Ehrenberg (noble family)

Coat of arms of the von Ehrenberg family (Ernberg) according to Siebmacher's book of arms

The Lords of Ehrenberg were a noble family that lived in Ehrenberg Castle near Heinsheim from the 12th century and died out in 1647.

history

Ehrenberg Castle near Heinsheim am Neckar

Town house of those von Ehrenberg in Wimpfen

The Ehrenberg (also Erenberg or Ernberg) were followers of the Staufer who established the Palatinate Wimpfen not far from Heinsheim in the 12th century . At the same time, Ehrenberg Castle was built, which in literature is often regarded as the upstream Wimpfen defense system.

The Ehrenberg were enfeoffed in the 13th century by the diocese of Worms with Heinsheim , Zimmerhof , Bargen and Wollenberg . Ehrenberg owned three of the mills in the Fünfmühlental near Bad Rappenau and a town house in Wimpfen. From 1348 to 1498 the Ehrenberg were also feudal lords over five farms in Grombach (today part of Bad Rappenau).

With Gerhard von Ehrenberg, the family provided the 57th Bishop of Speyer from 1336 to 1363 . In 1338 he redeemed Hornberg Castle in Neckarzimmern , which Speyer had temporarily pledged to the Bishop of Trier, and received permission to fortify the nearby village of Steinbach.

The town house in Wimpfen was donated by Anna von Ehrenberg (née Schlatt, † 1472) to the Dominican monastery there. After her death, an ornate epitaph was erected in the Dominican Church in Wimpfen as a thank you . A Heinrich von Ehrenberg was also feudal lord of Babstadt (today part of Bad Rappenau) until 1557 at the latest , which passed into the possession of Aulenbach in 1560 through the marriage of Brigitte von Ehrenberg to Johann Leonhard Kottwitz von Aulenbach .

In the Heinsheimer Bergkirche other ornate grave monuments have been preserved, including that of Johann Heinrich von Ehrenberg († 1584), which depicts the deceased kneeling in front of the Savior on an ornate large relief sculpture together with his wife Margarethe Echterin von Mespelbrunn († 1611) and his eight children shows.

One of Johann Heinrich's sons, Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg (1583–1631), became Prince-Bishop of Würzburg in 1624 . At first he had reluctantly consented to a clerical office after his brother Peter von Ehrenberg had renounced it, but he became a feared protagonist in the witch hunt .

Another son of Johann Heinrich, Hans Heinrich von Ehrenberg (born June 3, 1580, † April 30, 1647 in Würzburg), was the last Ehrenberg. In 1637 he exchanged part of his possessions in Kraichgau for the lands of his cousin Johann Conrad von Helmstatt on the Main . Hans Heinrich von Ehrenberg remained childless, with the result that the von Ehrenberg family died out.

The exchange of goods with those of Helmstatt led to a legal dispute even after Hans Heinrich von Ehrenberg's death, as the over 400-year feudal rule of Worms fiefdom and Ehrenberger private property had been extremely complicated and the separation of goods desired by Worms when the property was changed to Helmstatt could not be carried out. In 1650 the Imperial Court of Justice dealt with the matter and, with the Ernberg Treaty of 1655, ordered the division of Zimmerhof into a Worms and a Helmstatter side.

Bishop Gerhard von Ehrenberg † 1363
Ehrenberg's coat of arms on a 15th century grave slab in the Heinsheim mountain church
Tomb of Johann Heinrich von Ehrenberg with his wife and eight children, Heinsheim mountain church
Epitaph Anna von Ehrenberg in the Dominican Church in Bad Wimpfen

coat of arms

The coat of arms of the Ehrenberg still testifies to this day, showing a lying eagle's wing with an eagle's head (Ehrenberg is supposed to mean "eagle mountain" as the umlauted form of Aar ) and which is still the local coat of arms of Heinsheim today. Numerous landmarks in the Rappenau district still bear the abbreviations HHVE (Hans Heinrich von Ehrenberg) or IVE (Johann von Ehrenberg).