Grenchen (noble family)
The barons of Grenchen ( Latin de Granechun , French de Granges ) were a Burgundian noble family in the 12th and early 13th centuries with their seat at Grenchen Castle , north of Grenchen in what is now the municipality of Bettlach .
history
Five people from the family are known from the documents that have been handed down, presumably belonging to three different generations, probably not one after the other. They were called in as witnesses by the Counts of Saugern-Seedorf, the Dukes of Zähringen , the Lords of Neuchâtel and the Counts of Neuchâtel-Nidau and appeared among the other baron families. The two well-known women from the family were married to representatives from the Count's House of Neuchâtel.
The property of the family and the few verifiable family relationships all point to the west, to the Burgundian region and to the diocese of Lausanne. “Nothing is known of the relations between the Lords of Grenchen and the north, in Alemannic-German.” A document from 1180/1181 reveals a close relationship with the Barons of Strassberg, based near Büren an der Aare , so that Werner Meyer opened up a common origin with a common property to the left and right of the Aare between Jura and Bucheggberg includes, administered by the two castles Grenchen and Alt-Strassberg.
As the last representative of the Grenchen family, Bertha II (mentioned 1224 to 1226) brought her property to her husband, Count Rudolf I of Neuenburg-Nidau . With a later intra-family exchange of goods in the Count's House of Neuchâtel in the middle of the 13th century, the ownership of the castle and lordship of Grenchen came to the line of the Counts of Strassberg and from them, after an initial pledge in 1345, later to the city of Solothurn via several intermediate steps.
The results of the archaeological research of Grenchen Castle by Werner Meyer revealed several phases of use. Around the year 1000 a first system was built on the rocky castle hill, which was still made of wood. On the attack side in the west, a heaped earth wall provided protection. The earliest known representative from the von Grenchen family, Kuno (mentioned in 1131), still lived in this complex before the stone castle with a massive residential tower was rebuilt in the following generation, probably in the middle of the 12th century . The results of the excavations revealed some minor structural changes until around 1400, according to archaeological finds, life in the castle gradually died out. When the Barons von Grenchen died out in the middle of the 13th century, the complex lost its purpose as a residence. The heirs from the Count's House of Neuchâtel-Strassberg no longer lived in the castle themselves and had it cleared at the beginning of the 14th century, when it began to decay.
people
- Kuno (mentioned in 1131, but only in a Vidimus from January 11, 1362), witness at the establishment of the Cistercian monastery Frienisberg
- Hesso (also called Esso, mentioned 1175–1181)
- Bertha I. (mentioned 1189, died 1191/1192) ⚭ Ulrich II of Neuchâtel, Lord of Neuchâtel
- Bertha II (mentioned in 1224, died before 1226) ⚭ Count Rudolf I of Neuchâtel-Nidau (as his first wife)
- Johann (died before 1224/1225), mentioned in a document from Bertha II from 1224/1225 as her brother
When the count family of Neuchâtel redistributed their ministerials among themselves in 1214, a Heinrich von Grenchen and his wife and their children as well as a Burkard von Bettlach also appeared in this group of lower nobles. As members of the service aristocracy, they do not belong to the von Grenchen family.
The assumption that the wife of Berthold I von Strassberg (mentioned from 1225 to 1270/1273), Johanna, comes from the family of the Barons von Grenchen cannot be proven.
literature
Werner Meyer : Grenchen Castle. A contribution to scientific castle research . In: Yearbook for Solothurn History . tape 36 , 1963, pp. 142-219 , doi : 10.5169 / seals-324263 .
Web links
Urs Zurschmiede: Grenchen. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . January 23, 2007 , accessed January 21, 2020 .