Herborn Mark

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The Herborner Mark ( Herboremarca ) was a medieval territory in the area of ​​today's Lahn-Dill district .

Origins

The Herborner Mark, named after its main town Herborn in today's Lahn-Dill district , originally formed the Haigergau , a Untergau of the Oberlahngau , together with the neighboring Haigerer Mark ( Heigeromarca ) , but then became independent by the beginning of the 11th century. During the Carolingian Empire and during the reign of the Ottonian and Salian kings and emperors, like the Haigerer Mark, it was a royal property . It is first mentioned on 28 April 1048, on the occasion of the consecration of the Walpurgis pen in Weilburg donated Church in Haiger and the demarcation of the associated church parish . However, it existed before 914, because the description of the border is taken literally from a document from 914, when King Conrad I gave the Haiger baptistery ( ecclesia baptismalis ) to the Walpurgis pen, which he founded on November 28, 912.

Position and extent

The Herborner Mark was southwest of the Haigerer Mark. It encompassed the eastern part of what was later to become the Dillkreis and extended from Heiligenborn and Fleisbach in the southwest via Herborn and Dillenburg to Eiershausen , Hirzenhain , Wallenfels and Frechenhausen in the northeast. In the east it stretched almost as far as Eisemroth and up to today's district boundary between the Lahn-Dill district and the Marburg-Biedenkopf district . The central location was probably the one in the 8th / 9th The extensive castle complex was built in the 19th century in what is now the Burg district of Herborn , but was abandoned early on and left to decay; its function as the central place of the Mark went to the Nassau castle in Herborn , built at the end of the 12th century and renovated in 1251 .

Power relations

Herborn Castle

Since the mark was initially a royal property, there were no counts. However, there were local noble families, in particular the lords of Dernbach and the lords of Bicken and von Bicken zu Hainchen , who both developed count-like rights over time, as well as the lords of Monzenbach . When Emperor Heinrich II. And his wife Kunigunde founded the Wetter canonical monastery around 1015 , Giso I , who was seated in the nearby Hollende Castle, was appointed as its bailiff and count and enfeoffed with royal goods in the surrounding area. In the course of time, the Gisonen acquired considerable property and bailiwick rights in Central Hesse , on the upper Lahn and Eder and as far as the Westerwald , including the Herborner Mark. After Gisos V's death in 1137, the Ludowinger Landgraves of Thuringia inherited their feudal rights over an area from the Burgwald to the Westerwald, including the Herborn Mark. They gave, probably at the insistence of Emperor Friedrich II. , Parts of the Hessian-Thuringian imperial fiefs - d. H. the Herborner Mark, the Kalenberger Zent ( Beilstein , Mengerskirchen , Nenderoth ) and the Heimau court ( Löhnberg ) - as an after-fief in 1231 to Count Heinrich the Rich of Nassau . He and his successors built their own castles in Herborn, Dillenburg (around 1240) and Tringenstein (1350/51) to consolidate their rule in the Mark .

Fight for supremacy: the Dernbach feud

When the Ludowingers died out with Heinrich Raspe IV in the male line in 1247, there was a serious and protracted dispute over the sovereign rights in the Herborner Mark between the Nassauers and the Landgraves of Hesse, who appeared as heirs and successors of the Ludowingers in Hesse . With this, the quarrel that had been smoldering since 1230, the Dernbach feud , the Nassauer with the Lords of Dernbach and the Lords of Bicken and von Bicken zu Hainchen, allied with them, took on new explosiveness. In this feud , which was only ended after more than 100 years in 1333, the Counts of Nassau sought to assert themselves against the long-established noble families in the Herborner Mark and their rights (including mining rights, wild bans , customs law) and possessions (forest and ore mines in the Schelderwald ) to be pruned or removed. The Nassauer were now massively supported by the Archbishops of Mainz , who viewed the Ludowinger legacy in Hesse as a failed Mainz fief and wanted to move in. Sophie von Brabant , her son Heinrich I of Hesse and his successors Otto I and Heinrich II, on the other hand, supported the local nobility and tried to assert their own feudal rights against the Counts of Nassau. In order to strengthen their claim to power in the march , the Nassau residents obtained city rights from King Wilhelm to Herberin as early as 1251 . The construction of the Nassau castles Herborn , Dillenburg and Tringenstein and the Hessian castles Wallenfels , Eisemroth and Hessenwalt also took place in connection with this bitter feud.

The fighting flared up again and again, even among the sons and grandchildren of the original opponents. Even a settlement made in 1312 did not bring lasting peace. However, Heinrich III succeeded. von Nassau-Dillenburg and his brother Johann during the comparatively peaceful phase that followed from 1313 to 1325 to acquire further ownership rights in the Herborner Mark and in the Ebersbach court as well as the Hainchen castle and thereby further consolidate the Nassau position.

In 1325 the feud broke out again with great severity. Among other things, the wooden Nassau castle near Dillenburg is said to have been burned down during this time. Probably in the same year Heinrich III destroyed. of Nassau the Dernbach Castle , the ancestral seat of the Dernbacher, which was owned by the Landgraves of Hesse since 1309. The Hessian castle Wallenfels, built only after 1324, emerged unscathed from this feud; After the feud ended in 1334, Landgrave Heinrich II enfeoffed the Nassau Counts with this castle, but reserved the right to open it. Hessenwalt Castle near Roth , built around the same time as Wallenfels , which was strategically located to the remaining possessions of the Lords of Bicken and at the same time protected the Breidenbacher Grund , was destroyed again by the Nassauers in 1327/28.

The Hessians lost the Battle of Seibertshausen in 1327 , but won the great and decisive field battle under Landgrave Heinrich the Iron on August 10, 1328 against a united Mainz-Nassau army near Wetzlar , in which Johann von Nassau , field captain of the allies, fell. When Archbishop Matthias von Mainz , the landgrave's main opponent, died a month later , the end of the fighting became apparent.

Outcome of the dispute

West side boundary stone ON Orange-Nassau
Former Western border, since 1352, between Hessen (right) and Nassau (left), to this day Kreis- u. Municipal boundary between Siegbach-Wallenfels u. Bad Endbach-Schlierbach (right), the border runs at the edge of the forest, on the right at the edge of the picture old boundary stone

For the Dernbacher the battle was lost with the destruction of their family castle Alt-Dernbach in 1326/27. On May 21, 1333 they sold to Heinrich III. von Nassau-Dillenburg all rights in the city of Herborn, the Herborner Mark, in the Schelder Forest and in the Hörre , as well as other rights in smaller places for the then proud price of 4,000 marks. They only retained the church patronage rights and 13 farms in the Herborner Mark (in Dernbach, Stippach (desert in the district of Sinn ), Bicken, Merkenbach , Monzenbach and Offenbach ).

On May 21, 1336, a contract was also concluded between the von Bicken and Nassau family, in which the von Bicken family owned their Hainchen Castle and most of the property belonging to it (with the exception of their farms and Gülten in Bicken and Herbornselbach and the patronage rights there). sold for 800 marks to Count Heinrich von Nassau. After Count Heinrich had proven that he had bought the suzerainty over it from the Lords of Molsberg , they were to take the Ebersbach court as a fief from the Counts of Nassau.

With the end of the Dernbacher feud, the Herborner Mark finally came into the possession of the Counts of Nassau as an imperial fiefdom ( fiefdom ) of the Landgraves of Hesse. Hessen secured the new western border with a new Landheege (see Mittelhessische Landheegen ). The outer hay forms the border between the Lahn-Dill district and the Marburg-Biedenkopf district to this day .

Places belonging to the Herborner Mark

In the county of Nassau, the following places were administratively part of the Herborner Mark:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The history of Herborn at a glance. ( Memento of the original from September 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on: herborn.de  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.herborn.de
  2. ↑ Friedrich Uhlhorn, University of Marburg: "Boundary-forming factors in history, development of the western border of the Biedenkopf district", (research and meeting report, volume 48). Academy for Spatial Research and Regional Planning, 1969.
  3. ↑ Dernbacher Feud, on the website of the Heimatverein Dietzhölztal  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.heimatverein-dietzhoelztal.de  
  4. ↑ Johannes von Arnoldi: History of the Orange-Nassau countries and their regents. Volume 3, Neue Gelehrtenbuchhandlung, Hadamar 1799, p. 45.

literature

  • Eugen Huth: Herborn - Mark and City: A walk through its history. On the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the city, Herborn city administration, Herborn 1951.
  • Karl Nebe: Castle trips on the old border between Hesse and Nassau. The castles: Dernbach, Bicken, Wallenfels, Hessenwald, Murstein-Tringenstein. Nickel, Straßebersbach 1914.
  • Friedrich Uhlhorn: Formation of borders in Hessen, the development of the western border of the district of Biedenkopf. (Publications of the Academy for Spatial Research and Regional Planning, Volume 48). Gebr. Jänecke Verlag, Hannover 1969, pp. 51-65.
  • Jürgen Runzheimer : Dernbacher feud and Bickener Handel. In: Office Blankenstein. No. 5, Gladenbach 1990.
  • Horst W. Müller: Dernbach and the 'von Dernbach'. In: Hinterland history sheets. No. 3 and 4, 2005 and No. 1 and 2, Biedenkopf 2006.
  • Hans-Joachim Becker: New investigations into the Dernbacher feud. In: Nassau Annals. 119, 2008, pp. 49-74.
  • Horst W. Müller: Castle "Wallenfels", the unknown. In: Hinterland history sheets. 88 year, no.3, Biedenkopf 2009.

Web links