Hohnstein (noble family)

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Coat of arms of the Counts of Honstein

The Counts of Hohnstein (mostly Honstein at the time ) were a German noble family in the Harz Mountains . They appeared from the middle of the 12th century, initially as Lords of Ilfeld in the documents. They ruled the county of Hohnstein from 1182 at the latest until 1593.

history

The family first appeared in a document in 1154 with Elger von Ilfeld in a document from Heinrich the Lion for the Volkenroda monastery . Adelger von Ilfeld married Lutrude, who is called "von Orlamünde" in the Ilfeld chronicles. In 1182 a Count Elger von Hohnstein appeared as a witness in a certificate from Emperor Frederick I. The nucleus of the county was the area around Ilfeld and Neustadt / Harz with the Hohnstein Castle (Harz) . The counts expanded their territory significantly up to the middle of the 14th century, so that they could be addressed as the most important counts in the southern Harz, even before the counts of Schwarzburg and the counts of Stolberg . At the end of the 13th / beginning of the 14th century, the Hohnstein family began to split into several lines, and from 1315 it was divided into three lines.

In 1356 the line of Hohnstein- Sondershausen became extinct in the male line , and the Counts of Schwarzburg appeared as heirs . In 1373 the lines Hohnstein- Kelbra - Heringen and Hohnstein- Lohra - Klettenberg divided the county among themselves, whereby the ancestral county with the castle of the same name should remain in common ownership. In the Flegler War of 1412, part of the rulership was destroyed and ultimately the downfall of the Hohnsteiners was initiated. Their rule fell through sale to the Counts of Stolberg in 1412/17.

While the Kelbra-Heringen line was later further divided, but surrendered all possessions in the southern Harz by the end of the 15th century, the Counts of Hohnstein continued to rule in the Lohra-Klettenberg line. They expanded their possessions again in the 16th century to include the counties of Scharzfeld and Lauterberg . With the county of Lauterberg, the Hohnsteiners also had access to the mining area of Sankt Andreasberg , where they proclaimed the first mountain freedom in 1521.

With the death of Ernst VII in 1593, the ruling House of Hohnstein in the Harz region went out. The counties of Scharzfeld and Lauterberg moved in the Duke of Grubenhagen († 1596) as an extinct fiefdom, so that only the lords of Lohra and Klettenberg remained. Due to a hereditary brotherhood that had existed since 1433, the Counts of Schwarzburg and zu Stolberg took over the inheritance, but were forcibly expelled by the liege lord, the Bishop of Halberstadt . The counts sued the Imperial Court of Justice , but despite several judgments in their favor only came into the possession of part of the lordships of Lohra and Klettenberg in 1632. The other part remained with the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel .

Due to the warlike events, however, the rule over the county changed several times. Among other things, it came to Christoph Simon von Thun . Since then, his family has been called Thun and Hohenstein , but lost control again during the war. When the Peace of Westphalia was concluded in 1648, the former Hohnstein estates were occupied by the Swedish. They were awarded to the Elector of Brandenburg in the Osnabrück Peace Treaty as part of the Halberstadt Monastery and from then until 1945 - with the exception of French rule 1807 to 1813 - remained in Brandenburg-Prussian ownership. The rejection of the county by Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg to the Swedish colonel Count Johann zu Sayn-Wittgenstein in 1647 led to long-term disputes and in 1699 to the cancellation.

photos

Territory in the 19th century

The name Grafschaft Hohenstein referred to the Prussian county in the 19th century (originated from the Honstein-Lohra-Klettenberg line); In addition, there was the former family county Honstein around Ilfeld and Neustadt, which had partially become Welfisch from the property of the Stolberg Counts in 1803 and was initially run in the Kingdom of Hanover under the name Hohnstein Province, then Hohnstein County and finally Hohnstein Office. After Prussia had incorporated Hanover as a province in 1866, an administrative reform came into force in 1885, in which the Hohnstein office was combined with the Elbingerode office to form the Ilfeld district (both offices were separated from each other by Brunswick territory). On 1 October 1932, the county was divided Ilfeld: The old office Hohnstein was the county county Hohenstein in the administrative district of Erfurt of the Prussian province of Saxony affiliated with the old office Elbingerode among Wernigerode in the Region of Magdeburg (also province of Saxony).

title

The title Graf von Hohnstein was / are among others the Counts of Stolberg and the Counts of Schwarzburg (both houses inherited almost completely by the Hohnsteiners in the southern Harz region), the Counts of Thun (from the time of the Thirty Years' War), the Counts of Sayn-Wittgenstein (from the time after the Peace of Westphalia) as well as the dukes of Braunschweig and the kings of Prussia .

coat of arms

The coat of arms is three times four red and silver boxed (some depictions also show silver and red boxed). Red deer antlers on the helmet with red and silver covers .

Important representatives

literature

  • Johann Gottfried Hoche: Complete history of the County of Hohenstein, the dominions Lohra and Klettenberg, Heeringen, Kelbra, Scharzfeld, Lutterberg, the two founders Ilfeld and Walkenried: together with a statistical description of the Prussian share in this county. An appendix to the Brandenburg, Brunswick, Stollberg, Schwarzburg and Witgenstein history . Francke and Bispink, 1790 ( preview and free e-book in the Google book search).
  • Karl Meyer: Chronicle of the county of Hohnstein-Clettenberg-Lohra. Documented news about the Nordhausen district and the Oerter located in it, Nordhausen 1875
  • Ludwig Koch: Count Elger von Hohnstein, the founder of the Dominican order in Thuringia: A contribution to the church history of Thuringia . A. Perthes, 1865 ( preview and free e-book in Google book search).
  • Friedrich Christian Lesser: History of the County of Hohnstein. Based on the manuscript in the Thuringian main state archive in Weimar. Edited by Peter Kuhlbrodt, vol. 5 of the series of publications by the Friedrich Christian Lesser Foundation, Nordhausen 1997,
  • Ernst Schubert: The Harz counts in the late Middle Ages. In: Rogge, Jörg and Uwe Schirmer (eds.): High nobility in Central Germany (1200 to 1600). Forms - Legitimation - Representation, Leipzig 2003
  • Rudolf Reichhardt: The County of Hohenstein in the 16th and 17th Centuries - Festschrift for the 200th anniversary of the union of the County of Hohenstein with the Brandenburg-Prussian state, December 12, 1899
  • Paul Becker: The Counts of Ilfeld-Honstein in the politics of the 13th century , in: Contributions to history from the city and district of Nordhausen 35 (2010), pp. 33–41.
  • Frank Boblenz : Stands in the county of Honstein when it belonged to Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel 1593-1628 / 1636. In: Land estates in Thuringia. Pre-parliamentary structures and political culture in the Old Reich (writings on the history of parliamentarism in Thuringia; 27). Published by the Thuringian Parliament. Erfurt and Weimar 2008, pp. 315–351. ISBN 978-3-86160-527-0

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ DMGH DD Heinrich the Lion (HL), No. 28.
  2. ↑ See CDS IA 2 No. 467 and MGH DD F I., 4 (1181-1190) No. 835.
  3. ^ City of Schwedt / Oder - Count Martin von Hohenstein zu Vierraden and Schwedt. In: schwedt.eu. Retrieved July 27, 2011 .