Grote (noble family)

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Coat of arms of those of Grote

Grote is the name of a Lower Saxon nobility family from the Principality of Lüneburg , which still exists today in baronial and countial lines.

The Lower Saxon Grote are not related to the Baltic postal nobility von Grote and the Electoral Cologne noble family von Groote .

history

Origin and name

The family is mentioned for the first time in 1162 with the Vogt of Lüneburg Heinricus advocatus de Luneburg , who named himself after his place of work and his service in the lordly office. The uninterrupted line of trunks begins with him and he appears in the entourage of Henry the Lion until 1172 .

His son, Drost Otto , who appeared in a document from 1203 to 1224, was dapifer ( Truchsess ) from 1204 and was first mentioned in 1206 with the Latin attribute name Otto dictus Magnus (Otto, called the Great or in Low German de Grote ). His eldest son Otto II and his descendants already took over the nickname, while other lines continued to carry the old name of Lüneburg for a long time , and in one side line even the new name of Schwerin (the latter, founded by Werner von Schwerin , a son of Otto I. . de Grote , died out already in 1372).

Like all primeval noble families who named themselves not after a family castle but after a property, the Groten wrote themselves without the noble predicate of ; the predicate to was only sometimes added in connection with a property name (Grote zu Blick). However, while most of these families in the 17th / 18th In the 19th century, to differentiate themselves from the aspiring bourgeoisie, nevertheless, to gain a from , this is not the case with the Grotes to this day, so the name is Freiherr Grote or Graf Grote .

Possessions and lines

Possessions

The Grotes belonged to the ministerials of the Guelph princes. In Lüneburg they owned the Grimm castle seat with the associated pan rights to the Lüneburg salt works until it was destroyed in 1371 . In the east and south of Lüneburg and in the Harburg area , too, the family was wealthy from an early age, near the Harburg Palace they owned a Burgmannshof with Gutsland until the 20th century (partly sold to the Duke in 1538). a. several Elbe islands.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the family acquired properties in the eastern part of the Lüneburg principality, the first in 1517 in Wendland (now the Lüchow-Dannenberg district ), the Breese manor in Bruche , and later also the nearby Wustrow .

Thomas Grote (1594–1657), Grand Bailiff of Celle, acquired the Martinsbüttel and Wedesbüttel manors near Gifhorn (1655) - both now part of the community of Meine - and received from the sovereign an expedition to further fiefdoms that became available in the region. Due to the latter, his heirs acquired their goods Wrestedt I and Göddenstedt near Uelzen in 1667 - after those of Bodendieck had died out - and in 1678 the also former Bodendieck'sche Schnega in Wendland.

Jühnde Castle

In 1664 the Minister Otto Grote zu Schauen acquired the Jühnde Palace and Estate near Göttingen in what was then the Principality of Calenberg- Göttingen. In 1689 he also acquired the imperial rule of Schauen in the northern Harz, whereby the entire family was formally enfeoffed with the imperial fief (see below: Status surveys) . He was raised to the baron status of Emperor Leopold in 1689 in Vienna under the name of Grote, Freiherr zu Schauen . He was de facto First Minister of Elector Ernst August and in 1692 played a decisive role in the acquisition of the 9th  electoral dignity for the House of Hanover . The free imperial rule of Schauen fell in 1807 through mediation to the Kingdom of Westphalia and in 1815 to the administrative district of Magdeburg of the Prussian province of Saxony . The Blick estate remained in the possession of the Barons Grote until it was expropriated by the land reform in the Soviet occupation zone in 1945. The last owner, Thomas Freiherr Grote zu Schauen (1877–1955), died unmarried.

Jühnde Castle has remained in the possession of the Barons Grote to this day. A sub-branch of the Jühnde branch acquired the Klein Totshorn estate in the Harburg district in 1912, which had been owned by the family from 1330 to 1810.

Breese manor

In 1839, Count Adolf Grote (1769–1841) from the Ast Breese, son of the first Count August Grote , donated the Breese family fideikommiss with the Gamehlen estate and the manors Wrestedt I. and Braudel , Göddenstedt (acquired in 1854), Hohenweddrien (Gde. Rosche ) , and Breselenz . In 1905 he received a hereditary seat in the Prussian manor house . He was married to Karoline von und zu Schachten from the Hessian nobility.

His great-grandson August Graf Grote (1892–1953) shared the majorate among his son Adolf (* 1921) and his daughters Wendula (married to Counselor Dr. Erich Jakob) and Irene (married von Prondzynski) in view of the threat of land reform in Lower Saxony after the Second World War on; due to his untimely death he could not undo this later; the Vorwerk Gamehlen, which was upgraded to a manor in 1896 , fell to the Jakob family, while the old ancestral estate Breese (with Breselenz and Braudel), which had been in the family since 1517, was sold by Irene von Prondzynski to the Lower Saxony Landgesellschaft in the 1950s and immediately dissolved and divided up has been. The main building and a wing of the baroque palace were demolished. Only one side wing (orangery) remained and was bought back in 1962 by her sister Wendula Jakob. Wrestedt I with Hohenweddrien as well as the Braudel Forest and the Breese Forest (owner: Klemens-August Graf Grote, born 1959) remained in the possession of the Counts of Grote to this day . The manor Schachten in Hesse also fell to the Counts of Grote by inheritance : Karl-Ernst Graf Grote (born 1935) has been using the name of Graf Grote von und zu Schachten since his adoption in 1937 . A younger branch of the Count's Branch still owns the Göddenstedt estate. Another acquired the Mecklenburg estate of Schloss Varchentin through marriage in 1875 , which was expropriated in 1945.

Of the estates of the younger, baronial branch Jühnde, the latter remained in the family's possession, while Wedesbüttel and Martinsbüttel were sold to Karl von Schwartz in 1909 . After the death of Ulrich Freiherr Grote (1905–1943), the Schnega manor passed to his daughter Elke, married von Reden -Wathlingen.

Lines

In the first half of the 17th century, the family was divided into three main lines, which were named with branch lines after their ancestral seat.

  • 1st line: Schauen (baronial), inherited the free imperial rule of Schauen after the second line had expired in 1764; the line then led without objection in the Electorate and Kingdom of Hanover the title of baron. In 1861 she received the inheritance of the inheritance of the Prussian Principality of Halberstadt .
  • II. Hanoverian Line, acquired with the Electorate of Hanover Minister Otto Grote zu Schauen in 1664 Jühnde and in 1689 the imperial-free rule of Schauen; 1689 raised to the imperial baron status as Grote, Freiherr zu Schauen ; Extinguished in 1764.
  • III. Line:

The sex has been represented by senior citizens since 1616 and in 1925 founded the still existing Gräflich and Freiherrlich Grote family association .

Status surveys

At the beginning of the 13th century, the family was in possession of the Hereditary Office of the Princes of Lüneburg. Otto X., Lord of Stillhorn , Fachenfelde and Breese, received the title of Chamberlain of the St. Michaelis Abbey in Lüneburg in 1583 .

The minister Otto Grote came to look from the middle or Hanoverian line, which already died out again in 1764 . He acquired the electoral dignity of Hanover for his princely house and the baron status for his own family . After the purchase of the imperial authority of Schauen am Harz , he was elevated to the status of a baron by Emperor Leopold on July 1, 1689 in Vienna under the name of Grote, Freiherr zu Schauen . After its line became extinct, the older line inherited Schauen and took over the title. The previous free imperial rule of Schauen, which was not assigned to any imperial district, fell to the Kingdom of Westphalia in 1807 and to the administrative district of Magdeburg in the Prussian province of Saxony in 1815 . The Freiherren Grote remained in possession of the Schauen estate until 1945.

The other lines bore the customary baron title , which was confirmed in Prussia on September 18, 1911 for the entire family. The Breese branch was raised to the hereditary Prussian count status with August Otto von Grote on September 4, 1809 in Berlin .

Coat of arms graphic by Otto Hupp in the Munich calendar of 1925

coat of arms

The family coat of arms (oldest seal from 1264) shows: “In silver a striding, red bridled black horse with flying red reins. On the helmet with black and silver blankets a bush of black black grouse feathers . "

The count's coat of arms is quartered: fields 1 and 4 show the family coat of arms, fields 2 and 3 in gold a right-turned gold-crowned and armored black eagle. On the helmet (with black and silver covers on the right, red and gold covers on the left) eleven natural peacock feathers. Shield holders are two opposing flesh-colored unicorns with black hooves. The motto is: Virtuti fortuna credit .

people

literature

  • History of the Gräflich and Freiherrlich Grote'schen family , ed. by Emmo Freiherr von Grote and Wilhelm Grotefend, Hanover 1891, part 2, family tree II B (digitized version)
  • Otto Hupp : Munich Calendar 1925 . Book and Art Print AG, Munich and Regensburg 1925.
  • Erwin Massute:  Grote, barons and counts of. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 162 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Genealogical manual of the nobility , Adelslexikon Volume IV, Volume 67 of the complete series, CA Starke Verlag , Limburg (Lahn) 1978, ISSN  0435-2408
  • Karl Hopf, Historisch-Genealogischer Atlas , Volume 1, S. 214f, digitized Reichsfreiherren and Count Grote
  • Johann Seifert, XXV. anjetzo flourishing high families short historical and genealogical description , p. 54ff, digitized
  • Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of the baronial houses for the year 1861. Eleventh year, p.229ff
  • Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of the count's houses, 1874 p.319ff
  • Rittergüter der Lüneburg landscape , The knightly estates of the landscape of the former Principality of Lüneburg, published by the knighthood of the former Principality of Lüneburg . Edited by Ulrike Hindersmann and Dieter Brosius, series: Publications of the Historical Commission for Lower Saxony and Bremen; Vol. 282, Wallstein Verlag Göttingen

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mecklenburg Document Book I, No. 74
  2. ↑ The older of Lüneburg from the Groten family are not to be confused with the existing since 1625 noble family of Luneburg , it is in the Guelph Morganaten concerns.
  3. ↑ There is no connection to the von Schwerin family , who, however, also did ministerial service in the county of Schwerin in their early days .
  4. ↑ cf. z. B. also Bose , Flemming , Quadt - or families named after their coat of arms symbol, cf. z. B. Hahn , Pflugk
  5. ↑ In this respect, the lemmas of articles about individual family members, insofar as they are named in them as von Grote , are mostly wrong. However, at least before the general recognition of their baron status, individual family members used the nobility predicate of in modern times to identify themselves as nobility.
  6. ↑ Dirk Böttcher , Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein, Hugo Thielen: Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-87706-706-9 , p. 137: [1]