Freudenthal (Ermschwerd)
Freudenthal is a small settlement in the district of Ermschwerd , a district of Witzenhausen in the Werra-Meißner district in northern Hesse . It emerged from a former manor with a manor house .
location
The former manor house stands about 3 km northwest of Witzenhausen, on the east bank of the Werra opposite Emschwerd , at about 160 m above sea level, about 25 m above the valley floor of the Werraaue, at the confluence of a small side valley coming from the east between Badenstein and Großem Mittelberg the Werra valley. The Eichenberg - Kassel section of the Halle-Hann railway line runs directly to the west of the manor house and the farm buildings a little further north . Münden and the Hann. Münden – Witzenhausen on federal highway 80 . The nearest road bridges over the Werra are about 3 km north in Gertenbach and 3 km south in Witzenhausen.
Between the B80 and here, just east of Ermschwerd northward flowing Werra lies in the flood plain , the nearly 76 ha large nature reserve Freudenthal.
history
The first documentary mention was made in 1747, when a "Meierei im Thal", a courtyard with a fireplace, was mentioned. The court was the landgrave's fiefdom of the lords of Buttlar zu Ermschwerd, who also held the low and embarrassing jurisdiction . The farm was probably acquired as an accessory to the Ziegenberg lordship, which came to the Buttlar in 1486 as a pledge and in 1494 as a hereditary fiefdom , and remained as a Hesse-Kassel fiefdom until 1813.
Then, as a result of the Napoleonic occupation of Kurhessen, there were considerable disputes over property rights. The Lords of Buttlar had pledged their fiefs in Ermschwerd, Stiedenrode and Freudenthal to the electoral government in 1806 . Since Jérôme Bonaparte , ruler of the short-lived Kingdom of Westphalia , needed money, he had the pledged fiefdoms put out to tender for (forced) sale. The four von Buttlar brothers then sold the three estates to Christian Friedrich Heimbach, councilor and syndic of the Teutonic Order in Langeln near Halberstadt on April 3, 1813 . Heimbach bought the goods mainly with receipts for the claims assigned to him by the directorship of the royal house. While Ermschwerd and Stiedenrode were then administered by an official of the royal directorship, Heimbach sold the Vorwerk Freudenthal three weeks later, on April 25, 1813, for 50,000 francs in cash to Jérômes in Kassel at the court as general director of the artillery and artillery Genie Corps serving Lieutenant General Jacques Alexandre Allix de Vaux (1768–1836), who was then raised to Count von Freudenthal by Jérôme. Allix had the estate managed for one summer on his own account, but then leased it to the pastor Leopold Christian Badenhausen (1770–1823) in Ermschwerd on August 6, 1813. He reserved the right to hunt in the forest belonging to the estate and an apartment in the manor house.
After the end of the Kingdom of Westphalia in the autumn of 1813, Elector Wilhelm I , who had returned to Kassel, took the estate in as a settled fiefdom in January 1814. His government reached a settlement with the Lords of Buttlar, took possession of the three estates as payment and made them state domains . Badenhausen received instructions to pay the rent to the electoral rent chamber.
Allix, meanwhile banned from France and living in the Principality of Waldeck , lodged a complaint on May 1, 1817 with the German Bundestag of the German Confederation in Frankfurt am Main and demanded that he be reinstated. The Hessian envoy to the Bundestag clarified the view of his government, according to which the sale to Allix was only a sham to conceal a donation , and Allix was referred to legal action.
This was followed by a decade-long legal dispute in front of the Hessian courts due to disruption of property, which was continued after Allix's death on January 26, 1836. Finally, his heirs, two sons and two daughters, managed to have them entered in the cadastre of the municipality of Ermschwerd as the owner in accordance with the court authorization of September 18, 1850 on the basis of a proven possession of more than thirty years, but with the express remark "In the absence of a proper acquisition title" were. The two children of Allix, who remained as owners after an inheritance agreement of April 18, 1854, sold the property to Karl Friedrich von Berlepsch on May 4, 1858 .
Allix had offered the property to Badenhausen several times during the long litigation, but Badenhausen refused each time despite the cheap price offered in view of the uncertain acquisitions. Badenhausen's descendants were tenants of the property until the First World War.
The mansion
The former manor house, now used as a private residence, is a late Baroque, symmetrical building from the 18th century with a floor area of around 12 × 24 m with a hipped roof and wide, central dwarf houses with triangular gables on both the front and back .
Todays use
The agricultural areas of the former estate are used in various ways today. One of the Aussiedlerhöfe established there after the Second World War has been leased as an organic farm since 1989/90, with a focus on free-range laying hens , but also keeping horses. A second Aussiedlerhof has been used as a so-called Solidarity Horticulture since 2010 by members of several student residential communities and members of the Solidarity Agriculture movement .
Freudenthal nature reserve
Between the B 80 and the Werra, which flows northwards directly to the east of Ermschwerd, there is the 76 hectare “Freudenthal nature reserve” (FFH area number 4624-303) in the Werraaue with three larger quarry ponds created by former gravel mining . The ponds are partly surrounded by forest and agricultural land, and in the edge area there are structurally rich reed and floodplain landscapes. The area is a valuable breeding and resting habitat for rare and endangered water birds.
Coordinates: 51 ° 21 ′ 36 ″ N , 9 ° 49 ′ 52 ″ E
Footnotes
- ↑ Heimbach had already bought the former Deutschordenshof in Langeln on November 30, 1811 for 60,000 thalers, a Westphalian crown domain since June 1, 1809, and ran this estate until his death in 1837. ( Historical Commission of the Province of Saxony (Ed.): Document book of Deutschordens-Commende Langeln and the monasteries Himmelpforten and Waterler in the county of Wernigerode . (Historical sources of the province of Saxony and adjacent areas, 15th volume), Otto Hendel, Halle, 1882, p. 461 )
- ^ Protocols of the German Federal Assembly , third volume. Frankfurt am Main, 1817, pp. 377-380
- ↑ Reclamation of Lieutenant General Allix against His Royal Highness the Elector of Hesse, because of dismissal from the possession of the Freudenthal estate , in Subsequent Acts of the German Federal Negotiations as an appendix to the minutes of the Federal Assembly . Third volume, second issue, Frankfurt am Main, 1818; Pp. 137-145
- ↑ Reclamation of Lieutenant General Allix against His Royal Highness the Elector of Hesse for being relieved of possession of the Freudenthal estate, in: Subsequent Acts of the German Federal Negotiations , Third Volume, Second Issue, Frankfurt am Main, 1818, pp. 137-145
- ↑ Karl Friedrich Ludwig Hans von Berlepsch (1821–1893) was the father of the famous ornithologist Hans Hermann Carl Ludwig von Berlepsch (1850–1915).
- ^ Messages to the members of the Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies. Born in 1915/16. Kassel, 1916, pp. 26-27
- ↑ Hessian Ministry for Climate Protection, Agriculture and Nature Conservation: Protected Area 4624-303 ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Götz Lätsch, Jacob Maurer: The nature reserve "Freudenthal near Witzenhausen" - a first description and inventory. Writings of the Werra Valley Association Witzenhausen, issue 5. Self-published by the Werra Valley Association Witzenhausen, Witzenhausen, 1982, OL24690034M
Web links
- "Freudenthal, Werra-Meißner-Kreis". Historical local dictionary for Hessen. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).