History of Bad Laasphe

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The history of the current core town of Bad Laasphe up to the end of the Old Kingdom in 1806 is presented here, which received city rights in the 13th century from the Counts of Wittgenstein and repeatedly served as the residence of various lines of the Counts and later princes of Sayn-Wittgenstein .

City view of Laasphe with Wittgenstein Castle by Matthäus Merian in his Topographia Hassiae from 1655

Early and High Middle Ages

The place Laasphe is first mentioned in 780 in a register of the Fulda monastery as "villa lassaffa". At that time the area of ​​the later county of Wittgenstein was still very sparsely populated and was probably developed as a border mark against the Saxons in the north under the new Carolingian royal family . Above the settlement, there is archaeological evidence of a small simultaneous fortification at the site of the older hill fort "Old Castle". Presumably you have at the above "villa lasaffa" one of the then typical manors understand was mismanaged to the settled with non-free male and female slaves, and some in the area serfs. This so-called villication under the direction of an administrator (Villicus = Meier) could have served to supply the aforementioned Carolingian fortifications.

The Fronhof was laid out on a slightly elevated alluvial cone south of the Laasphebach, which gave it its name, and whose name itself has been handed down to older Celtic names. The rounded settlement structure around today's Laaspher town church probably still depicts the settlement structure of the Fronhof. The settlement was cared for in pastoral care by the original parish in Breidenbach , about 7 km away to the south , from whose parish network it was only later removed.

The intensive settlement of the Wittgenstein area began as an external colonization movement from neighboring Hesse to the east around 900. First, the agriculturally favorable valleys were populated with individual farms or small farm groups; after that, most of the less favorable, i.e. H. usually higher settlements. It can be assumed that the Carolingian Fronhof at the mouth of the Laasphe retained its old central function and that one or more noble families lived here in the center of their property.

City foundation in the high Middle Ages

Around the middle of the twelfth century, a new hilltop castle Wittgenstein (= Widechinstein / Wittekindstein) was built above Laasphe and south of the old Carolingian fortification of the "Old Castle" , which soon afterwards functioned as the core of a small county. The property probably came from the estates of the Counts of Ziegenhain and served a family connected with these and from 1174 count Werner I as a new name-giving residence. The new Grafenburg and the older Laasphe settlement were on a north-south facing road that linked the Breitenbacher Grund with the large east-west road from the Rhineland to Thuringia on the watershed of the Rothaar Mountains. Judging by comparative examples, the former Fronhofverband in Laasphe is likely to have been increasingly disbanded at that time and divided among subordinate subjects for their own management, so that the first central market functions could have developed under the supervision of the new Counts of Wittgenstein . Nothing is known about the settlement structure of Laasphe from this period; there is an irregular distribution of farms west of the old manor around a church that have left no traces.

When, in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, a wave of founding cities in Central Europe proved the potential of this economic and social concept, the grandson of the first count, Count Siegfried I von Wittgenstein (ruled 1234 – after 1283), came up with the plan, to develop the Laasphe settlement into a town with its own constitution and defensible demarcation from the surrounding area. The exact time for this is unknown; It can be assumed that a division of the estate with Sigfried's brother soon after 1238 was the prerequisite for this intensification of rule. In 1277, Laasphe is incidentally attested as a city in the legal sense; an official charter has not been handed down.

historic town house in Wallstrasse. 63 with the rest of the western city wall

The town center of Bad Laasphe with its streets running parallel to the church hill in a westerly direction (today Wallstraße, Steinweg and Königsstraße; some of the Mauerstraße was only laid out in the 19th century) shows that a planned settlement process took place here. Parcels of roughly the same size had been given out along an elongated street and market area. What exactly the first city plan looked like in the 13th century cannot be determined without archaeological excavations. What is striking is the row of roughly equally wide, clearly elongated plots along a west-east running traffic axis, which included courtyards in the urban area as well as directly adjacent gardens and farmland towards the valley edges and were later divided by the city ​​wall . It is also unclear when Laasphe received this stone fortification. It probably took some time until the economic potential for this was available, so that, according to other examples, one can reckon with the early 14th century, in which the rectangular city wall with two gates in the west and four in the east, later documented, figuratively and archaeologically verifiable round corner towers and two more towers on the long sides.

Town church of Bad Laasphe from the 13th century with renovations from the 19th century (portals / windows)

The precise construction time of what is presumably the first stone church, which is still essentially preserved, is unclear. Today Laaspher town church includes on the north side of the first built hall church in Romanesque style with a recessed rectangular choir. The tower itself is attested in a document around 1237, so it was probably built before the city was founded. A little later, another nave with a polygonal choir was added on the south side. The reason for this will have been the re-establishment of Laasphe as a city by Count Siegfried I von Wittgenstein, who is also the main builder of the expansion. This created a vaulted two-aisled hall church .

Late Middle Ages

Count Johann IV. Von Sayn-Wittgenstein (died 1412) on his grave slab (detail)

According to comparative examples, the first township of the 13th century did not yet have a mayor as an independent head of administration. For a long time, the role of the count's family as lords of the city was of decisive importance. They had their ancestral seat at Wittgenstein Castle directly above the city and for whom the city represented an important resource for their court. Among the ruling counts in the late Middle Ages are: Salentin von Sayn, Graf zu Wittgenstein (around 1310 - around 1392), Johann IV. Von Sayn, Graf zu Wittgenstein (died around 1436), Georg von Sayn, Graf zu Wittgenstein (around 1400 - 1472), Eberhard von Sayn, Count of Wittgenstein (1425 - 1494) and his brother Johann, who later converted to the clergy, and Wilhelm von Sayn, Count of Wittgenstein (1488 - 1570), who after death his brother Johann reunited the entire county in 1551. At times the counts suffered from such a lack of money that at the end of the 14th century they had to mortgage the county with the city for several decades.

The city of Laasphe was administered by a college of judges set up directly by the Count's House under the chairmanship of the mayor as the count's official and was able to achieve a certain degree of self-administration within this framework. The aldermen of the college were named for life. In the late Middle Ages, the names of some families of lay judges have been passed down, who also took over the functions of city councils over time. It was only in modern times that Laasphe trained a city council that was independent of the judiciary. In the course of the 14th century, however, the function of the Count's mayor was limited to his function as a judge, and since 1357 there is also evidence of a mayor as a self-governing body and head of the city, who was soon assisted by a sub-mayor. Since the 14th century, the forces in large cities to open up the city administration in favor of a broader middle class, i. H. especially the organized craftsmen, were only available to a limited extent in Laasphe due to the small size; in the 15th century, however, the guilds mentioned wool weavers and tailors.

Since it was founded in the 13th century, the Laaspher township has been made up of various social groups, as we know from comparable towns in the area. In the early days, the group of leading families dominating the administration of the city was mainly composed of the ministerials associated with the Wittgenstein Count House . Over the generations, these families formed a circle of so-called aldermen or genders capable of council, which in larger cities are referred to as patriciate , but in smaller cities they refer to a similar social phenomenon as Meliorrat or Ehrlichkeit . As a rule, it was also a question of a marriage group tending to close , which maintained connections with the elites in the surrounding area of ​​roughly equal rank. From the traditions of the late Middle Ages one can for Laasphe about this circle a. a. the families (von) Hesselbach, (von) Banf, Wolffart, Hülscher, Schobel (Schöbel), Achenbach, Herbertzhausen and Hahn count. As a rule, the families had smaller agricultural fiefs from the neighboring aristocratic families, which enabled them to have a certain livelihood and presumably enabled them to distance themselves from the declassing manual labor. Those families from the originally dependent and legally unfree circle of ministers in the area who owned larger land and distinguished themselves in military service rose to the rank of lower nobility in the course of the 14th century. As the lower aristocratic Burgmanns assigned to the Grafenburg, based on comparative cases , they may have had their residences ( Burgmannenssitz ) in Laasphe in the early days . Here one can count on the families von Feudingen, von Hohenfels (1321), Ringk (castle seat until 1481) and von Achenbach (Rorich von Achenbach called vom Dornhof 1361), whose role in relation to Laasphe has yet to be clarified historically . From the 16th century onwards, there were no more noble Burgmann families living in the city of Laasphe.

In addition to this group of the city-based elite, families of craftsmen lived in Laasphe who mainly worked for the needs of the surrounding territory. The city of Laasphe achieved a verifiable prosperity in the course of the late Middle Ages, which today is demonstrably reflected above all in substantial university attendance. In the 15th century, students from the Laaspher family can be traced back to: B. 1449 Eynolphus Banf, who can later be proven as pastor in Laasphe between 1474 and 1482, 1474 Balthasar Banf, 1476 Heiderich Banf, 1485 Vulpertus Banf, 1486 Gerlasius Banf, 1491 Eynolphus Banf, Johannes Hahn 1467, Gilbert Hahn 1474, Paul Herbertzhausen 1495 , Johann Herbertzhausen 1499, Johann Hesselbach 1457, Heidenreich Hesselbach 1479, Eckhard Hülscher 1460, Paul Hülscher 1490, Konrad Schöbel 1417, Johann Schöbel 1473, Johann Wolfarth 1403, Paul Wolfarth 1454. The main place of study for the Laaspher offspring was the University of Erfurt . Since university studies at that time were associated with comparatively high costs and required the subsistence of parts of the younger generation, it proves the prospering economy of the city of Laasphe and the cross-regional contacts of its residents, which were otherwise difficult to prove for that time. There are also isolated contacts with other neighboring cities, for example a branch of the Banf family has been recorded in the aldermen's college of neighboring Biedenkopf since 1445 or a branch of the Hesselbach family was one of the advisable families there from the 16th century. The best-known result of this educational culture was the theologian Johannes Bonemilch , born around 1434 in Laasphe and multiple rector of the Erfurt University , who also worked as auxiliary bishop in Erfurt from 1489 to 1508 .

Laasphe, house Koenigsstrasse no. 40, the core from the early 16th century

The wooden construction of the town's half-timbered houses in Laasphe repeatedly led to town fires, the last of which was large-scale in 1506. At least one house in the old town of Laaspher has been preserved from the reconstruction, which was sure to begin immediately at that time (today Königstrasse No. 40). In the eastern outer wall, the house still shows the ancient construction features of a multi-storey post construction and could be dendrochronologically dated to the winter of 1508/09 with a central beam . This finding indicates that Laasphe was mainly built up with long, two-storey town houses with the gable facing the street. Without further building research and archaeological investigations, however, it remains unclear which properties and street spaces existed at the end of the Middle Ages. The first citizen list is handed down as a Turkish tax list from 1532 and lists 94 households.

The time of the Reformation

House Wallstr. No. 5 from the 16th century with older stone components

The greatest turning point in the traditional life of this city was the Reformation at the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period . As the wife of Count Wilhelm, Countess Johannetta from the House of Isenburg-Grenzau introduced the first reformatory changes to Wittgenstein Castle. The first Protestant pastor in Laasphe was Nikolaus Zell (Cell) from Treysa in 1552. In 1555 a first Protestant church order was issued for the county and thus also for Laasphe. In 1558, the highly educated Count Ludwig d. Ä. (1532–1605) took over the government in the County of Wittgenstein and actively campaigned for a more Calvinist -oriented church policy in connection with the territories of the Electoral Palatinate and the County of Nassau . A new church order from 1578 now had clearly reformed features. In 1564, Zell was followed by the Laaspher pastor Bartholomäus Grenzenbach the Elder. J. from Treysa. His successor in 1583 was the distinguished theologian and talented organizer Dr. Paul Crocius , who began to keep the church book for the Laaspher parish and who organized the parish's income.

Of the old aldermen and council families, the Banff and the Hesselbach in particular were able to retain their old position during the Reformation. Leadership roles were now also assumed by some families who had recently moved to the city: Schütz, Bilgen, Streithoff, Wehn, Rumpf. As a rule, they were also in connection with the count's house.

Since that time, the intellectual life in Laasphe can be surveyed more precisely thanks to a large number of sources. Laasphe had a Latin and a German school. Pastor Paul Crocius himself had married the daughter of the family of scholars Roding, who worked mainly in Marburg and thus had close ties to this university town and the landgrave's residence at the time. But also in the other families of the urban elite the university attendance of the late Middle Ages continued. A scholarship originally set up for the salvation of the descendants of the Hülscher family was converted into support for the study of suitable descendants under the supervision of the Count. The Laasphe born Dr. med. Christian Rumpf, for example, rose to be the personal physician of the Palatinate Elector Frederick V in Heidelberg and later followed him into exile in the Netherlands.

Laasphe as the royal seat of the southern county of Wittgenstein

Steinweg No. 17 Bad Laasphe from around 1700

Basically, it was Laasphe's function as a count's residence that raised the small town above comparable urban settlements as early as the Middle Ages, and repeatedly brought special functions and foreign personalities to the town. Had Count Ludwig d. Ä. moved his residence to Berleburg in the north, the division of the county among his sons led to Laasphe again functioning as the residence of a Wittgenstein line of counts from 1605.

Count Ludwig II. (The younger) von Sayn-Wittgenstein-Wittgenstein (1571–1634) was still an electoral Palatinate bailiff in Simmern in 1610 and did not move into the old count's castle via Laasphe until 1620. First of all, the events of the Thirty Years' War meant that, on the one hand, the function as a count's residence could not develop immediately; on the other hand, Laasphe's economic activity was hit hard by increasing troop movements, confiscations and epidemics related to the war from the 1620s.

Count Johann VIII. (1601–1657), from 1643 until his death in the service of Brandenburg, tried from a distance to mitigate the consequences of the Thirty Years' War for Laasphe. Laasphe only slowly established itself as the permanent residence of the ruling counts. He was succeeded by Ludwig Christian (1629–1683). He was followed by Count Gustav (1634–1705) and this Count Heinrich Albrecht (1658–1723). But since he had no children, his brother Count August (1664–1735) followed and then his son Karl Friedrich Wilhelm (Berlin 1708–1756).

Today, the structure of the old town of Laasphe shows that within a few decades after the Thirty Years War it was possible to turn the city back into a prosperous economic center. Most of the older buildings today date from after around 1680. One reason for this was a devastating fire in the south-eastern quarter of the city, which destroyed the houses around the church square in 1683. The houses built at that time such as B. the semi-detached house at Kirchplatz 16/18 are noticeably spacious, usually have three full storeys and the gable faces the street. Deviating from this, with the two houses of the first and second pastor on the church square and the neighboring house of a rent master's widow, buildings were also built with their roof ridge parallel to the street and thus forming a representative facade in a broad form, as it was in other places in German cities at that time Fashion became. It was not only this city fire in 1683 that led to such stately new buildings, but also new half-timbered houses were built in other parts of the city, such as the eaves-standing house at Königstraße 48 with its modern dwarf house in the roof area. The sequence of the owners of the Laasphe houses has been known almost continuously since the late 16th century.

One of the first residential buildings in front of the city wall: The Stoltz'sche Haus at Königstrasse 49 from 1705

From the beginning of the 18th century, the protective line of the city wall was crossed and the first houses were built on the western and eastern arteries in front of the gates, and the barns were increasingly relocated there. At that time, the Stoltz'sche Haus (Königstrasse 49) was built in the west of the walled city with its imposing three full storeys and rich decoration on the beams, which was carried out by the carpenter Mannus Riedesel . In the south of the old town, next to the mill, which is certainly quite old, a count's hunting arsenal was built as a single-storey stone building (not preserved). In addition, there were buildings for the collection of road tolls and the first steps towards establishing a factory.

literature

  • Jochen Karl Mehldau: Old Laaspher families and their houses. House chronicles ~ 1600–1875. Bad Laasphe 2013.
  • Dieter Pfau: Traces of time in Siegerland and Wittgenstein, the early and high Middle Ages (750–1250). Bielefeld 2009.
  • Eberhard Bauer: Pictures from Laasphe. A historical tour of the city. Bad Laasphe 1993.
  • Reinhard Schmidt: From the history of Jews and Christians in Laasphe. Bad Laasphe 1991.
  • Eberhard Bauer: The professions of the citizens of Laasphe and Berleburg in the 18th century. In: Wittgenstein (1971), 35 issue 2, pp. 70-76.
  • Joachim Naumann: Inventories and assets in the Laaspher farm citizen house of the 17th century. Materials on a socio-historical folklore of the Wittgensteiner Land. In: Wittgenstein: 1. The food supplies, their preservation and storage. Wittg. Vol. 33/1969 / H. 1 / S. 5–13: 2. Clothing and linen. Wittg. Vol. 33/1969 / H. 2 / S. 75-92; 3. Valuables u. am, Wittg. Vol. 33/1969 / H. 4 / S. 169-174.
  • Naumann, Joachim: The world of work and ways of life in the building trade in the Wittgenstein territorial state of the modern age (1550–1850), 1972.
  • Gustav Bauer: The Reformation in the County of Wittgenstein and its implementation up to the death of Count Ludwig the Elder. In memory of the 1st Wittgenstein Church Ordinance of November 4, 1555 . Laasphe 1954.
  • Wilhelm Hartnack: On the older topography of the city of Laasphe. In: Festschrift Männer-Gesang-Verein Liedertafel-Eintracht Laasphe. Laasphe 1953, pp. 13-33.
  • Karl Hartnack: Wittgensteiner at foreign schools and universities . In: Das Schöne Wittgenstein H. 10 (1939), pp. 77-79.
  • Karl Hartnack: Laasphe 1824-1936 (city plans, house owners) . In: Wittgenstein Vol. 24 (1960), H. 4, pp. 157-166.
  • Karl Hartnack: Changes in the cityscape of Laasphes through conflagrations in the first half of the 19th century . In: Das Schöne Wittgenstein (1942), No. 11, pp. 41–43.
  • Günther Wrede : Territorial history of the County of Wittgenstein (= Marburg studies on older history. I. series: Works on the historical atlas of Hesse and Nassau, vol. 3), Marburg / Lahn 1927 (here especially the local lexicon on Laasphe pp. 164–167).
  • Johann Georg Hinsberg : Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg. The entire county of Wittgenstein until the formation of the independent county of Wittgenstein-Berleburg around 1603/05 with special consideration of the glory and city of Berleburg in local picture decorations. Berleburg 1920 digitized .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wied 1988; Pfau 2009, p. 60.
  2. ^ Peacock 2009
  3. ↑ Gustav Bauer: The dispute about the Laaspher velvet tenth. In: Wittgenstein Vol. 41 (1977), H. 1, pp. 2-11.
  4. ↑ Wrede 1927, p. 164.
  5. ↑ Hartnack 1939.
  6. ↑ Joachim Naumann: A Laaspher population register of the year 1532, in: Wittgenstein vol. 35, booklet 1 (1971), pp. 2-4
  7. ↑ 1602 Reinhard Hesselbach mayor (Mehldau 2012, p. 97), 1609 Hermann Hesselbach mayor (Mehldau 2012, p. 97)
  8. ↑ 1572/3 Jost Schütz mayor; 1585 Hans Schütz mayor; 1581 Hans Rumpf mayor.
  9. ↑ Werner Wied: Ernst Mohr - secretary, official administrator and bailiff of the county of Wittgenstein-Wittgenstein. In: Wittgenstein Vol. 62/1998 / H. 4 / S. 155-163 Wittg. Vol. 63/1999 / H. 1 / S. 15-22 Wittg. Vol. 63/1999 / H. 2 / S. 65-79 Wittg. Vol. 63/1999 / H. 4 / S. 144-160 Wittg. Vol. 64/2000 / H. 1 / S. 25-32 Wittg. Vol. 64/2000 / H. 2 / S. 55-63 Wittg. Vol. 64/2000 / H. 3 / S. 104-117 Wittg. Vol. 65/2001 / H. 2 / S. 66-75 Wittg. Vol. 65/2001 / H. 3 / S. 103-112 Wittg. Vol. 65/2001 / H. 4 / S. 152-160 Wittg. Vol. 66/2002 / H. 1 / S. 24-32 Wittg. Vol. 66/2002 / H. 2 / S. 76-85 Wittg. Vol. 66/2002 / H. 3 / S. 115-124 Wittg. Vol. 66/2002 / H. 4 / S. 154-158 Wittg. Vol. 67/2003 / H. 1 / S. 13-18 Wittg. Vol. 67/2003 / H. 2 / S. 58-65 Wittg. Vol. 67/2003 / H. 3 / S. 94-107 Wittg. Vol. 67/2003 / H. 4 / S. 136-151.
  10. ↑ Jochen Karl Mehldau: Old Laaspher families and their houses. House chronicles ~ 1600–1875. Bad Laasphe 2013.
  11. ↑ Karl Hartnack: The Stoltzsche House King Street 49 in Laasphe. In: Wittgenstein Vol. 21 (1957), H. 2, pp. 95-96.

Web links

Wikisource: Bad Laasphe in Merian's Topographia Hassiae  - Sources and full texts