County maggots

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The county maggots , since Emperor Otto I , a fiefdom , but by 1118 a fief of the archbishops of Mainz , was one of the Hessian Gaugrafschaften in which the Frankish Hesse during and after the end of the supremacy of Conradines fragmented. Initially the noble family Werner was enfeoffed with the county, later maggots went to the Gisonen and shortly after their extinction to the Ludowingers . The Landgraviate of Hesse developed from the territory over a period of around 250 years .

Disintegration of the Conradin rule

After the death of Duke Eberhard von Franken from the House of the Conradines in the battle of Andernach in 939, the Duchy of the Conradines, which had included the area of ​​Hesse, became extinct. The remaining members of the family died or gradually lost their counties, and royal administrators, official or titular counts, were appointed in their place. Both under the Ottonians and under the Salians , the Hessian territories were administered by counts from different and changing sexes, who were initially appointed by the king, but established hereditary territorial lords over time.

These Hessian districts or district counties included, among others, the Hessengau (for example Northern Hesse according to the proposal of the Geographentag 1973 as well as the eastern half of today's Warburg , but without the Ittergau and without the areas east of the Werra and east of the Hohe Meißner ), the Ittergau (at Itter and Oberer Diemel ), the Perfgau (around Breidenbach ), the Lahngau (Oberlahngau around Marburg and Niederlahngau from Weilburg to Limburg ), the Erdagau (in today's Lahn-Dill district ), the Wetter (g) au , the Niddagau ( Friedberg , Bad Homburg vor der Höhe ), the Kinziggau , the Maingau , the Rheingau ( Wiesbaden , Darmstadt ), the Gotzfeldgau in southern Hesse and the Oberrheingau ( Heppenheim , Bürstadt ). Well-known count families already in the older post-Carolingian epoch were the Counts Gozmar on the upper Eder (who were probably ancestors of the later Counts of Reichenbach and von Ziegenhain ), the Counts Thiemo (or Tiemo) on the upper Lahn and Eder (probably the ancestors the Counts of Wittgenstein - Battenberg ), and the Counts of Giso in the upper Lahngau, who later inherited the County of Maden.

Division of the Hessengau and rule of Werner

The area of ​​the county of Maden or Maden-Gudensberg included in particular the area of Fritzlar , Kassel , Spangenberg , Melsungen , Homberg an der Efze and Rotenburg an der Fulda . The monasteries Fritzlar, Weilburg and Worms , the monasteries Breitenau , Hasungen and Kaufungen , the Bailiwick of Hersfeld and the rule of Bilstein on the Werra also belonged to the territory of the county .

After the death of Count Dodiko , Count in Hessengau, Ittergau and Nethegau , in 1020, King Heinrich II divided his area of ​​responsibility and gave the Saxon northern part of Hessengau to the Bishop of Paderborn , while the Franconian southern part went to Tammo / Thankmar. Just six years later, in 1027, King Konrad II enfeoffed his Swabian follower Werner von Winterthur with the Franconian part, and from then on he administered the Franconian Hessengau as Count Werner I. von Maden. As primicerius et signifer regis , Werner was the forerunner and standard bearer of the Holy Roman Empire , an office that his three successors of the same name also held. Before Werner I fell on August 22, 1040 during the campaign of Heinrich II against Břetislav I of Bohemia, he had acquired several other counties in the Lahn valley and had become the governor of the imperial abbey of Kaufungen .

Werner II , his son and successor, was killed in the Battle of the Normans at Civitate in 1053, also as a standard bearer of the empire. Werner III. Together with Archbishop Adalbert von Bremen, he had considerable influence on the young King Heinrich IV and on imperial politics, but was slain in a scuffle in Ingelheim in 1065 at the age of less than 25 years . Due to the successful inheritance and consolidation policy of his ancestors, Werner IV had extensive counts' possessions and bailiwicks over monasteries and monasteries in Hessengau (e.g. Fritzlar, Hasungen, Kaufungen, Breitenau), Lahngau, Neckargau and in the Lorch and Worms area. When he died in 1121, the last of his house, he was by far the most powerful count in Hesse.

The county under the Gisonen and Ludowingern

After Werner IV's death, the county came to Giso IV in 1121 from the Gison family , who already had extensive property in the Lahngau. However, it fell to the Thuringian Ludowingers as early as 1137 after the death of his son Giso V. and through the marriage of his heir Hedwig to Count Ludwig von Thuringia . As Ludwig I, Count Ludwig became the first Landgrave of Thuringia .

Due to significant acquisitions under the Counts Werner and the Gisonen, the domain of the Counts of Maden grew steadily. This also found expression in the gradual renaming of the county to that of Gudensberg, Hesse or Lower Hesse. Under the Ludowingians, the county, now called Grafschaft Gudensberg or Grafschaft Hessen, was mostly administered by a younger brother of the ruling landgrave - one after the other by Heinrich Raspe I , Heinrich Raspe II , Heinrich Raspe III. and Konrad von Thuringia (Konrad Raspe). After the Ludowingers died out with the death of Heinrich Raspe IV. In 1247, the former, but now much larger, county of Maden-Gudensberg came to the son of Heinrich's niece Sophie von Brabant , who lived on the Mader Heide as Heinrich I in 1247 as a result of the Thuringian Wars of Succession . was proclaimed Landgrave of Hesse.

From 1118, when Werner IV gave it to the Archbishop of Mainz as a fiefdom, the county was a fiefdom of Mainz . Landgrave Heinrich I did not acquire the dignity of imperial prince until 1292 .

Count

literature

  • Paul Kläuli: The Swabian origin of Count Werner . In: Journal of the Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies . Volume 69, 1958.