Greck from Kochendorf
The Greck von Kochendorf gentlemen were a lower aristocratic family from the ministry in Kochendorf , a district of Bad Friedrichshall in the Heilbronn district in northern Baden-Württemberg . The family has been documented since the late 13th century, gradually received all of Kochendorf's property and had full sovereignty as landlord there with the award of blood justice to Wolf Conrad Greck I in 1559 . In the 17th and 18th centuries, the family got into economic hardship, as a result of which the entire property of the family, which had already died out in the male line in 1749, was sold by 1762. With the death of the last heir, the family completely died out in 1786.
Origins
First mention and parentage
The Grecken were next to the original and older lords of Kochendorf, the second noble family in Kochendorf. Little is known about their ancestry and the origin of their name. Wolframus Grecco is mentioned for the first time in 1295 in the pension register of the Wimpfen monastery , in 1308 the same as the guarantor of a sale of farms and tithe rights of Erkenger von Magenheim to the Adelberg monastery .
An Ulm chronicle of the Dominican Felix Fabri from 1488 interprets the name as Graeci ( Greek ) and depicts the Kochendorfer family as a branch of an Ulm family with Greek roots, also called Greck. While there is no evidence of Greek origin, much is known about them Ulmer family Greck, which is mentioned with a Hainricus Grecus 1237 for the first time, was acquired rich in Ulm and in other places and the Greckenaltar in Ulm Cathedral has donated. Fabri reports on a contract signed in 1458, in which the Ulmer Greck and the Greck von Kochendorf declared their common descent. In the archives of the Greck of Kochendorf nothing has received about the alleged Ulmer relatives also have nothing about any inheritances after the extinction of Ulmer Greck in 1611. Nevertheless, the Ulmer Greck, initially another crest led, since the time of of Faber announced contract carried the coat of arms of the Kochendorfer Greck. It is possible that the Ulmer Greck hoped for a promotion to the Ulm patriciate through the contract with the Kochendorfer Imperial Knights .
Relationship to the Lords of Kochendorf and ascent
Various researchers see in the Greck von Kochendorf members of the clan of the older gentlemen of Kochendorf, who as Staufer ministerials lost their importance and property with the end of the Staufer , before they died out around 1450. Among the various other noble families who were able to expand their holdings in Kochendorf at the expense of the Lords of Kochendorf as early as the 13th century, the Greck finally gained the upper hand.
The Greck's early possession in Kochendorf could come from the Wimpfen monastery or from the Wimpfen Dominican monastery , as the Greck had an old and long-lasting connection to both Wimpfen monasteries. Already from the late 13th century, the donation of meadows and fields in Kochendorf of force Greck to the pin Wimpfen is attested, moreover, the Greck owned a townhouse in the Wimpfener Klostergasse while the pen farms, goods, parts of the tithe and church patronage in Kochendorf owned. There is a presumption that the early Greck administrators of the Kochendorfer property of the monastery and therefore gradually came to own property there.
In 1315 a Siegfried Greck von Kochendorf is mentioned for the first time, whose coat of arms in a document from 1316 is also the oldest known representation of the Grecken coat of arms with the shield divided by gold and blue. For the first time, the place name is an integral part of the family name.
history
Expansion of the possessions
Siegfried Greck was in the service of the Lords of Weinsberg . He and other early representatives of the family initially received smaller fiefs in the Neckar area. Kunz Greck, Kraft Greck and Goltstein Greck, the sons of the progenitor Siegfried, received a fiefdom in Heinsheim in 1344 . While Kunz probably died early, the two brothers who were still alive received part of the Heuchlingen fortress in 1368 from the property of the mother's family, a née von Goltstein. Kraft's eldest son, Hans, probably became a cleric. The younger son Götz Greck († around 1390) inherited the fiefdom of Heinsheim and also received another part of Heuchlingen and a fiefdom of the diocese of Worms in Kochendorf. Götz's son Hans Greck († around 1393/94) probably only outlived his father a few years. The Heinsheim fief came to his son Konrad Greck. His son Siegfried Greck († around 1419) was in the service of Weinberg like his ancestor of the same name and became a confidante of the Imperial Treasurer, Konrad IX. von Weinsberg was granted imperial privileges to collect the Jewish tax.
After the von Kochendorf family died out, Kraft Greck († around 1480) received from Konrad von Heinriet in 1440, probably the first Greck to give the castle feud over the moated castle there, which became an imperial fief when the von Heinriet family died out in 1462 . After a second Worms fiefdom was added in Kochendorf in 1480, Wolf Greck († 1534) acquired two thirds of the market town of Kochendorf from the siblings Christoph, Wolf and Veit Fuchs in 1527. In 1532, through a second marriage with Dorothea von Venningen († 1540), he also came into possession of the remaining third with the upper manor house and was the sole local lord of Kochendorf.
Wolf's son Wolf Conrad Greck I (around 1530; † 1598) was still a child when his father died and was under a. the guardianship of Eberhard von Gemmingen-Bürg, a relative of his later wife Sybilla von Gemmingen-Gemmingen († 1567), whose family was close to Lutheran teaching as early as 1525. Wolf Conrad Greck I came into contact with the Reformation , which he carried out in Kochendorf in 1549, through his school education in Gemmingen as a classmate of David Chyträus . In the same year he came into the possession of the upper manor house, which had initially passed to his stepsister when the father's inheritance was divided. In 1553, under Wolf Conrad Greck I, today's Lehen Castle was built as a Renaissance castle on the site of the Kochendorfer moated castle (possibly devastated during the Peasants' War) . In 1559 Wolf Conrad Greck I also received blood justice over Kochendorf.
The local rule came during Wolf Conrad Greck I's lifetime to his sons Johann Philipp, Wolf Conrad II and Walther, who renewed the village rules for Kochendorf in 1597 . The three sons also shared the paternal inheritance, as the eldest son Johann Philipp received the third with imperial fiefdom and castle fiefdom. Wolf Conrad Greck II built the so-called Greckenschloss around 1600 on the Lindenberg . In 1606 Johann Philipp sold his third of Kochendorf to Duke Friedrich I of Württemberg, who wanted to build a Neckar port there. After the sudden death of the duke in January 1608, however, his successor Johann Friedrich rejected the plans and the property in Kochendorf was bought back in the same year by Wolf Conrad Greck II (1561-1614), since the older brother Johann Philipp was (around 1557–1620) had meanwhile oriented towards Pforzheim, where he owned the Hirsauer Hof. The youngest of the brothers, Walther Greck (1577–1634) lived in the third manor in Kochendorf, the lower castle opposite Lehen Castle.
About the marriage of Wolf Conrad Greck III. (1604–1648) with Benedicta von Gemmingen-Michelfeld , the family came into possession of further goods belonging to the lords of Gemmingen , including half of Ittlingen, which had died out with Benedicta's brother Weirich von Gemmingen-Michelfeld in 1613 . The Grecken also owned properties in Höchstberg and in some other places in the area. This was under Wolf Conrad Greck III. In the early 17th century the Grecken reached their peak of power and possession, but the Thirty Years' War had already broken out, which ultimately led to their decline.
Wolf Conrad III. entered Swedish service as a Protestant in 1630 to fight against the Catholic imperial side. After the defeat of the Swedes in the Battle of Nördlingen , he fled to Speyer , where he was imprisoned by the emperor and only released against the promise of Ranzion (ransom). But when the requested amount was collected in 1635, Wolf Conrad III. insolvent. At that time he was also staying in Heilbronn , as his goods in Kochendorf had been destroyed in the course of the ongoing war. The war also wiped out almost the entire family. 1657 was Wolf Conrad's younger son, the almost 10-year-old Johann Georg Greck (1647-1713), the only living male bearer of the name. He had great financial difficulties because the Kochendörfer goods had to be rebuilt during the war, his mother had left him not only goods but also debts and he was involved in costly legal disputes, some of which had lasted for generations.
Johann Georg Greck initially offered the knightly canton of Odenwald a third of the Kochendorfer property, the Walther third named after his grandfather's brother , as a pledge. Since there were no interested parties, the Walther third with the lower castle came to Baron Johann Daniel Rollin von Saint-André († 1689) in 1672 . His son Friedrich Magnus von Saint-André (1674–1731) built the so-called St. Andrésche Schlösschen in 1710 instead of the lower castle . At the beginning of June 1762 the property came from his sons to the knightly canton of Odenwald.
The remaining two-thirds stake in Kochendorf with the Grecken was divided equally between his sons Johann Wolf (1671–1734) and Wolf Conrad V. (1672–1749) after the death of Johann Georg in 1713. The older brother Johann Wolf had a son Johann Philipp Adam Greck (1699-1735), who died one year after the father, after which the margrave Ansbach colonel Wolf Conrad V. Greck was the last local lord and ancestor. He was heavily in debt, had already been arrested and exiled in the Raab fortress and bankruptcy in 1724 and, despite his marriage in 1732 to the wealthy and much younger Isabella Elisabeth Teuffel von Birkensee (1709–1781), was under administration until his death. With the death of Wolf Conrad Greck V in 1749, the male line of the family died out. Their imperial fief was withdrawn and given to the lords of Gemmingen-Hornberg . Her allodial property, however, went, after years of quarrels and lawsuits, to the only daughter Juliana Isabella Charlotte Greck (1740–1786), who sold the Kochendorfer property at the end of June 1762 for 100,000 guilders to the knightly canton of Odenwald , who had already owned Saint-André three weeks earlier 's share of the place and thus owned the entire place except for the imperial castle fief.
Anna Maria von Helmstatt born Greck von Kochendorf (1599–1627), painting 1618.
Wolff Ludwig Greck from Kochendorf. Painting 1716.
Testimonies
Several streets are named after the Grecken: Greckengasse and Greckenhof in Neckarsulm and Greckenstrasse in Bad Friedrichshall , where there was also a restaurant called Grecken . Several historical Grecken grave slabs have been preserved near the Sebastian Church in Kochendorf. However, some ornate Grecken grave monuments from inside the church were destroyed during World War II.
Lehen Castle, built in 1553 by Wolf Conrad Greck I.
Greckenschloss, built around 1600 by Wolf Conrad Greck II.
Grecken grave slab 1633 at the Sebastianskirche
Web links
literature
- Karl Hugo Popp and Hans Riexinger : The early Grecken von Kochendorf - An evaluation of the oldest documents , in: Historischer Verein Heilbronn, 29th publication, Heilbronn 1979/81, pp. 121-133.
- Karl Hugo Popp and Hans Riexinger : The Grecken von Kochendorf . In: Bad Friedrichshall 1933–1983 . City of Bad Friedrichshall, Bad Friedrichshall 1983