Löwenstein County
The county Lowenstein was a county in the Holy Roman Empire , which existed from the 12th century until the end of the empire 1806th The name of the county is derived from Löwenstein Castle , below which the city of the same name Löwenstein (today in the Heilbronn district in the north of Baden-Württemberg ) developed. The Counts of Löwenstein came one after the other from three different noble families, of which the Löwenstein-Wertheim family , who last provided the counts, still exists.
The Grafschaft Löwenstein was originally an imperial county, but was conquered by Württemberg in the Landshut War of Succession in 1504 . In 1510, the Counts of Löwenstein received the county of Württemberg back, but no longer as an imperial county, but as a Württemberg fiefdom and part of the Duchy of Württemberg. After the counts came into the possession of the Grafschaft Wertheim by marriage and they had moved their residence there, the Grafschaft Löwenstein lost its importance for them. Until 1806, however, it retained a special position within Württemberg.
history
The Calwer Line
The Counts of Löwenstein initially came from the family of the Counts of Calw , who had one of their main property interests around Löwenstein (besides Calw and Sindelfingen ), which probably extended to the Neckar , such as the acquisition of a manor in Lauffen by Count Adalbert II. (died before 1099) shows. Adalbert III. († 1094) acquired property in and around Willsbach im Sulmtal through his marriage to Cunizza von Willsbach and in the late 11th century was probably also the founder of Löwenstein Castle above the Sulmtal . His son Adalbert IV. Von Calw (died after 1146) first called himself Count von Löwenstein ( comes de Lewinstein ). An inheritance was divided among his sons: Adalbert V continued the Calw line, his brother Berthold (born before 1152; died 1167) received the Grafschaft Löwenstein and founded the line of the (Calwer) Counts of Löwenstein . The last count from this dynasty was Gottfried III. von Löwenstein (born before 1252; died unknown), who probably had no sons (two daughters Richinza and Agnes are known). Against the will of their daughters, Gottfried and his wife Sophie sold the county to the Bishop of Würzburg on October 21, 1277 .
The Habsburgs
For lack of money, the bishop sold the County of Löwenstein on August 15, 1281 to King Rudolf von Habsburg , who converted it into an imperial fief and handed it over to his first-born, illegitimate son Albrecht von Schenkenberg to take care of him. In addition to the actual county of Löwenstein with the castle and possessions in the Sulmtal below (including the villages of Affaltrach and Willsbach as well as castles with Löwenstein servants in Eschenau and Weiler ), the county in the broader sense also included the Wolfsölden dominion with the castle of the same name west of Backnang , which has now disappeared , Hochdorf Castle and the villages of Burgstall , Affalterbach , Erbstetten , Beihingen am Neckar and Großaspach as well as the Murrhardt Monastery Bailiwick with the Murrhardt Monastery , the village Sulzbach with Lautereck Castle and many small hamlets on the heights of the Upper Murr ; finally, free float on the lower Brettach ( Langenbeutingen , Neudeck ) and around Kornwestheim / Hoheneck . Rudolf gave Albrecht the rich tithe income from the entire Heilbronn mark. From 1283 Albrecht Graf von Löwenstein called himself and also took over the coat of arms of the old Counts of Calw-Löwenstein, the striding lion on a mountain of three . In 1284 he married Luitgard von Bolanden and thereby acquired large estates on the Rhine, on which he has regularly stayed in winter ever since.
King Rudolf tried to break the power of individual noble families in the south-west of the empire. A three-year battle between Rudolf and the Counts of Württemberg , whose county bordered on the Count of Löwenstein, ended in 1287 with a stalemate. In order to improve Löwenstein's military position, Rudolf, who was personally present, granted the town below the castle on November 11, 1287, the rights of the nearby imperial city of Weinsberg , which allowed Löwenstein to be walled. Around the same time, Murrhardt was promoted to town. In 1288 Albrecht von Löwenstein acquired the town of Bönnigheim , the villages of Cleebronn and Ramsbach (near Zaberfeld , sold) and Obermagenheim Castle (which was destroyed in the 16th century) on the Cleebronn Michaelsberg . After Rudolf's death in 1291, Albrecht temporarily lost parts of his possessions, but got them back when his half-brother Albrecht became King in 1298 . When Albrecht died in 1304, the Grafschaft Löwenstein had become an important power factor in the south-west of the empire.
Albrecht's successor, first his widow Luitgard and later his sons, could not maintain the county’s possessions and power. The Rhenish property was gradually sold, but the rule Gleichen (with Mainhardt and Pfedelbach , now part of Pfedelbach) and Altböckingen were added. In 1309/10 most of the Wolfsölden dominion was lost, later also Bönnigheim, Magenheim and Altböckingen. In 1330/1364, the Heinriet lordship adjacent to Löwenstein was acquired in two stages . In 1375, however, the county collapsed under the burden of debt, which is why Count Albrecht II leaned closely on the Electoral Palatinate and became Ministeriale of Count Palatine Ruprecht . After Albrecht's death in 1382 half of the county was pledged to the Palatinate, and after the Battle of Döffingen in 1388 Murrhardt was lost to Württemberg. Since Gleichen and Mainhardt had been pledged since 1380, the County of Löwenstein now actually only consisted of the castle and town of Löwenstein, the villages in the Sulmtal, Heinriet and Sulzbach. The last Löwenstein count of the Habsburg line, Heinrich, leaned on his neighbors and became councilor of Württemberg. Since Heinrich's marriage remained childless, his younger brother Johann-Rudolf died young and the older brother Georg had become a clergyman, it was clear from around 1420 that the counts would die out. Several noble families, including the Lords of Weinsberg and the Hohenlohe , hoped for their successor, but Heinrich sold the Grafschaft Löwenstein to the Palatinate in 1441, which already owned half of it. He reserved considerable rights, was allowed to continue to use all income and also received an annual pension from the Palatinate. After Heinrich's death in 1443, his older brother Georg, canon in Bamberg , continued to exercise these rights of rule. It was not until Georg, almost 90 years old, died on August 10, 1464, that Löwenstein was finally Palatinate.
The Count Palatine
The Count Palatinate enlarged the county by buying Schmidhausen and its hamlets in the Schmidbachtal such as Gagernberg , Jettenbach and Kaisersbach . In 1488, Elector Philip the Sincere gave his cousin and adoptive brother Ludwig , who was not entitled to inheritance and who had emerged from the morganatic marriage of Frederick the Victorious to the Augsburg bourgeois daughter, Clara Tott , the county of Löwenstein. Ludwig had already received the rule of Scharfeneck in the Palatinate in 1476 and therefore called himself Ludwig von Scharfeneck. In 1490 Ludwig acquired Abstatt and Wildeck Castle , not far from Löwenstein , and in 1494 King Maximilian awarded Ludwig the rank and coat of arms of Count von Löwenstein and elevated him to the rank of imperial count . As early as 1504, Ludwig fell victim to the power struggle between the Electoral Palatinate and Württemberg in the Landshut War of Succession, and the county of Löwenstein was conquered and annexed by Württemberg. In 1510 he received the county of Württemberg back, but no longer as an imperial immediate county, but as a Württemberg fiefdom and part of the Duchy of Württemberg. In 1521 the Löwensteiners appeared for the last time in the register of the Reich under the Swabian district estates.
An inheritance split in 1552 led to the separation of the Löwenstein-Scharfeneck sideline, which, in addition to the Scharfeneck rulership, also included the Habitzheim rulership (in the Odenwald) and the Abstatt office. In 1574 Ludwig's grandson Ludwig III came. , who had married a daughter of Count Ludwig zu Stolberg in 1566 , through this marriage into the possession of the imperial county Wertheim , which is why the counts have since called themselves Counts (later princes) of Löwenstein-Wertheim and their residence is located in the - some distance from Löwenstein located - City of Wertheim relocated. The Grafschaft Löwenstein subsequently lost its importance for the Counts of Löwenstein-Wertheim. After the family was divided into two lines of different denominations from 1621, the County of Löwenstein came into the possession of the Protestant line Löwenstein-Wertheim-Virneburg (later Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg ), for which it was - alongside the County of Wertheim - one of the most important sources of income . The possessions of the Scharfeneck sideline, which died out in 1633, including Abstatt, however, came to the Catholic line Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rochefort (later Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg). The media coverage due to the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss circuit brought in 1806 finally the end of the county Lowenstein, which, like the Office Abstatt to the Kingdom of Württemberg fell, although the Lowenstein-Wertheim counts as lords remained still for a few decades special rights.
literature
- Karl-Heinz Dähn: Wittelsbach-Kurpfalz in Löwenstein . In: 700 years of the city of Löwenstein. 1287-1987 . City of Löwenstein, Löwenstein 1987, p. 141-172 .
- Gerhard Fritz: The history of the Grafschaft Löwenstein and the Counts of Löwenstein-Habsburg from the late 13th to the middle of the 15th century . Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1986, ISBN 3-7995-7628-2 ( Research from Württembergisch Franconia . Volume 29).
- Gerhard Fritz: On the history of the Counts of Löwenstein-Calw , in: Württembergisch Franken 75 , Schwäbisch Hall 1991, pp. 49–56.
- Iris Raster: Calwian Beginnings . In: 700 years of the city of Löwenstein. 1287-1987 . City of Löwenstein, Löwenstein 1987, p. 103-112 .
- Harald Stockert: Nobility in transition. The princes and counts of Löwenstein-Wertheim between state rule and class rule 1780–1850 . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-17-016605-0 ( Publications of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg. Series B: Research . Volume 144).