Hans von Trotha
Knight Hans von Trotha (* presumably in Krosigk ; † October 26, 1503 at Berwartstein Castle ) was Marshal of the Electors of the Palatinate and obtained the French honorary title of Chevalier d'Or . It was in 1480 by the elector with the two castles Berwartstein and Grafendahn invested , in the southern Palatinate part of the Wasgau (now Rhineland-Palatinate are). There the knight is popularly known as "Hans Trapp" or (more rarely) "Hans Trott" or "Hans Drot".
family
Hans from the noble family von Trotha , which had its origin in the Saalekreis , was the fourth son of the archbishopric Magdeburg marshal Thilo von Trotha . Hans was probably born in Krosigk (today Saxony-Anhalt ) around the middle of the 15th century . His exact date of birth is not known; he was the younger brother of Thilo von Trotha , born in 1443 , the bishop of Merseburg . The coat of arms of Hans von Trotha shows u. a. the raven , the traditional heraldic animal of the noble family.
Hans von Trotha married Anna from the noble family Helmstatt, who live in what is now the south-west German and Lorraine region . With her he had only one son, Christoph ; This followed his father to the holder of the Berwartstein by this in 1511 by the Elector Ludwig the peacemakers invested was. Christoph married Margaretha Sturmfeder von Oppenweiler ; their daughter Martha, who married Friedrich the Elder from the Alsatian noble family von Fleckenstein , died in 1536. Since Christoph had no male descendants, the line was extinguished when he died in 1545.
The legacy, which mainly consisted of the feudal lordship over the Berwartstein and Grafendahn castles, fell to Christoph's widowed son-in-law Friedrich the Elder of Fleckenstein. This was followed in 1549 by his son Hans von Fleckenstein, Hans von Trotha's great-grandson.
Later descendants of the noble family are Thilo von Trotha (1814–1888, see also section Literature ) and Hans von Trotha .
Life
Career in the Electoral Palatinate
As the later - fourth - son of a noble family , who was only entitled to inherit after his three older brothers , Hans entered the service of Philip the Sincere , Elector and Count Palatine near Rhine in Heidelberg as a young man towards the end of the 1470s . The connection to the Electoral Palatinate was probably made through Archbishop Johann von Magdeburg, who came from there, and was the patron of Bishop Thilo von Trotha. Hans obviously proved himself, because as early as 1480 the elector of about the same age rewarded him with two castles in Wasgau as hereditary fiefdoms, namely Berwartstein "with all its accessories" and Grafendahn.
Armor and cannon balls on the Berwartstein
Castle chapel of the Berwartstein
Impregnable bastion: Berwartstein Castle on one side ...
... gun-equipped Vorwerk Klein-France on the other
Grafendahn Castle, "uninhabitable" as early as 1500
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Within four years, the knight expanded the Berwartstein into a fortress, which was impregnable by the standards of the time. He achieved this, among other things, by building the Vorwerk Klein-France in 1484 on the northern slope of the Nestelberg opposite the castle . The system mainly consisted of a mighty battery tower , on whose platform long-pipe field snakes could be placed. Now it was possible to bring besiegers of the Berwartstein under precise crossfire from two sides .
On the other hand, Hans von Trotha showed no interest in Grafendahn Castle, 6 km to the northwest. It was probably already dilapidated when he received it, in any case it was described as "uninhabitable" around 1500. The reason for the poor condition was probably that Grafendahn from the outset as Ganerbenburg was conceived and therefore always a homeowners association had heard no one felt responsible for conservation measures in the.
Feud with the Weissenburg Monastery
Hans became known through his subsequent feud with the Weissenburg Abbey in Alsace and its abbot Heinrich (Henricus), who headed the Benedictine monastery from 1475 to 1496 . Because the Berwartstein and a lot more that belonged to the castle, the “belonging”, was originally owned by the monastery. In the abbot's opinion, the Electoral Palatinate had not acquired any legal property because the monastery only wanted to place itself under the protection of the Elector in 1453 by granting him the so-called opening rights. When Hans von Trotha finally demanded “belonging” to the castle in 1485, the abbot turned to the elector for assistance. However, this reacted differently than expected by the monastery: he initially resorted to excuses, then he even elevated Trotha to the rank of marshal and sold him all of the disputed properties.
Wieslauter above Niederschlettenbach
Bobenthaler button , at the foot of which the Wieslauter was jammed
Wieslauter in Weißenburg ( Wissembourg )
The former monastery church Weissenburg
Interior of the former monastery church
When the disputes with the monastery reached their climax, Hans von Trotha had the nearby Wieslauter dammed and thus initially withdrew the water from the downhill monastery town of Weißenburg . The knight erected the barrier in the village of Bobenthal 5 km south of the Berwartstein. There, 8 km above Weißenburg, the river flows through a bottleneck that is formed by the Bobenthaler Knopf ( 534 m , on the left the Wieslauter on the Palatinate side) and the Dürrenberg ( 520 m , on the right on the Alsatian side). A small reservoir was created that flooded the floodplain in front of Bobenthal. Trotha responded to the abbot's complaints as planned by tearing down the dam - and without warning caused a huge flood in Weißenburg with considerable economic damage.
Imperial ban and church ban
The knight then openly waged a guerrilla war against the abbot. When the emperor's invocation could not stop the knight, the abbot turned to Pope Innocent VIII in 1491. Eight years later - both the abbot and this pope had died in the meantime - was Hans von Trotha, now through Alexander VI. , summoned before the papal court to be questioned about his loyalty to the Church. But the knight refused to travel to Rome and instead wrote a letter to the papal address. In it he emphasized on the one hand his Christian faith, on the other hand he accused the Borgia Pope with subtle formulations of immorality. Trotha was then banned from church . In order not to suffer the same fate, his previous patron, the elector, had to renounce his henchman. As early as 1496, the Roman-German king and later Emperor Maximilian I was forced to pronounce the knight's ban on the empire.
The elector, however, only outwardly withdrew the knight's favor; Because of his diplomatic skills, he sent him temporarily to the French royal court during the Italian wars . There King Ludwig XII awarded him . the Chevalier d'Or award .
Death and rehabilitation
Hans von Trotha cared little about the sanctions imposed by the emperor and the church, and he died of natural causes in 1503. Two years later the ban was lifted; his body, initially temporarily buried, was buried with ecclesiastical honors in the St. Anna chapel belonging to Niederschlettenbach , which is 4 km from Berwartstein above the confluence of the Erlenbach in the Wieslauter. In 1967 the von Trotha family had a memorial plaque installed in the chapel.
meaning
The events surrounding the water feud with the monastery are depicted in the knights' hall of Berwartstein Castle. The knight's hall, which can seat 150 people, is now used as a restaurant, but is freely accessible for tours.
Hans von Trotha, who, at about two meters tall, is said to have been of imposing stature even by today's standards, went down in the legends of the region under his popularly twisted name "Hans Trapp", occasionally also "Hans Trott" or "Hans Drot" . He was not only referred to by the term robber baron , which was coined later , but also increasingly distorted into a child fright, who as a "black knight" supposedly finds no peace and haunts the Wasgau at night. Even in the legend of the Jungfernsprung his name is used for the monster who wants to rob the main female character of innocence .
In neighboring Alsace, the name Hans Trapp is used to frighten children; Hans Trapp and not Knecht Ruprecht appear here in the wake of Nicholas or the Christ Child . Design and features of Hans Trapp (white beard, stocking cap and tail) are the following dialect poem described from Alsace, the next to the High German is transferred:
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literature
- Johann Georg Lehmann : Documented history of the castles and mountain palaces in the former districts, counties and lordships of the Bavarian Palatinate . A contribution to thorough patriotism. 1. Volume: Documented history of the castles and mountain palaces in the former Speyergaue . Kaiserslautern 1857. On Hans von Trotha pp. 58–72. Online .
- Thilo von Trotha : Preliminary studies on the history of the Trotha family . Collected by Thilo von Trotha. Neuwied 1860. On Hans von Trotha, pp. 61–80. Online .
- Otto von Reinsberg -Düringsfeld: The festive year in manners, customs and festivals of the Germanic peoples . With around 130 illustrations printed in the text, many audio images, etc. s. w. Leipzig 1863. On Hans von Trotha p. 380 f. (with illustration on p. 381 “Christkindchen and Hans Trapp in Alsace”). Online .
References and comments
- ↑ a b c d Hans von Trotha, Ritter - 5th generation. Von Trotha family, accessed on November 12, 2011 (no longer public since 2015).
- ↑ The years 1480 and 1503, which were subsequently added to the coat of arms, indicate the time of the knight's reign on the Berwartstein.
- ↑ VI. Generation (1479-1565). Von Trotha family, accessed December 10, 2016 .
- ↑ V. Generation (1443-1547). Von Trotha family, accessed December 10, 2016 .
- ↑ See Alemannische Wikipedia: Hans Trapp .
- ↑ D'r Hans Trapp . In: Le Nouveau Rhin Français . 7th December 1952.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Trotha, Hans von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Hans Trapp; Hans Trott |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Knight, Marshal of the Electors of the Palatinate and Chevalier d'Or of the King of France |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 15th century |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | uncertain: Krosigk , Germany |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 26, 1503 |
| Place of death | Berwartstein Castle , Germany |