Heinrich I. (Raugraf)

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Heraldic shield of the Raugrafen

Raugraf Heinrich I (* in the 13th century; † October 19, 1261 ) was a south-west German nobleman who was involved in a deadly jealous drama, which also went down in various versions in German sagas .

Life

Origin and family

Henry I came from the family of raugraves (often also raugraves of Baumburg ) and was the son of Raugraf Rupert I., Electoral Palatinate Steward and castellan to Alzey , and his wife Hedwig von Eberstein . His date of birth is unknown. Due to the descent of the Raugrafen from the Wildgraves , he sometimes appears in older literature with their nickname as Graf von Schmidtburg .

The Speyer bishop Konrad von Eberstein († 1245) and Eberhard IV. Von Eberstein († 1263), founders of the Palatinate monastery of Rosenthal , were their mother's brothers; the St. Hedwig and Queen Gertrude of Hungary whose cousins. Agnes von Eberstein, a sister of the mother, married Count Friedrich II. Von Leiningen . Their children Friedrich III. von Leiningen († 1287), builder of Neuleiningen Castle , Emich IV. von Leiningen († 1281), founder of the city of Landau in the Palatinate , Berthold von Leiningen († 1285), Bishop of Bamberg , and Heinrich von Leiningen , Bishop of Speyer († 1272), cousins ​​of Raugraf Heinrich I, St.  Elisabeth of Thuringia (a daughter of the aforementioned Gertrude of Hungary) were his great cousin.

Heinrich's brothers were the Worms bishops Eberhard I and Friedrich I as well as Rupert II, founder of the Altenbaumburg family line, who married Elisabeth von Hohenfels .

Raugraf Heinrich I became the founder of the Neu Baumburger line of the family and married Agnes von Saarbrücken, daughter of Count Simon II of Saarbrücken . They were, among other things, the parents of Bishop Emich I. von Worms († 1299) and the grandparents of his successor Heinrich III. von Daun-Oberstein († 1319).

Entanglement in a jealous drama

Epitaph plate Duchess Mary of Brabant in the monastery church of the Holy Cross in Donauwörth
Grave slab of Raugraf Heinrich I († 1261), Rosenthal Monastery (Palatinate)

Heinrich I led the life of a count of his time and was active a. a. as a knight in the arms trade. He was Kurpfälzer Erbtruchsess and Erbburgvogt. What sets him apart from the crowd of his peers is the tragic involvement in a jealous drama with a fatal outcome:

The Palatinate-Bavarian Duke Ludwig der Strenge was on a military campaign in the Rhine Palatinate in 1255/56 . His wife Maria von Brabant wrote him a letter asking him to return soon. At the same time she wrote a letter to the Count Heinrich, who was staying with her husband, and asked him to take care of him and bring him back safely, for which she wanted to grant him the special favor for which he had long asked her. According to tradition, the Raugraf had already been to the Duke's court earlier and had asked the Duchess for the favor of "Du" , since other familiar knights addressed the ruler in this way. Maria von Brabant sealed both letters with sealing wax of different colors (black and red), but the messenger who was not able to read had mixed them up anyway. So the Duke accidentally received the letter addressed to Raugraf Heinrich and drew from it the conclusion of an extramarital love affair.

Full of anger, Duke Ludwig rode to Mangoldstein Castle in Donauwörth and had his wife beheaded on January 18, 1256, immediately after his arrival, for alleged adultery. Two of her ladies-in-waiting and the bailiff also fell victim to the blind jealousy of the Bavarian Duke on the night of January 17-18; the ladies-in-waiting because of alleged complicity and the bailiff because he wanted to prevent the execution. Through this crime, the ruler earned the nickname "the severity" . In 1260 he married again. According to tradition, Ludwig the Strict regretted his cruel behavior and asked the Pope to abscond. Alexander IV then placed on him as atonement the obligation to participate in the crusade or to found a monastery for at least twelve monks. Duke Ludwig decided on the latter and founded the Fürstenfeld Monastery as a penance in 1263 .

Another fate

The reports differ about the further fate of Raugrafen Heinrich I. It is unanimously said that he renounced the Bavarian Duke and his service. Various sources report that Heinrich traveled restlessly around the country, called on the nobles to oppose Ludwig the Strict and spread his crimes. It is said that he also died a violent death on Ludwig's orders; other accounts speak of having become a monk and later found dead at the tomb of Mary of Brabant. Facts are his relatively early death in 1261 and his burial in the local monastery Rosenthal , while its founder, his uncle Eberhard IV von Eberstein , was still alive . He is the only one of his family buried here; the Raugrafen had no burial place there, but were usually buried in the Otterberg monastery.

The grave slab of Raugraf Heinrich I is preserved in the ruins of the Rosenthal monastery church.

Background and afterlife

The actual background to the jealous drama in which Raugraf Heinrich I was involved is largely unclear. The facts were fabulously spelled out soon after the events, as the events were first spread orally by minstrels , entered the German saga and became the subject of ballads and poems. Recent studies assume that the alleged unfaithfulness was probably a pretext and that political motives for the execution of the wife Ludwig des Strengen, who was related to the ruling German King Wilhelm of Holland , could have been decisive.

Friedrich Bruckbräu processed the material into a stage play at the beginning of the 19th century.

literature

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Friedrich W. Hebel: Palatinate legends. Crusius, Kaiserslautern 1906, pp. 19-20; Reprinted by Salzwasser Verlag, Paderborn 2011, ISBN 978-3-8460-0060-1 ( excerpt from Google Books ).
  2. ^ Johann Georg Theodor Grasse : Book of legends of the Prussian state. 2nd volume. Carl Flemming, Glogau 1871, pp. 137-138 ( excerpt from Google Books ).
  3. ^ Genealogical website of the University of Erlangen on the mother
  4. ↑ a b Widar Ziehnert: Prussia's folk tales, fairy tales and legends. 1st volume. Leipzig 1839, pp. 245-253 ( digital scan of a ballad on Google Books ).
  5. ^ A b Gustav Pfarrius: The Nahethal in songs. Cologne 1838, pp. 35–43 ( digital scan of a poem on Google Books ).
  6. ↑ Illustrated website for Mangoldstein Castle
  7. ↑ Website for the grave plate
  8. ^ Friedrich Bruckbräu : Maria von Brabant: A historical-romantic tragedy in five acts , 1824; (Digital scan)
personal data
SURNAME Raugraf Heinrich I.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heinrich I. Raugraf von Baumburg, Count Heinrich von Schmidtburg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Count and knight, trigger of a homicide offense
DATE OF BIRTH 13th Century
DATE OF DEATH October 19, 1261