Giselbert (Moselgau)

Giselbert (named as Count in 996; † May 18, 1004 near Pavia ) was a Count of the County of Wallerfangen .

Life

Giselbert came from the Luxembourg counts , the so-called Middle Moselle family, which in the course of its history developed into one of the most influential dynasties in the west of the empire. The possession centers were Luxemburg , Sierck and Diedenhofen .

Giselbert was a son of Count Siegfried I of Luxembourg , who is considered the founder of Luxembourg , and his wife Hadwig (* around 935/945; † December 13th after 993).

Under Giselbert's father Siegfried, efforts began to expand their own domain in the direction of the upper Moselle and the central Saar . It was possible to acquire properties in the vicinity of Metz and to gain them by exchanging them with the Bishop of Trier Saarburg , albeit not as a hereditary fief . The power of the Luxembourgers could be extended up the Saar to Wallerfangen . The Wallerfangen rule was occupied by Siegfried's son Giselbert. The county name was in pago Moselensi, in comitatu Waldelevinga, cui Giselbertus comes preesse videtur (German: "in the Moselgau, in the county of Wallerfangen, which Count Giselbert heads").

The County of Wallerfangen was not a county, but a personal rulership without known borders. The place on the Saar was a main base for the spread of power. The county of Wallerfangen is related to three districts in the three traditional documents: the Rizzagau, the Saargau and the Moselgau. The County of Wallerfangen did not coincide with any of these three districts. Presumably Giselbert was also able to acquire Sierck on the Moselle for the Luxembourg Count House. Giselbert's County Wallerfangen is only mentioned in the 10th century. Direct evidence of Giselbert's political actions is rare. The Count House of Luxembourg was unable to hold the Wallerfanger area and was ousted here by the House of Lorraine. Wallerfangen became the official seat of the German Bellistum of the Duchy of Lorraine in the 14th century .

Wallerfangen, fragments of the Düren Humburg ( Historical Museum Wallerfangen )

A fortress of the Wallerfanger counts can be assumed in the Düren Humburg . In 1965, the Saarland state curator Reinhard Schindler excavated the foundations of a mighty medieval stone tower on a mountain spur near Wallerfangen . The spur and tower were cordoned off by a section wall with an associated ditch. The roughly two meter thick walls form an irregular rectangle measuring 13/14.50 m by 17/19 m. They have carefully hewn sandstone blocks at the tower corners. The archaeological findings suggest the type of castle " residential tower ". Inside there were sooty remains of columns and Romanesque architectural parts such as column shafts, capitals and round arches. The pillars, one of which bears a Roman inscription, are of Roman origin and were reused in the construction of the building. The shape of the capitals found indicates that it was manufactured in the 11th century. An older predecessor cannot be ruled out. The historians Edith Ennen (1953) and Horst Wolfgang Böhme (1992) think it is possible that Count Giselbert had his seat here. The task of the Humburg falls at the time when Count Giselbert dies in 1004 without heirs and from which there is no further written evidence for the County of Wallerfangen.

Giselbert's sister Kunigunde had married Duke Heinrich von Bayern in the second half of the 90s of the 10th century, who was elected German king on June 7th, 1002 in Mainz and was crowned by Archbishop Willigis in Mainz Cathedral . When Heinrich set out on an Italian campaign against Margrave Arduin von Ivrea in the spring of 1004 , his brother-in-law Giselbert von Wallerfangen also accompanied him. Margrave Arduin murdered Bishop Petrus von Vercelli in March 997 and was condemned in January 999 by a Roman synod in the presence of the Pope and Emperor. Nevertheless, on February 15, 1002, only three weeks after the death of Otto III, he was made King of Italy (Rex Italiae) .

Other Lombard bishops, including Leo von Vercelli , appealed to Henry II for help. They had been curtailed several times by Arduin in their power of disposal over the church property. Heinrich's army moved from the assembly point, the Augsburg Lechfeld , over the Brenner Pass to Trient , where Palm Sunday was celebrated on April 9, 1004 .

Pavia, Church of San Michele Maggiore

Thietmar von Merseburg, bishop and historian of the Ottonian period, describes the fate of Giselbert in his chronicle (excerpt from the Dresden manuscript of Thietmar's chronicle, facsimile in the Wallerfangen local history museum with color highlighting of the corresponding text passage)

On May 14, 1004 Heinrich in Pavia was elected and crowned King of Italy by Archbishop Arnulf II in the church of San Michele . The following night the citizens of Pavias attacked Heinrich and his companion. These in turn set fire to houses in Pavia to alert the distant troops. The revolt in which the royal palace was set on fire by the rebels could only be put down with great difficulty. During this uprising, Giselbert was injured and carried away from the fray by helpers. In revenge, a knight named Wolfram from Heinrich's entourage is said to have split the helmet and head down to the throat of an insurgent Pavese with a sword cut. Giselbert died of his serious injuries four days later on May 18, 1004. Giselbert is referred to in the chronicle of Bishop Thietmar von Merseburg at the time of his death as iuvenis (dt. "Young man"):

"Ibi tum quidam egreius iuvenis Gisilbertus nomine, frater reginae, a Longobardis vulneratus oppeciit et consociorum tristiciam vehementer adauxit. Quem Vulferam miles, in medium agmen prosiliens unumque ex his galeam usque in iugulum feriens, securus vindicavit. "

After Heinrich had received homage from other Lombards on a court day in Pontelungo , he withdrew from Italy at the beginning of June 1004 without having achieved the imperial crown or defeating Arduin.

Commemoration

In Wallerfangen, Graf-Giselbert-Straße is reminiscent of Giselbert von Wallerfangen.

Further development

The Giselberts family rose to European importance under Count Johann the Blind when he married the Kingdom of Bohemia . Due to his marriage in 1310, the dynasty's main power politics shifted to the east. The family used the heartland between the Moselle and Saar to provide for female members. Among other things, Elisabeth von Görlitz should be mentioned . Through alienation and inheritance, the family's core territory came to the Habsburg dynasty until the end of the Holy Roman Empire .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Camille Wampach : Documents and source book of the old Luxembourg territories up to the Burgundian period , I, Luxembourg 1935, No. 207, p. 289ff.
2. ↑ Hans-Christian Herrmann u. Johannes Schmitt (Hrsg.): The Saarland - History of a Region, Hrsg. from the Historical Association for the Saar Region, St. Ingbert 2012, p. 19.
3. ↑ Edith Ennen : Giselbert, Graf in der Wallerfanger Grafschaft , in: Festschrift on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Dillinger Realgymnasium and the inauguration of the new building in Dr.-Prior-Straße , ed. by Dr. Aloys Lehnert, Dillingen / Saar, 1953, pp. 278-283.
4. ^ Theodor Liebertz: Wallerfangen and his story , Wallerfangen 1953, 37-39.
5. ^ Heinz Renn: The first Luxemburger Grafhaus (963-1136) , Bonn 1941, p. 74ff.
6. ^ Camille Wampach: Documents and source book of the old Luxembourg territories up to the Burgundian period , I, Luxembourg 1935, No. 207, p. 292.
7. ↑ Camille Wampach: Documents and source book of the old Luxembourg territories up to the Burgundian period , I, Luxembourg 1935, No. 249, p. 357f.
8. ↑ Roland WL Puhl: The districts and counties of the early Middle Ages in the Saar-Mosel area , philological-onomastic studies on early medieval spatial organization based on the room names and the place names specified with them (contributions to the language in the Saar-Mosel area, 13), dissertation , Saarbrücken 1999, pp. 457-463.
9. ↑ Reinhard Schindler: Studies on the prehistoric settlement and fortification system of the Saarland, Trier 1968.
10. ^ Information on the exhibition at the Wallerfangen Historical Museum
11. ^ Camille Wampach: Documents and source book of the old Luxembourg territories up to the Burgundian time , I, Luxembourg 1935, No. 219, p. 308f.
12. ↑ Robert Holtzmann (Ed.): Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, Nova series 9: The Chronicle of Bishop Thietmar von Merseburg and their Korveier revision (Thietmari Merseburgensis episcopi Chronicon) Berlin 1935, p. 282 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )
13. ↑ Hans-Christian Herrmann u. Johannes Schmitt (Hrsg.): The Saarland - History of a Region, Hrsg. from the Historical Association for the Saar Region, St. Ingbert 2012, p. 19.