfeld -Fondi in 1771. In 1780 the last male count of Mansfeld , Josef Wenzel Nepomuk von Mansfeld-Vorderort-Bornstedt, died . All man fiefdoms of the Mansfeld counts in Central Germany fell back to the feudal lords ; namely to Electoral Saxony and Prussia as legal successor to the secularized Archdiocese of Magdeburg . The Bohemian allodials with Dobříš Castle, however, went to the Countess and half-sister of Josef Wenceslas, Maria Isabella, who had been married to Franz de Paula von Colloredo since 1771.

In 1789, the imperial government in Vienna allowed the prince to combine names and coats of arms for the two families in order to preserve the memory of the Mansfeld counts. (The Mansfeld family wrote themselves with an “n”. When drawing up the documents for the name association to “Colloredo-Mannsfeld” on the occasion of the marriage of Franz-Gundaccar Colloredo to Maria Isabella Mansfeld, the name was - accidentally - spelled with two “ns” in 1789 Although based in fact on a transcription error, since then the officially and legally correct spelling has been that with two "n". However, some family members have returned to the spelling with an "n".)

Towards the end of the 18th century, Prince von Colloredo belonged to the Swabian Imperial Counts College as a personalist , in 1803 he acquired Nostitz's share in the County of Rieneck and thus achieved promotion to imperial immediacy .

Many members of the Colloredo family were in the political and diplomatic service of the Holy Roman Empire, the Habsburgs and Austria. High church offices were also held by members of the gender. As one of 16 mediatized princely houses, it held a hereditary seat in the manor house , the upper house of the Austrian Imperial Council .

After the death of Franz Gundaccar II (1852), the title of prince and property went to his cousin Josef I (1813–1895). He proved to be a prudent businessman, upgraded the goods to include sawmills, breweries and brickworks, had the Palais Colloredo built on the Stubenring in Vienna and enlarged the property in 1879 by purchasing the Zbiroh domain . After his death in 1895 there was an inheritance division in which the eldest, Prince Hieronymus VII (* 1842), became the heir to the Bohemian estates and the Ringstrasse palace; he married Countess Aglae Festetics and served as the kuk agriculture minister. The younger, Count Franz Ferdinand, took over Sierndorf, which was expropriated by the German Reich in 1940 but returned to the Colloredo-Mannsfeld family in 1950.

The Bohemian possessions included from 1635 Opočno Castle , from 1775 (from 1630) Mansfeld's domain Dobříš Castle , and from 1879 the Zbiroh Castle domain . The entire property in Bohemia around 1900 was about 60,000 hectares of forest and agriculture; Mills, breweries, brickworks and sawmills were connected. In the Czechoslovak land reform (around 1920/1930) the property was reduced to around half. Prince Josef II (1866–1957) lived in Paris and was childless; his younger brother, Count Hieronymus d. Ä. (1870–1942), married to Berta Countess Kolowrat -Krakowsky, first served in the navy and then took over the management of goods for his brother. In 1927 he was still able to acquire Gstatt Castle and Forestry Office in Mitterberg (Styria) in Austria , which still belongs to his descendants today. When the Fideikommiss was abolished in 1940, ownership was divided among his four sons: Josef (1910–1990) took over Gstatt and was to inherit Opočno after his uncle's death, Hieronymus the Elder. J. (1912–1998) Zbiroh and Weikhard (1914–1946) Dobříš. The youngest son, Friedrich (1917–1991), was later to take over the Vienna Palace. During the German occupation in the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , all of the Czech Colloredo refused to take over the offered German citizenship. As a result and because of denunciations, they were declared “enemies of the Reich”, all property confiscated in favor of the German Reich and two of the sons were sent to do forced labor.

restitution

As early as 1942, all members of the family - including those living abroad - had been declared "enemies of the Reich" and all property in Bohemia and Austria had been confiscated in favor of the German Reich. The Austrians were restituted in 1948. The possessions that had been confiscated by the Gestapo were again confiscated - now as “German property” - immediately after the end of the war on the basis of the Beneš decrees . The four Colloredo brothers were deprived of their citizenship of the re-established Czechoslovakia, they emigrated abroad after temporary arrests, one soon died in Switzerland, the other three went to Canada and the USA. Prince Josef II went to Opočno Castle again after the war, but was soon denied access to his possessions. He gave the Vienna palace to his nephew and lawyer Karl Graf Trauttmansdorff , a son of his sister Maria Theresia, who sold it a few years later.

Opočno Castle became the Museum of Aristocratic History, Dobříš Castle became the recreation and event center of the Writers' Union, and Zbiroh Castle became a military barracks.

As part of the restitution legislation in the Czech Republic , the Colloredo-Mannsfeld family received their former possessions (around 20,000 hectares of forest and ponds) back after the Velvet Revolution from 1990, which they had for the second time with the expulsion from Czechoslovakia, which was re-established after the Second World War had been expropriated. These include Dobříš Castle , which was built in 1998 to Hieronymus the Elder , who died in the same year. J. (Jerome) Colloredo-Mannsfeld was restituted as well as Zbiroh Castle , which was transferred back to the same in 1990, but was sold back to the state by him. His nephew and main heir Hieronymus (Jerome), son of his brother Friedrich, took over the Zbiroh estate and Dobříš Castle. Kristina Colloredo-Mannsfeld, daughter of Prince Josef III, who died in Gstatt in 1990, obtained the restitution of the property in the Opočno domain. The castle, which she was also able to take over at first, had to be returned to the state after a sensational judgment by the Constitutional Court. The Dobříš lands were subsequently given in equal parts to Jerome and his cousin Kristina, who in 2006 divided them up. Dobříš Castle is now home to two museums and a hotel with restaurants.

In 2007 the family sued the Czech state for restitution of the art collection from the renaissance chateau Opočno in Eastern Bohemia. However, a court decision by the district court of Hradec Králové (Königgrätz) in October 2007 rejected this in an appeal. The collection, the value of which the Monument Protection Office estimates at over a billion crowns , around 35 million euros, includes an artistically valuable carriage, a collection of paintings and several thousand items such as historical weapons and crockery.

coat of arms

The family coat of arms (Waldsee / Walsee ) shows a silver bar in black. On the helmet with black and silver covers an eagle's wing marked like the shield.

  • Coat of arms graphic by Otto Hupp in the Munich calendar of 1906

  • Princely overall coat of arms Colloredo-Mannsfeld

people

Waldsee / Wallsee line

Waldsee-Mels line

Line Man (n) sfeld

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Colloredo  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry on Colloredo (noble family) in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
  2. ↑ Bauzer, Mscr. historie rerum Norie et Forojul. libr. V.
  3. ↑ Giambattista von Crollalanza: The noble family of Waldsee-Mels and in particular the Count Colloredo. Vienna 1889.
  4. ↑ a b c Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels , Adelslexikon, Volume II, Volume 58 of the complete series, pp. 324–326.
  5. ^ Antichi Castelli . Sattimberg and Monfort castles (Italian), online at pioverno.it, accessed on April 4, 2013.
  6. ^ The East Bohemian court ruled on the art collection in the Opočno Castle. In: radio.cz. Radio Praha , October 18, 2007, accessed on July 26, 2017 .
  7. ^ Franz Philipp von Sommaruga:  Colloredo-Waldsee, Franz . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 415 f.