Gleiberg county

Gleiberg Castle

Coat of arms of the Counts of Gleiberg

The county of Gleiberg was named after Gleiberg Castle in today's Krofdorf-Gleiberg in the Gießen district.

history

As early as the 10th century, the Konradines, in their capacity as Counts of Lahngau, used the Gleiberg as the location of a castle. It is possible that the castle was built by Otto, the brother of the later King Konrad I , as a fortress against the Popponen .

Heribert von der Wetterau made the castle his residence in 949 and thus founded the county on the middle Lahn. After his death, the castle passed through his daughter Irmtrud to his son-in-law Friedrich von Luxemburg , the founder of the Luxemburg Count House of Gleiberg. The castle is considered to be the possible birthplace of Empress Kunigunde around 980.

This first line of the Counts of Gleiberg died out at the end of the 11th century. In 1103 King Henry V conquered the castle and had it destroyed. The next owner of the castle (or castle ruins) was Clementia von Poitou , the widow of Count Conrad I of Luxembourg. After her death, one of her grandchildren, Wilhelm, appears as Count von Gleiberg, as does his nephew Otto. It was probably during this time that the castle was rebuilt.

Wilhelm and Otto shared the county of Gleiberg at the beginning of the second half of the 12th century. Wilhelm received the eastern half around the Wasserburg Gießen, which he built in 1152 and made his residence . Due to the marriage of his heir, Mechthild, to Rudolf I in 1181 , this small sub- county of Gießen came to the Count Palatine of Tübingen . It was initially managed by Wilhelm's widow and Mechthild's mother Salome von Isenburg , who called herself "Countess von Gießen", until her death between 1197 and 1203 . Mechthild's grandson Ulrich I sold this property, together with Gießen, to Landgrave Heinrich I of Hesse in 1264/65 .

Wilhelm's nephew Otto received the western half of the county with Gleiberg Castle. This sub-county came to the Lords of Merenberg after Otto's death in 1163 through the marriage of his heir daughter Irmgard with Hartrad II of Merenberg, which had already been completed around the middle of the century . Hartrad II moved his residence to Gleiberg Castle and assumed the title of "Count". The Merenbergers owned this area until their sex died out in the male line with the death of Hartrad VI. in 1328. The subsequent inheritance dispute, which then degenerated into a feud , did not end until 1333, when Gertrud, the older daughter of Hartrad VI, married Johann I von Nassau-Weilburg and the claims to the rule of Merenberg, including the county of Gleiberg, were thus final the house of Nassau fell. Since then, Johann called himself "von Nassau-Merenberg", until it was renamed "von Nassau-Saarbrücken" with the inheritance of the County of Saarbrücken . Gleiberg Castle remained the center of the "Land on the Lahn", but no longer had a residence function.

After the division, part of the old county of Gleiberg remained joint property until 1585. These included the "common land on the Lahn" ( Heuchelheim , Kinzenbach, Rodheim , Fellingshausen , Launsbach and Wißmar ) as well as the Hüttenberg , the court Lollar , and the places Grossen-Linden , Niederkleen and Vollnkirchen .

Counts of Gleiberg

1. Heribert von der Wetterau (* 925; † 992), Count in Kinziggau , Count in Engersgau , Count Palatine , Count of Gleiberg ( Konradiner )
   1. Irmtrud († after 985), heiress of Gleiberg ∞ Friedrich , Graf im Moselgau († 1019), Wigeriche
      1. Hermann I. von Gleiberg , († around 1065)
         1. Hermann II of Gleiberg , († probably after 1095)
      2. Giselbert († 1056/59), Count of Salm
         1. Conrad I , Count of Luxembourg († 1086) ∞ Clementia of Poitou, † after 1129, Countess von Gleiberg, daughter of Wilhelm VII. , Duke of Aquitaine ( Ramnulfiden )
            1. Wilhelm , Count of Luxembourg († 1129/31) ∞ Luitgart of Northeim, daughter of Kuno , Count of Beichlingen
               1. Wilhelm (1131/58 attested), Count of Gleiberg ∞ Salomone (Salome), "Countess of Gießen"
                  1. Mechtild , † after 1203, Countess of Gießen ∞ Rudolf I , Count Palatine of Tübingen († 1219)
               2. Conrad II , Count of Luxembourg († 1136)
                  1. Otto (attested in 1142/62), Count von Gleiberg
               3. Luitgard (* 1120, † 1170), ∞ Henri II (* 1125, † 1211), Count of Grandpré

literature

• Gerhard Köbler : Historical lexicon of the German countries. The German territories from the Middle Ages to the present. 7th, completely revised edition. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-54986-1 .
• Angela Metzner: Reichslandpolitik, aristocracy and castles - studies on the Wetterau in the Staufer period. Büdingen 2008/2009 , ISBN 978-3-00-026770-3 , pp. 152-156 ( Büdinger Geschichtsblätter 21 ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Christian Spielmann: History of the city and rule Weilburg. City of Weilburg, 1896 (new edition 2005) without ISBN, p. 42 ff.
2. ↑ History of Kinzenbach - a walk through time, at www.heuchelheim.de