County of Kerpen and Lommersum

The two lords of Kerpen and Lommersum were located southwest of Cologne . After they had originally been under the control of Kurköln , they fell to the Duchy of Brabant after the Battle of Worringen as a result of the Limburg succession dispute in 1288 .

In 1404 the territories came to Burgundy through inheritance and later again through inheritance to the Habsburgs . When the Habsburg lands were divided in 1522, Kerpen and Lommersum came to the Spanish Netherlands . In the following 200 years, the two lords were often pledged to the neighboring rulers ( Kurköln , Duchy of Jülich and House of Nassau ).

In 1710 they were transferred to the Duchy of Jülich, which in the meantime had fallen to Pfalz-Neuburg . Duke Johann Wilhelm transferred the rulership to his minister, Count Schaesberg , which two years later became an imperial county.

The imperial immediacy , which was achieved in 1786, did not last long, however, because the territory was already occupied by France in 1795 and the Counts of Schaesberg received the Thannheim office of the former Ochsenhausen imperial abbey in 1803 .

At the end of its existence, the small state only comprised around 75 km² with around 3000 inhabitants. Since 1815 the area belonged to the Prussian Rhine Province .

Of the former Kerpen castle , only the castle hill still exists, because the last imperial count of Kerpen and Lommersum wanted to build a castle instead of the castle ruins, but could not get it because of the French occupation.

In the vicinity of Lommersum, Bodenheim Castle is the only still preserved aristocratic seat of the former imperial county.