Inheritance

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A ganerbschaft was after old German inheritance the joint family assets, primarily real estate, over which the Ganerben could have just shared. According to today's legal terms, this corresponds to a collective community of hands (or community of the entire hand ).

history

Ganerbschafts arose from the simultaneous appointment of several co-heirs to one and the same estate, as it occurred primarily in the Middle Ages for reasons of family policy.

The subject of such legal relationships was usually a jointly built or conquered palace or castle . The latter was then called the Ganerbeburg . The peaceful coexistence of the heirs, the rules of daily living side by side as well as the exploitation and use rights Community components were (in short: mostly by so-called truce agreements truce ) comprehensively regulated.

Legacies were closed in order to keep an important family property such as a castle undivided. Although the initially very close community of the Ganerbe gradually loosened over the decades, the unity was preserved externally, which was often expressed in the use of a common name and coat of arms.

Another form of inheritance that made something similar possible was the Fideikommiss .

Examples of inheritances

Künzelsau in the Hohenlohe district

Ganerbe coat of arms on the old town hall in Künzelsau

At the end of the 11th century, the von Stein family, the owners of Künzelsau (today in the Hohenlohe district ), were about to die out. One of the last family members, Mechthild von Stein, donated a large part of their possessions to the Comburg monastery . The rest of the property went to close relatives after her death: the Lords of Künzelsau and the Lords of Bartenau. Over the centuries the shares were inherited, partially or fully sold, or passed into other hands through marriage.

Around 1500 the Lords of Stetten owned 25% of Künzelsau, 20% belonged to the House of Hohenlohe and 15% to the imperial city of Schwäbisch Hall . Another 10% were owned by the Archdiocese of Mainz , 10% belonged to the Diocese of Würzburg , and 20% were distributed among other owners ( Sulmeister von Hall , Ritter von Bachenstein , Berlichingen , Crailsheim , Neuenstein and others).

The shares changed hands several times in the following period. As a result of the Tierberg feud of 1488, a truce agreement was concluded in 1493, which regulated the joint administration of the place under a "Community Ganerbe-Amt-Schultheiss". The Ganerbe undertook to sell their shares only to one another, not to strangers. Only Comburg Monastery was allowed to buy the shares of the Lords of Stetten in 1717 due to its earlier membership of the Ganerbschaft.

In 1802, the place lost its status of inheritance, since in the course of the secularization of the castle and spots fell solely to the princes of Hohenlohe . However, in 1806 the entire area was confiscated by the Duke of Württemberg; henceforth it was part of the Kingdom of Württemberg .

Eltz Castle

In 1286 the brothers Elias, Wilhelm and Theoderich von Eltz split up the sex. The ownership of Eltz Castle was also divided among the three. From then on, the three lines Eltz-Kempenich, Eltz-Rübenach and Eltz-Rodendorf (originally Eltz from the Golden Lion , Eltz from the Silver Lion and Eltz from the Buffalo Horns ) had joint rights to the castle complex. This is still indicated today by the residential buildings named after the three lines: the Rübenach house, the Rodendorfer houses and the Kempenich houses. When the Eltz-Rodendorf line died out in 1786, its share came to the Eltz-Kempenicher, who also acquired the Rübenach share in 1815 and thus became the sole owner. The von Eltz-Kempenich family is still the owner of the castle today.

Old Limpurg

The noble inheritance of the Alten Limpurg family , which has existed in Frankfurt am Main since the 14th century, is a family association with legal personality. It is based in Frankfurt am Main. The basis of the inheritance are the family relationships of the families represented in the association.

The eastern border of the Würzburg monastery

Würzburg statistics from around 1700 show many Ganerbian-ruled localities. Above all, the Haßfurt monastery office with a total of eleven localities (contractually regulated in 1696) and the Iphofen office with Hüttenheim and Obernbreit, which on the central eastern border of the Hochstift area, caused considerable legal disintegration. The potential for conflict and the need for legal clarification, for example with Brandenburg-Ansbach , Würzburg's direct competitor in the Franconian district, was correspondingly high .

The Ganerbschaft Treffurt with the Bailiwick of Dorla

The property of the Lords of Treffurt with the town of Treffurt in the west of Thuringia lay between the Landgraviate of Hesse in the west, the Eichsfeld belonging to Kurmainz in the north, and the Wettin Landgraviate of Thuringia in the south and east. At the turn of the 14th century, the lords of Treffurt became robber barons and repeatedly plundered villages in the neighboring Landgraviates of Thuringia and Hesse and in Eichsfeld, which belongs to the Electorate of Mainz . 1333/36 It conducted a siege of the city and Castle Treffurt by the Landgrave of Hesse, the Landgrave of Thuringia and the Archbishop of Mainz, which ended in 1336 with the expulsion of the Lords of Treffurt.

In the truce of 1336, the winners took each one-third the entire Treffurter possession of the ganerbschaft Treffurt six places and the Bailiwick Dorla comprised of three places. These have since been administered by Kurmainz and the Landgraviates of Hesse and Thuringia - as their legal successors, the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel and the Electorate of Saxony  - as inheritance. The hereditary third of the Thuringian landgraves went over to the Albertine and the Ernestine Saxony, half of them due to the division of Leipzig in 1485 . In 1588, in the Treaty of Friedewald, the latter gave his sixth share of the rule in exchange to the Landgraves of Hessen-Kassel, who since then have held half of the property rights of the Treffurt rule . In 1736, the Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel gave half of its share to Electoral Saxony, which since then has held two thirds of the rulership.

In the 18th century, the sovereignty of the Electorate of Saxony and the Landgraviate of Hesse passed to Kurmainz and with this came to Prussia in 1802 . The final dissolution of the Ganerbschaft Treffurt took place in 1807 with the assignment of the electoral Saxon share and the incorporation into the Kingdom of Westphalia .

Trappstadt in the grave field

The "Ganerbendorf" Trappstadt in Lower Franconia has an extremely interesting ownership history. If in the 13th century the Counts of Henneberg and the monasteries Theres and Veilsdorf shared the property of the village, 300 years later there were already twelve gan heirs who issued a common village regulation in 1524. Around 1600 the village was divided into four districts, each of which was allowed to serve as mayor for a year. The castle was owned by the Barons of Bibra .

The ownership of the Ganerbeviertel was distributed as follows:

  • Würzburg subjects (formerly Theres Monastery) sat in 22 houses.
  • Veilsdorf Monastery (from 1699 Würzburg Cathedral Chapter) had 28 houses.
  • Henneberg (from 1584 Saxon) vassals owned 22 houses.
  • Another 9 houses passed through the hands of the following families from 1524: Schott (until 1585), Echter (until 1665), Faust von Stromberg (until 1738), Counts von und zu Eltz (until 1824).

In 1656, the bailiff von Römhild was elected director of the Ganerbenschaft as a representative of the Henneberg-Saxon part. In 1803 the rights of the Hochstift Würzburg fell to the Grand Duchy of Würzburg of the Archduke Ferdinand of Tuscany . The rights of the county of Sachsen-Römhild (represented by the duchies of Sachsen-Meiningen and Sachsen-Gotha ) fell to the Grand Duchy by contract in 1808. The Grand Duchy of Würzburg became part of Bavaria in 1814 .

Bönnigheim

In 1288, the city, which is now in the north of the Ludwigsburg district in Baden-Württemberg , was bought by Rudolf von Habsburg . He left it to his son Count Albrecht von Löwenstein in 1291 . The latter's widow ceded her inheritance to Friedrich von Sachsenheim , which started the division of the property. The Ganerbentum in Bönnigheim arose through purchase, marriage, death and inheritance .

literature

  • Friedrich Karl Alsdorf: Investigations into the legal status and division of German inheritance castles . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3820464085 ( legal history series . Volume 9).
  • Christoph Bachmann: Ganerbe castles . In: Horst Wolfgang Böhme: Castles in Central Europe. A manual . Volume 2. Theiss, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-8062-1355-0 , pp. 39-41.
  • Johannes Hoops: Real Lexicon of Germanic antiquity . Volume 11, 2nd edition. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-11-015832-9 , p. 85 ( online )
  • Helmut Naumann: The legal word Ganerbe . In: Communications of the Historical Association of the Palatinate . No. 71, 1974, ISSN  0073-2680 , pp. 59-153.
  • Werner Ogris: Ganerbe . In: Concise dictionary of German legal history (HRG) . Volume 1, volume 8, 2nd edition. Schmidt, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-503-07912-4 , Sp. 1928-1930.
  • Francis Rapp. On the history of the castles in Alsace with a special focus on inheritance and truces . In: Hans Patzke (Ed.): The castles in the German-speaking area. Their legal and constitutional significance . Volume 2. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1974, pp. 229-248.
  • Robert Schneider (Ed.): New critical yearbooks for German jurisprudence . Vol. 5, No. 9, Tauchnitz, Leipzig 1846, pp. 326–327 ( online )
  • Karl-Friedrich Krieger: Ganerbe, Ganerbschaft. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Volume 4, 2nd edition. dtv, Munich 2003, ISBN 978-3-423-59057-0 , Sp. 1105.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Trappstadt in Rhon lexicon
  2. ↑ Ganerbeviertel of Trappstadt in the Rhön Lexicon
  3. ^ Bönnigheim - city history. Retrieved July 19, 2018 .