Falkenhayn (noble family)

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Family coat of arms of those of Falkenhayn

Falkenhayn (also Falkenhain ) is the name of a German noble family . The first representatives can be found in the 13th century in the diocese of Merseburg , later they came into possession mainly in Silesia and Austria . Branches of the family still exist today. The gender is not to be confused with those of Sommerfeld and Falkenhayn , who were previously also called von Sommerfeld auf Falckenhayn and von Sommerfeld from the Falckenhayn family (after their Falkenhayn estate in the Principality of Breslau).

history

Eugen von Falkenhayn
(1792-1853)
Julius von Falkenhayn
(1829-1891)
Erich von Falkenhayn
(1861–1922)

origin

The older literature as in ancestor -called sex Falko , who after the battle of riade in 933 by King Henry I the Knights defeated and with Falkenhain in pen Wurzen invested to have been, is genealogically and documented undetectable.

In a document dated June 8, 1216, Bishop Ekkehard von Merseburg decided a dispute between the Pforte monastery and the knight of Lössen in favor of the monastery. Rudolfus de Valkenhain appears among the witnesses . Around the year 1222, Landgrave Ludwig von Thuringia transferred the village of Daubnitz to the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Meissen as guardian of his nephew, Margrave Heinrich von Meißen. As a witness, among other are Burggrafen Wolfwinus bvrchgr. de Valkenh. and his brother Wolfne de Pesne , although the name Valkenhain is not fully spelled out. Both brothers appear side by side as witnesses as early as 1220, with Wolfinus being referred to as de Cice , probably by Zeitz . The proximity of Zeitz and Falkenhain suggest that with Valkenh. what is meant by today's Falkenhain near Zeitz.

It cannot be proven that Falkenhain near Wurzen is the ancestral seat of the family, especially since the first bearer of the name mentioned in 1216 was in the service of the Bishop of Merseburg, so that a possible connection to Falkenhain in Altenburger Land is more likely, where it is also gave a manor .

Cunrad von Falkenhain is mentioned in 1227 as the son-in-law of Vogts Heinrich zu Freiberg.

In 1227 Bishop Engelhardt left the estate "curia" at Zeitz Conrad von Valkenhain. Wichard von Valkenhain and Heinrich, the brother of the Burgrave of Valkenhain, are named among the witnesses. In a document from the diocese of Merseburg from 1352, the Burgrave Rudolf von Falkenhain is named as a witness. It is the last known documentary mention of a Burgrave of Falkenhain.

The uninterrupted family line begins with Konrad von Falkenhayn , ducal-Schweidnitzer council, who is mentioned in documents from 1290 to 1303.

There was probably a relationship with the Brandenburg noble family von Falkenhagen , which had a similar coat of arms .

Expansion and possessions

There are two tribes, that of the Mark Brandenburg and the one in Silesia. You can also say the Prussian and the Austrian. In the Middle Ages, the Falkenhayn family moved from the Thuringia area to the northeast, i.e. to Poland and West Prussia, and there were also Falkenhayns who migrated to the southeast, i.e. to Silesia and Austria.

As early as the 13th century, members of the family settled in Lower Silesia . There they set up their headquarters in Falkenhain near Schönau . The Falkenhayns must have been prominent in Lower Silesia, because in the Lower Silesian city of Liegnitz the coat of arms with name can still be seen in the lead glass window in the large St. Mary's Church and in Jauer - today Jawor - in a prominent place above the pulpit. This is a particularly valuable place in the Evangelical Church, whose worship lives less from the liturgy than from the word. Branches made their way from Silesia to East and West Prussia , the Mark Brandenburg, Pomerania , the County of Glatz and Austria .

Balthasar von Falkenhayn was in 1504 the ducal-Liegnitzsch chief kitchen master . One of his descendants, Georg von Falkenhayn, appears around 1617 as a ducal-liegnitz privy councilor and state elder . His grandson Friedrich von Falkenhayn (* 1649) first came to Austria as a privy councilor from Braunschweig-Lüneburg and as envoy to the imperial court. He entered the imperial service, became court war councilor and chamberlain . His son from his second marriage to Maria Elisabeth Countess von Abensperg-Traun, Nicolaus Norbert Graf von Falkenhayn († 1777), was also an imperial treasurer and member of the Lower Austrian government . He was married to Maria Franziska Countess von Kollonitz. All other Counts of Falkenhayn descend from her two sons Ernst August Graf von Falkenhayn and Eugen Graf von Falkenhayn.

Eugen Isidor Graf von Falkenhayn (1792-1853), son of Count Eugen von Falkenhayn, who died in 1826, was a privy councilor and field warden . He owned the dominions of Girines, Droß , Ottenschlag and Rechberg . His brother Johann Graf von Falkenhayn became an imperial chamberlain and a field marshal lieutenant . In Silesia the family owned Royn , Rothkirch , Rüstern, Seichau and Gassendorf, among others . Until recently, they also owned the Raschwitz estate in the Falkenberg OS district. A Silesian line was called von Falkenhayn and Brauchitschdorf .

Important relatives from more recent times were Count Julius von Falkenhayn (1829–1899), Austrian military and politician. He was initially the Imperial Chamberlain, Rittmeister and Adjutant of the Emperor, but resigned his service in 1857. In 1871 he became governor of Upper Austria and from 1879 Minister of Agriculture, a department that he held in several cabinets until 1893. He represented a right-wing conservative policy, but also earned merit with his forest law amendments for the protection of forests, karst afforestation and torrent control.

The Brandenburg line goes back to Christoph von Falgkenhagen, the elder. He lived from 1546 to 1613. The place where he was staying was called "Grabow". Further ancestors were Georg and Karoline von Falkenhayn, who lived at Belchau Castle. Georg (1777–1849) was royal Prussia. Rittmeister of the Dragoon Regiment on horseback and from 1818–1819 District Administrator of the Deutsch Krone district , today's Wałcz .

One of the most famous representatives of the family was the Prussian general, minister of war and chief of the general staff Erich von Falkenhayn (1861-1922). He was a military advisor in China , where he was a general staff officer of the East Asian Expeditionary Corps involved in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in 1901. In July 1913 he became Prussian Minister of War and in September 1914 Chief of the General Staff. He was one of the key figures behind the outbreak of World War I and was involved in planning the Battle of Verdun in 1916.

Erich von Falkenhayn had four children. His daughter Erika (1904–1974) was the wife of Henning von Tresckow , one of the leading resistance fighters of July 20, 1944. His wife Erika typed the military deployment plans for July 20 on her typewriter and gave her husband strong moral support.

A family association was established on October 8, 1905 .

Status surveys

Friedrich von Falkenhayn , imperial court war councilor and general war commissioner , received the bohemian baron status in Vienna on August 1, 1682 . Associated with this was a coat of arms association with the extinct family of Holzapfel. On December 9, 1689 in Augsburg he was raised to the Bohemian count and on March 9, 1690 in Vienna to the imperial count with an improvement in the coat of arms .

Ernst August Graf von Falkenhayn was accepted into the Lower Austrian gentry on April 7, 1718 . On November 25, 1867, members of the family became hereditary members in the manor house of the Austrian Imperial Council .

coat of arms

Family coat of arms

Family coat of arms of those of Falkenhayn (Märkische line), after Siebmacher (1605)

Blazon : The family coat of arms shows a red hunting horn in silver (medieval shape: Hifthorn ) without fittings and ribbon; on the helmet the horn in front of five natural heron feathers; the helmet covers are red and silver.

Declaration of coat of arms: The coat of arms was adopted as a uniform coat of arms after a resolution of the sex association on October 11, 1930. (Before the pictures varied, the sound opening of the horn was sometimes right and left, sometimes without, sometimes with (black) fittings and cord; peacock feathers were shown on the helmet instead of the heron feathers and sometimes the horn was omitted as a crest ornament .)

Count's coat of arms

Blazon: The Bohemian Count's coat of arms , awarded in 1689, shows the coat of arms square and covered with a silver central shield , in it a red hunting horn (family coat of arms); 1 and 4 in blue three slanted golden apples (coat of arms of the extinct family von Holzapfel), 2 in red an inward-facing silver lion (coat of arms of Bohemia ), 3 divided by silver and black, inside a fish-tailed unicorn in confused colors (coat of arms of those of Nimptsch ); the coat of arms has three helmets with red and silver helmet covers, on the right and left a red hunting horn, the mouth turned outwards is equipped with a gray heron bush each (trunk helmet), on the middle the lion growing.

Known family members

literature

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Large Universal Lexicon , Volume 38, 1743, p. 697.
  2. ↑ Friedrich Lucas: Schlesiens curieuse Denckworthiness , Volume 2, 1689, p. 1851.
  3. ↑ P. Kehr (arrangement) : Document book of the Hochstift Merseburg, 1st part (962-1357). Halle 1899 (= historical sources of the province of Saxony and adjacent areas, 36), p. 137.
  4. ↑ P. Kehr (arrangement) : Document book of the Hochstift Merseburg, 1st part (962-1357). Halle 1899 (= historical sources of the province of Saxony and adjacent areas, 36), p. 899.
  5. ↑ CDS II 4 No. 390.
  6. ^ Otto von Zallinger: Die Schöffenbarfrei des Sachsenspiegel , Innsbruck, 1887. S. 144, 204, 210, 215, 216 and 217.
  7. ↑ Directorium Diplomaticum or chronologically ordered excerpts from [...] , Volume 2, 1825, p. 656.
  8. ↑ Ernst Zergiebe (arrangement): Chronicle of Zeitz and the villages of the district, 1894
  9. ↑ 800 years of Falkenhain.