Gerold the Younger

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Gerold in der Baar (also Gerold II., Geroldo, Gerolt, Geroldus, Gero, Kerold, Keroldo, Kerolt, Keroldus ; † September 1, 799 ) from Alemannia was one of the most important military leaders, advisers and personal confidants of Charlemagne and was after the deposition of Duke Tassilo III. first Franconian governor (prefect) as well as supreme military leader of Baiern .

family

Gerold was the son of Gerold von Anglachgau and Imma. Seven of Gerold's brothers are known as well as his sister Hildegard , who was married to Charlemagne in 771. The proximity to the king due to his marriage to Hildegard is generally attributed to Gerold's political ascent and outstanding position. The family, which belonged to the Frankish imperial aristocracy, had considerable positions of power in the area between Worms and Oppenheim , Heidelberg and Bruchsal , but especially in Alemannia. Mother Imma was the daughter of the Alemannic Duke Hnabi and therefore related to the Baier ducal house of the Agilolfingers . The Geroldons , whose father Gerolds is considered to be the progenitor, are counted among the Agilolfingers. The relationship to the Baier ducal house of the Agilolfinger probably played an important role in the appointment of Gerold as Baier prefect as well as the legitimation of Gerold as prefect in Baiern. It is possible that the count was an ancestor of the Aribones and the House of Württemberg .

Count Gerold was married to a whale councilor whose origin is unknown, but who, as a widow, gave the Fulda monastery as a gift in 821 with the consent of Count Uto, who was obviously related to her . Gerold had at least two sons.

  • Hadrian. A son of Gerold by this name is known from a donation to the Lorsch monastery in 793. As Michael Mitterauer suspects, the choice of this name is probably related to the fact that Count Gerold accompanied Emperor Charlemagne on his first journey to Rome in 774 and named his son after Pope Hadrian I (772–795).
  • Erpo. He probably died early, as he is mentioned in the document from the year 793, with which his brother Hadrian hands over property to the Lorsch Monastery in Hesse for his soul's salvation .

However, nothing certain is known about other descendants of Gerold. Like many other Frankish imperial aristocrats, the Gerolds family lost much of its influence under the later King Ludwig the German .

Political functions

In 785 and 790 he is mentioned in documents as Count in der Baar (Bertoldsbaar). Gerold seems to have played a decisive role in the integration of Bavaria into the Frankish Empire and in the fight against the last Bavarian tribal duke Tassilo III. having played. After Tassilo's dismissal in 788, Karl did not want to appoint a duke in Baiern and therefore appointed Gerold "Prefect" of Bavaria and made him the royal messenger . The royal messengers of that time were held in high regard. Upon their arrival they were given the same honor as the king himself and a solemn high mass was held .

After the conquest of the Avar Empire in 796, he was also Margrave of the Avarmark . In this function, Lorch an der Enns served him as his official residence. 798 he worked in the service of the Christian Mission in Carantania . Together with the ecclesiastical royal messenger and Archbishop Arn von Salzburg , he introduced the missionary bishop Theoderich to his district in this region. His solidarity with the church is further demonstrated by the foundation of a Marienkapelle in Paderborn, Saxony, as well as substantial donations to the Reichenau and St. Gallen monasteries . In 799 a diocesan synod took place in Treisma with which the missionary work of the Avars began. Participants included Bishop Waldrich von Passau and Gerold as the king's representative. During the course of this synod, Waldrich issued a certificate on the basis of which Gerold Linz received a fiefdom for life from the Martinskirche there.

After Gerold's death the Baierische Ostland was administratively separated from Baiern and got its own prefect. Audulf Gerold followed as prefect in Baiern, and Goteram in the east .

Military leader

He accompanied Karl on his campaign in 773/774 to the Longobards, where he distinguished himself through bravery and was made the king's signifer . Were probably Gerold and his father among those great men who, together with Charles at Easter 774 in Rome at Hadrian I lingered. It was the first visit of a Frankish king to the Pope.

From 791 he stood at the king's side in the war against the Avars. There he distinguished himself together with the Margrave Erich von Friuli , so that Karl entrusted the continuation of the entire campaign to Gerold, Erich and his son Pippin of Italy . Gerold also excelled in the fight against the Saxons and Slavs and since he was not yet an official at the time, he was probably also involved in the campaign against the Saracens in 778 . According to the imperial chronicle , Gerold killed the Duke of the Saxons Widukind "by using a ruse" whereupon the war between Franconia and Saxony was rekindled. In 799 he died in a battle against the Avars together with Erich and his son at an unknown location in Pannonia. The poet Walahfrid Strabo reports that the corpse of Gerold was brought to the Reichenau monastery by his loyal followers and buried there at the Marien Altar that he himself donated.

Literature, sagas

In the Holy Roman Empire , the Swabian knights had the right of pre-litigation . The origin of this tradition is not known. According to the "Imperial Chronicle" from the 12th century, Charlemagne has granted this right to his loyal Gerold as the leader of the Swabian people for the Swabians for all time. Gerold thus served as an identity-creating personality in Swabian history. In the Middle High German poem "Charlemagne" by the knitter , the Swabian count is the declared favorite of the emperor.

In the four stories "Am Hof ​​Herrn Karls" by Felix Dahn , Gerold, described here as a "brave hero", "loyal" and "glorious", is one of the protagonists. In the folk tales, Gerold is mainly glorified as the "standard bearer of Charlemagne". According to legend, Gerold is said to have been the founder of the Beuron monastery . A Lower Austrian legend is about Count Gerold and his daughters. According to legend, today's village of Gerolding is said to have received its name from Count Gerold. The count is a symbol of the Bavarian city of Gerolzhofen . Legend has it that he founded Gerolzhofen. The count is mentioned several times in the book "Deutsche Sagen" by the Brothers Grimm .

1990s letter bomb series

In the 1990s there was a series of letter bomb attacks in Austria. The series of attacks was accompanied by several letters of confession with xenophobic and racist slogans. In one of these letters, the confessor wrote in the name of a "Margrave Gerold, Prefect of the Avarmark". It has been assumed that this name refers to Gerold in der Baar. In the process following the attacks, Franz Fuchs was sentenced to life imprisonment.

literature

  • Willi Age:
    • Graf Gerold and Frau Imma - property, family and personal environment, In: Mitt. Des Hist. Association of the Palatinate, Speyer 1996, pp. 7–80.
    • Gerold and his sons Adrian and Eribo from 793 - An addition to the family of Count Gerold, In: Mitt. Des Hist. Association of the Palatinate, Speyer 2000, pp. 83–96.
  • Karl Schmid :  Gerold, Count. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 315 ( digitized version ).
  • Bernhard von Simson :  Gerold (Count in the Baar) . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, p. 40 f.
  • JB Ross: Two neglected paladins of Charlemagne, E. of Friuli and Gerold of Bavaria. In: Speculum 20, 1945, p. 212 ff. (English)
  • Hans Dieter Tönsmeyer: Gerhao quondam dux. On the role of the Frankish imperial nobility in the Hessian-Saxon border area . In: Journal of the Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies (ZHG) Volume 122 (2017), pp. 1–24. (Digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Gerold in der Baar  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johann Samuelersch , Johann Gottfried Gruber : General Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts . First section. Sixty-first part. Bibliographisches Institut & FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1855, p. 437
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Michael Mitterauer : Carolingian margraves in the southeast, Franconian imperial aristocracy and Bavarian tribal nobility in Austria , Verlag Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., Graz, Vienna, Cologne 1963
  3. ^ New historical treatises of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Volume 2. , Munich 1781, p. 6
  4. ↑ a b Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Volume 4, Col. 11350.
  5. ^ Matthias Werner: Noble families around the early Carolingians: the relatives of Irminas von Oeren and Adelas von Pfalzel , Verlag Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1982, p. 111f
  6. ^ Treatises of the historical class of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Third volume. First division. KB Academy of Sciences publishing house in commission of G. Franz'schen Verlag, Munich 1841, p. 148
  7. ^ Karl Schmid : On the problems of family, clan and gender, house and dynasty in the medieval nobility. Preliminary questions on the topic of ›nobility and rule in the Middle Ages‹. In: Journal for the History of the Upper Rhine , 1957
  8. ↑ Rudolf Huebner Dr. Iur .: Court documents of the Franconian era , new edition of the Scientia publishing house, 1971, p. 21
  9. ^ New historical treatises of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Volume 2. , Munich 1781, p. 44
  10. ^ Eduard Beninger , Ämilian Kloiber : Upper Austria's soil finds from the Baier and early German times. In: Upper Austrian Museum Association - Society for Regional Studies (Hrsg.): Yearbook of the Upper Austrian Museum Association. Year 107, Linz 1962, ISBN 3-902397-49-7 , pp. 125–150 ( PDF on ZOBODAT ).
  11. ↑ Kleindel: "Austria, Numbers - Data - Facts" , special edition A&M 2004, ISBN 3-902397-49-7
  12. ↑ Sebastian Rosche: Manorial legitimacy in early medieval Bavaria based on Lex Baiuvarium, GRIN Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-640-57228-1
  13. ↑ Karl Alexander von Müller (ed.): The myth of the Duke Widukind , in Historische Zeitschrift, Volume 155 , Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich and Berlin 1937
  14. ^ Herwig Wolfram: Salzburg, Bavaria, Austria. The Conversio Bagoarium et Carantanorum and the sources of their time. , Verlag Oldenbourg, Vienna, Munich, Oldenbourg 1996
  15. ↑ Meinrad Schaab , Hansmartin Schwarzmaier (ed.) U. a .: Handbook of Baden-Württemberg History . Volume 1: General History. Part 1: From prehistoric times to the end of the Hohenstaufen. Edited on behalf of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-608-91465-X , p. 465f.
  16. ↑ Carl Voretzsch (Ed.): Romanist Works, Volume 1 , Max Niemeyer Verlag, Halle an der Saale 1922, p. 150
  17. ^ Felix Dahn : At the court of Mr. Karl. Four stories. , Vol. XI of "Small novels from the migration of people (13 volumes)", 1901
  18. ^ Karl Schmid :  Gerold, Graf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 315 ( digitized version ).
  19. ↑ Beuroner Kunstverlag (ed.): Erzabtei Beuron , Beuron 1992, p. 11
  20. ↑ Margrave Gerold and his daughters. on the website http://www.sagen.at/
  21. ^ History of Gerolzhofen on the website of the city of Gerolzhofen
  22. ↑ Irmgard Eisenbach-Stangl, Wolfgang Stangl (ed.): The outer and inner Auslang , WUV-Universitätsverlag, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-85114-481-3 , p. 201
  23. ↑ Bloody riddle trail on Spiegel Online on October 23, 1995.
personal data
SURNAME Gerold the Younger
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gerold II .; Gerold in the Baar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Alemannic Margrave
DATE OF BIRTH 8th century
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 799