Wildungen County

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The County of Wildungen was a short-lived rule that was founded in 1185 and ended again in 1247 at the latest.

Origins

Areas on the upper and middle Eder , especially around today's Bad Wildungen in Northern Hesse , were at least partially owned or under the administration of Count Gozmar , the probable ones, as early as the older post- Carolingian epoch and at the time of the Konradine domination in Hesse Ancestors of the Counts of Reichenbach and thus the Counts of Ziegenhain . It is documented that in 850 a Gozmar donated his possessions in the seven villages of Affoldern , Buhlen , Gleichen , Haine , Mehlen , Schreufa and Viermünden to the Fulda Monastery .

The area around Wildungen subsequently belonged to the domain of the Reichenbergers, who in the first half of the 12th century, probably after the death of Count Rudolf I von Reichenbach in 1123, under his brothers Gozmar II and Poppo I in a Ziegenhainer and divided a Reichenbacher line, whereby the Wildungen rule came to the Ziegenhainer branch. There Gozmar II was followed by his son Gottfried I and then his son Gozmar III.

Foundation of the County of Wildungen

Gozmar III. died in the fall of the Erfurt latrine in July 1184 without leaving a son. His daughter Lukardis (or Luitgart) (* around 1160, † after 1207) married Count Friedrich von Thuringia (* around 1155, † 1229), the third son of Ludowinger Landgrave Ludwig II of Thuringia and Judith von Hohenstaufen , half-sister of the emperor Friedrich Barbarossa . Friedrich was initially intended for a church career, was trained accordingly, and was provost of St. Stephan in Mainz from 1171 to around July 1178 . He then let himself be released from his church vows and was involved in a long dispute over his inheritance.

Lukardis brought the Wildungen rulership with him into her marriage to Friedrich, who has called himself Count von Wildungen since then. Thus, important Ziegenhainer Allod property came to the Ludowingers, who had already inherited the Gisonen in Lower and Upper Hesse in 1137, and who were thus able to further promote their efforts to supremacy in Hesse. In 1186 Friedrich was formally confirmed as Gozmar's successor as Count von Wildungen , Count von Ziegenhain and Wegebach and Vogt zu Staufenberg and Reichenbach . In September 1229 he inherited the important and lucrative office of Domvogts von Fulda , which until then had been hereditary in the hands of the Reichenbachers.

For the Ziegenhainers and Reichenbachers, the result of this marriage was a considerable loss, especially since the Waldeck office and castle had come to Volkwin II von Schwalenberg through the marriage of another Reichenbach heiress, Poppo I von Reichenbach's daughter Luitgart , whose family was born The County of Waldeck built this foundation . In addition, the marriage of Friedrichs with Lukardis also established the Ludowingers' inheritance claims on Reichenbach, the castle and bailiwick of Keseberg , the strong castle Staufenberg near Gießen and on Ziegenhain and Treysa . Gozmar's brother and successor Rudolf II von Ziegenhain fought vehemently against these claims, and the dispute, which escalated further after 1227, was not contractually settled until 1233.

Friedrich von Wildungen began building Friedrichstein Castle in Alt-Wildungen in 1200 .

End of the county

Friedrich's marriage to Luitgard came from a son, Ludwig, who died early, and two daughters, Sophie (* 1185/90, † after April 2, 1247) and Judith († October 6, 1220). The latter married Count Friedrich II von Brehna and Wettin .

Sophie, the elder, inherited her father as Countess von Wildungen. She married Burchard VI. "Kurzhand" from Querfurt (* around 1185, † 1243/1246), the burgrave of Magdeburg . Before 1227 he sold the castles of Keseberg and Wildungen to Landgrave Ludwig IV (the saint) of Thuringia. Since he lacked the consent of his wife, the rightful owner, and her family, there was another dispute between the Ziegenhainern and the Ludowingern. It was not until 1233 that Count Berthold I von Ziegenhain reached an agreement with Landgrave Konrad von Thuringia , who administered the Hessian possessions of the Ludowingers on behalf of his brother, Landgrave Heinrich Raspe , on the Ziegenhain legacy of Konrad's uncle Friedrich von Wildungen, who had died four years earlier. In a contract concluded in Marburg , Berthold had to do without Reichenbach, Wildungen, Hollende Castle , Keseburg and the southwestern half of the Keseberg Bailiwick. However, the court Hofgeismar , in which the Keseberg was located, remained the Mainz fief of the Bailiffs of Keseberg. A court ruling from 1244 once again confirmed that the land on which the castle stood was a landgrave, while the surrounding area belonged to the Haina monastery.

After the death of Heinrich Raspe in 1247, with which the Ludowingians died out in the male line, Archbishop Siegfried III tried . of Mainz to collect the landgraves' fiefdoms. Burchard VI. von Magdeburg had died in the meantime, and his widow, Countess Sophia von Wildungen, as the actual heiress, had planned to sell Wildungen and Keseberg to Mainz. In 1247, shortly before her death, she ceded her rights to both castles to the archbishop, but Sophie von Brabant , who fought for her son Heinrich I for the Ludowingen inheritance in the Thuringian-Hessian war of succession that broke out after Heinrich Raspe's death , did not recognize this and both castles remained in the possession of the Landgraviate.

The short-lived County of Wildungen ended with Sophia's death in 1247.

During the Thuringian-Hessian War of Succession, in 1263, Wildungen came through a treaty between Heinrich I of Hesse and Count Adolf I of Waldeck , Heinrich's fight against the Corvey Abbey and the bishops of Paderborn for territorial supremacy in the North Hessian border area to Westphalia , to Waldeck.

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