County of Hanau
The county of Hanau is a territory of the old German Empire. It emerged from the rule of Hanau and for a long time was divided into the counties of Hanau-Munzenberg and Hanau-Lichtenberg . After the Counts of Hanau died out, the Hanau-Munzenberg region fell to the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel , and the Hanau-Lichtenberger to the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt .
| Territory in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation |
|
|---|---|
| Overview | List of territories in the Holy Roman Empire |
| coat of arms | see picture below |
| designation | County of Hanau |
| Head of state | Count of Hanau |
| Capitals / residences | Windecken , Hanau |
| Emerged from | Hanau reign |
| Form of rule | county |
| Ruling house | Count of Hanau |
| Religion / denomination | initially Roman Catholic , since the 16th century Lutheran and Reformed |
| language | German |
| Reichstag College | |
| In the Reichstag represented | Curial vote by Wetterauisches Reichsgrafenkollegium |
| Reichstag Bank | |
| Army register 1422 | |
| Reich register 1521 | |
| Reich register 1663 | |
| Reichskreis | Upper Rhine Empire Circle |
| Submerged | 1458 divided into: Grafschaft Hanau-Münzenberg u. County of Hanau-Lichtenberg |
Elevation to the county
When Emperor Sigismund in 1429 Reinhard II. Hanau by in Bratislava document issued in the imperial counts rose, was from the reign Hanau the county Hanau. From this point on, one can actually speak of a "County of Hanau", even if the term is sometimes blurred in the literature to apply to the time when the territory was still rulers. The title of count was an outward sign of an upswing that the county took as a whole during the reign of Reinhard II.
Division of the county
With the death of Count Reinhard II in 1451, dynastic problems quickly arose. Reinhard III died in 1452 after only one year of reign . Heir was his only four-year-old son Philip I, the younger . For fear of the continued existence of the family, the relatives and other important decision-makers in the county agreed not to apply the family primogeniture statute of 1375, one of the oldest in Germany, and to give the uncle of the heir and brother of the late Reinhard III, Philip I, to give the elder , the Babenhausen office , from the stock of the county as a separate county. This equipment enabled him a befitting marriage and the witnessing of descendants entitled to inherit and thus increased the security for the continued existence of the count house. Philip the Elder Ä. married Anna von Lichtenberg in 1458 , daughter of Ludwig V von Lichtenberg . After his death in 1473 Anna and Philipp d. Ä. the rule Lichtenberg in the lower Alsace with the capital Buchsweiler . This resulted in the line and county of Hanau-Lichtenberg . Philipp I (the younger) of Hanau and his descendants called themselves to differentiate from this in future "von Hanau-Munzenberg ".
reunion
It was not until the 17th century that the two territories were reunited to form a county of Hanau. In 1642, Johann Ernst, the last count from the Hanau-Münzenberg family, died. He came from the Hanau-Munzenberg-Schwarzenfels sidelines. The Hanau-Munzenberg house was thus extinguished. According to a contract of inheritance from 1610 between Philipp Ludwig II of Hanau-Münzenberg and Johann Reinhard I of Hanau-Lichtenberg , Hanau-Lichtenberg entered into the succession. At that time, Friedrich Casimir, who was only nineteen, ruled there . The Thirty Years' War was still raging , the relationship to the last deceased Hanau Munzenberger was very extensive, and the accession to power was by no means certain. On secret routes and incognito, Friedrich Casimir was brought to Hanau by his guardian, Baron Georg II von Fleckenstein-Dagstuhl . There he first had to commit himself to the patriciate of the Neustadt Hanau and grant them a number of rights. This included, above all, the freedom of religion for the Reformed denomination, the "state religion" in Hanau-Münzenberg, because Hanau-Lichtenberg had remained Lutheran and Count Friedrich Casimir was a Lutheran. Friedrich Casimir initially had Lutheran services held for himself and his court in the palace chapel. 1658–1662 a separate church for the Lutheran congregation was built in Hanau (today: Alte Johanneskirche ), which also became the burial place of the count's house. Over time, the number of Lutherans increased and the county became bi-denominational. For a long time, however, the two denominational camps were often hostile to each other and tried e.g. B. to prevent interdenominational marriages .
In 1643, with the help of Landgravine Amalie Elisabeth von Hessen-Kassel , a born Countess von Hanau-Münzenberg, it was possible to enforce Friedrich Casimir's claims against the Archbishop of Mainz . In return, Friedrich Casimir concluded an inheritance contract with the Landgravine, according to which Hesse-Kassel should inherit the county of Hanau-Münzenberg if the Hanau family died out. In 1647 Friedrich Casimir married the widow of a predecessor in the government of the County of Hanau-Munzenberg, Count Philipp Moritz , Sibylle Christine von Anhalt-Dessau, who was twenty years his senior . The move was probably due to the precarious financial situation of the county: So the donation for the countess widow was saved. However, the marriage remained childless.
Economic situation
The Count's attempts at early mercantilism met with only mixed success. In 1661 the first German faience manufacture was founded in Hanau, which produced successfully. On the other hand, he commissioned the then well-known economist Johann Joachim Becher to contact the Dutch West India Company with the aim of acquiring a stretch of land in Dutch Guiana (between Orinoco and the Amazon ). In 1669, Count Friedrich Casimir signed a treaty to this effect , according to which a kingdom of Hanau India was to be established as a Hanau colony between the Orinoco and the Amazon in Dutch Guiana. The contract included the purchase of an area of over 3,000 square miles - the County of Hanau at that time comprised 44 square miles. The "Hanauisch India" company immediately failed because of the initial investments that were initially required, which the county could not raise, and the Dutch-French War . It has otherwise left no trace in history.
As a result, the county of Hanau was so financially troubled that relatives of the count applied to the Hofrat in Vienna to place the count and county under curate , a form of compulsory administration . Emperor Leopold I granted this and ordered the requested curate. In 1670 Friedrich Casimir submitted to this saying and from then on ruled much more economically. He died in 1685.
The last counts of Hanau
The legacy of the childless deceased came into the two sons of his brother Johann Reinhard II. Von Hanau-Lichtenberg , the Counts Philipp Reinhard in Hanau-Münzenberg and Johann Reinhard III. in Hanau-Lichtenberg. The County of Hanau was thus divided again. However, Philipp Reinhard died in 1712, so that Johann Reinhard III. then also inherited the Hanau-Munzenberg region and reunited the county.
During this time the county took off economically. The residential city of Hanau was expanded in a Baroque style, the city palace was expanded, and a summer palace, Philippsruhe Palace , was built, as was the Marstall, the Neustädter Rathaus and the Frankfurter Tor. The upswing was also noticeable in the countryside: in many villages in the county, two churches, two schools, two cemeteries, etc. were now maintained, due to the religious division between Lutherans and Reformed people. This bi-denominational system did not have to be abandoned until the beginning of the 19th century with the “ Hanauer Union ”, when there was no longer enough money to maintain it during the Napoleonic wars .
The Heritage
1736 died with Johann Reinhard III. at the age of seventy the last male representative of the Count's House. Due to the inheritance contract of 1643, the Hanau-Münzenberg part of the state fell to Hesse-Kassel , due to the marriage of the only daughter of the last Hanau Count, Charlotte , with the Hereditary Prince Ludwig (VIII.) Of Hesse-Darmstadt, the Hanau-Lichtenberg share went there. For decades, the affiliation of the Babenhausen office to the Munzenberger or Lichtenberger inheritance remained controversial between Hessen-Kassel and Hessen-Darmstadt . This dispute was only settled after 40 years through a real division.
In 1754, as a consequence of his son Frederick II's secret conversion to the Roman Catholic faith (1749), his wife Maria and their children separated from him. Landgrave Wilhelm VIII of Hessen-Kassel then transferred the county to his grandson, Wilhelm (IX) , and appointed the daughter-in-law, a daughter of the English King Georg II , to be regent during Wilhelm (IX) 's minority . Friedrich II, who inherited his father as Landgrave of Hessen-Kassel in 1760, made several attempts to reunite the County of Hanau with Hessen-Kassel. But they all failed because of resistance from Great Britain and the Protestant estates. Wilhelm (IX.) Was the last Count of Hanau to rule Hanau himself from 1760 to 1785, when he succeeded his father in Kassel. In the following period, the county became more and more part of the Landgraviate and the later Electorate of Hesse , a process that dragged on until a fundamental administrative reform when Elector Wilhelm II took office in 1821.
Quote
“Hanau is one of the most important counties in Germany, which was divided into two parts, the Munzenberg and the Lichtenberg. The Munzenbergische Lande are located at Franckfurt around the Mayn; the Lichtenbergische but without Strasbourg on either side of the Rhine. "
See also
continuation
Articles with related topics
- Hanau (noble family)
- List of the lords and counts of Hanau
- Coat of arms of the county of Hanau
- List of the counties of Germany
literature
- Erhard Bus: On the territorial history of the county of Hanau-Munzenberg . In: Homepage of the Hanauer Geschichtsverein eV
- Karl Ernst Demandt : History of the State of Hesse , 2nd edition, Bärenreiter-Verlag , Kassel and Basel 1972, ISBN 3-7618-0404-0 , pp. 288-299.
- Reinhard Dietrich : The state constitution in Hanau. The position of the lords and counts in Hanau-Münzenberg based on the archival sources (= Hanauer Geschichtsblätter 34). Self-published by the Hanauer Geschichtsverein, Hanau 1996, ISBN 3-9801933-6-5 .
- Peter Gbiorczyk: The development of the rural school system in the county of Hanau from the Reformation to 1736. The offices of Büchertal and Windecken. 2 volumes. Shaker Verlag, Aachen 2011, ISBN 978-3-8440-0331-4 .
- Ernst Julius Zimmermann : Hanau, city and country. Cultural history and chronicle of a Franconian weatherwave city and former county. With special consideration of the older time. Increased edition. Self-published, Hanau 1919 (Unchanged reprint. Peters, Hanau 1978, ISBN 3-87627-243-2 ).
Individual evidence
- ^ Ferdinand Hahnzog : Georg II von Fleckenstein, Freiherr zu Dachstuhl. A Hanau administrator in the final phase of the Thirty Years War. In: Hanauer Geschichtsblätter 18, 1962 pp. 223–242.
- ^ Ferdinand Hahnzog: Hanauisch India then and now. Verlag W. Dausien, Hanau 1959.
- ^ Johann Jakob Moser : New German State Law. Stuttgart 1766 ff., Vol. 3.2, p. 845.