Henry III. (Nassau-Siegen)

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Design drawing by Bernard van Orley for the tapestry with Heinrich I von Nassau-Siegen and Adelheid von Heinsberg and Blankenburg

Henry III. von Nassau-Siegen (* around 1270 , † between July 13 and August 14, 1343 ) was Count of Nassau-Siegen , part of the County of Nassau , and founder of the House of Nassau-Siegen . It comes from the Ottonian line of the House of Nassau .

Life

The coat of arms of the Counts of Nassau from the Ottonian line

Heinrich was the eldest son of Otto I , the founder of the Ottonian line of the House of Nassau, and his wife Agnes von Leiningen , daughter of Count Emich IV von Leiningen and Elisabeth. He was probably born in the 1860s because he appears as an adult as early as 1281.

Heinrich fought on the side of his liege lord , Archbishop Siegfried of Cologne , in the Battle of Worringen (1288) and fell into the hands of the citizens of Cologne , to whom he had to swear primal feud in January 1289. About his claims for compensation he compared himself with the archbishop at the court conference in Frankfurt am Main in March 1295.

Count of Nassau

Heinrich succeeded his father in 1290 together with his brothers Emich and Johann .

Heinrich played a not insignificant role in imperial politics as the cousin of King Adolf von Nassau , whose elevation to Roman-German King he supported in 1292 by agreeing to pledge Nassau property to the Archbishop of Cologne. He remained an ally of his cousin and was in 1294, 1295 and 1297 commander of the royal army against the Thuringian landgrave Albrecht II the Degenerate . From 1297 to 1298 Heinrich was the king's representative and governor in the Margraviate of Meißen and in the Pleißen region . During Adolf's reign, Heinrich took part in the campaign of Count Guido of Flanders against Philip the Fair of France . On February 26, 1298, Adolf mortgaged his cousin Heinrich and Emich for 1000 marks Cologne groschen, the mountains Ratzenscheid near Wilnsdorf in Siegerland , and other mountains in their rule, in which silver can be found. This laid the foundation for the Bergregal of the Counts of Nassau. On July 2, 1298 Heinrich and Emich fought at the side of the king in the battle of Göllheim , in which Adolf was killed; Heinrich was imprisoned.

No matter how faithful Heinrich had been to his cousin Adolf in the fight against Albrecht von Habsburg , after his death he soon enough passed over to the Habsburgs' side. Already in 1301 Albrecht accepted him and his brothers as his and the empire's helpers in return for a reward of 1,000 marks, a portion of which was transferred to the Counts on the strength of Greifenstein, in which Act later claims of the Nassauer to the rule of Greifenstein are rooted. Heinrich remained loyal to the House of Habsburg time and time again, which established the protracted opposition to the anti-Habsburg Walram line of the Nassau family.

Count of Nassau-Siegen

Siegen Castle
The Ginsburg

After a long fratricidal struggle, the County of Nassau was divided among the three brothers in 1303. Heinrich received victories , the Ginsburg , Haiger and the rule of the Westerwald . Emich received the county of Nassau-Hadamar and Johann founded the first line Nassau-Dillenburg , which consisted only of himself .

Heinrich fought with Archbishop Wigbold of Cologne against Eberhard I. von der Mark . As compensation for his help, he received 600 Siegenische Marks, proof that Siegen was still a mint and issued its own common currency. When in 1303 the Cologne co-ruler of Siegen granted the city the right to Soest, Heinrich hastened to issue the citizens with a corresponding certificate, because he did not want to lag behind in the competition for the favor of this city. He could never have suspected that he was giving the citizens a means that they later knew how to use often and successfully against the overly sovereign lust for power of their masters.

In a document dated February 28, 1305, 'Henricus comes de Nassauwe' and 'fratri nostro Emichoni comiti ibidem… eius… conjugi… Anne' reached an agreement on the distribution of the inheritance of 'auum nostrum Emichonem comitem de Liningen et ex morte Emichonis filii sui comitis ibidem nostri avunculi ' .

Henry's younger brother Johann was in 1306, with the consent of Count Henry I of Hesse , his property ( Dillenburg , Herborn and Kalenberger centering ) Heinrich to feud on, with the determination that should home drop his part county at his death his brother.

One of Heinrich's merits is undoubtedly a push back of the Cologne influence in the Siegerland. He acquired the bailiwick of Krombach and the entitlement to the Selbach court in Freie Grund . The noble families of Wilnsdorf and vom Hain were bought up in 1309 and made feudal men from Nassau. He was not that successful in his quarrel with the von Bicken men . 1311 he acquired half and two years later all Molsberg , 1314, the provost Eibelshausen and finally the Office Ebersbach .

Heinrich and his brother Johann got into serious disputes with the Landgraves of Hesse , who, as feudal lords, supported the local nobility against the ambitions of the Nassauer. In the Dernbach feud for supremacy in the Herborner Mark , which had been going on since around 1230 , the Landgraves had sold the Lords of Dernbach in 1309 their Dernbach Castle . In the settlement concluded on June 26, 1312 between Landgrave Otto I on the one hand and Count Heinrich, Emich and Johann von Nassau on the other hand, both sides undertook not to build any more castles against each other, and the Nassau residents conceded that they would be the Lords of Dernbach and Wilnsdorf were not allowed to restrict their rights which they had had at the time of Count Otto von Nassau.

In the conflict between Frederick the Handsome of Austria and Ludwig the Bavarian , he and his brothers were on the side of the former, for which he and them received multiple donations. A. again dealt with Greifenstein, whereas King Ludwig enfeoffed Count Gottfried von Sayn - a countermine - with this rule. They attended the coronation of King Frederick the Fair by the Archbishop of Cologne in Bonn in November 1314 .

When Heinrich's brother Johann fell as a Mainz- Nassau field captain on August 10, 1328 near Wetzlar , Emich renounced his share of his inheritance in favor of his older brother Heinrich.

In 1336 Heinrich's sons Otto and Heinrich signed an agreement to partition the county of Nassau-Siegen. In 1339, however, the youngest son, Heinrich, married Imagina von Westerburg against the will of his father and brother . Due to the marriage, the brothers quarreled. Otto made an alliance with Landgrave Hermann I of Hesse against Heinrich. At the mediation of Gerlach I. von Nassau and Dietrich III. An agreement was reached by Loon . A new partition agreement followed in 1341.

At the end of his life Heinrich got into a quarrel with Reinhard von Westerburg over the justice of the Westerwald, from which he emerged victorious. Then he partially left the rule to his older son Otto. He last appears active in the summer of 1343 in a comparison with Archbishop Walram of Cologne about the community at Siegen. Heinrich's successors were his sons Otto and Heinrich in accordance with the partition agreement of 1341.

Marriage and offspring

Heinrich married before 1302 with Adelheid von Heinsberg and Blankenburg († after May 21, 1343), the daughter of Dietrich II. Von Heinsberg and Blankenburg and Johanna von Löwen. He had three children with her:

  1. Agnes († October 29, 1316/18), ⚭ around 1314 Gerlach II of Limburg († April 2, 1355).
  2. Otto II. (* Around 1305; † December 1350 / January 1351), his father's successor as Count of Nassau-Siegen.
  3. Heinrich I (around 1307; † February 24, 1378 (1380?)), Successor of his father as Count of Nassau-Beilstein .

literature

  • E. Becker: Castle and City of Dillenburg. A walk through their history in the Middle Ages and modern times. Published for the commemoration of the city charter on September 20, 1344 . 2nd Edition. The City Council of Dillenburg, Dillenburg 1983.
  • AWE Dek: Genealogy van het Vorstenhuis Nassau . Europese Bibliotheek, Zaltbommel 1970 (Dutch).
  • Ludwig Götze:  Emich I. In: General German Biography (ADB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, p. 80.
  • Michel Huberty, Alain Giraud, F. & B. Magdelaine: l'Allemagne Dynastique. Tome III Brunswick-Nassau-Schwarzbourg . Alain Giraud, Le Perreux 1981 (French).
  • Ernst Joachim:  Heinrich, Count of Nassau-Siegen . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1880, p. 548 f.
  • Alfred Lück: Siegerland and Nederland . 2nd Edition. Siegerländer Heimatverein eV, Siegen 1981.
  • Fritz Trautz :  Heinrich I., Count of Nassau-Dillenburg. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 8, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1969, ISBN 3-428-00189-3 , p. 374 ( digitized version ).
  • AA Vorsterman van Oyen: Het vorstenhuis Oranje-Nassau. Van de vroegste tijden dead . AW Sijthoff & JL Beijers, Leiden & Utrecht 1882 (Dutch).
  • P. Wagner: The acquisition of the Herborn Mark by the Counts of Nassau . In: Annals of the Society for Nassau antiquity and historical research . Volume 32, 1901. Rud. Bechtold & Co, Wiesbaden 1902, p. 26-44 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dek (1970). Trautz (1969): around 1265 (?).
  2. ↑ Trautz (1969). Dek (1970): August (?) 1343. Vorsterman van Oyen (1882): July / August 1343.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Cawley.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h Dek (1970).
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Vorsterman van Oyen (1882).
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Joachim (1880).
  7. ↑ a b c d e f Trautz (1969).
  8. ↑ a b c d Huberty, et al. (1981).
  9. ↑ a b c Becker (1983), p. 12.
  10. ↑ a b c d e f Lück (1981), p. 21.
  11. ↑ Lück (1981), p. 20.
  12. ↑ Huberty, et al. (1981): "Only during his reign (1323) did Heinrich finally manage to enforce his rule over Haiger."
  13. ^ Wagner (1902).
  14. ↑ a b Götze (1877).
predecessor Office successor
Otto I. Count of Nassau
1289 / 90-1343 		Otto II.
Heinrich I.
personal data
SURNAME Henry III.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Henry III. from Nassau-Siegen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Count of Nassau-Siegen
DATE OF BIRTH around 1270
DATE OF DEATH between July 13, 1343 and August 14, 1343