Liebenstein (noble family)
Liebenstein is the name of an old, originally from the Alsace -derived noble family (initially Lords of Liebenstein , later barons of Liebenstein ), which since the 13th century is headquartered in Castle Liebenstein in Neckarwestheim in Baden-Wuerttemberg had. Branches of the family still exist today.
The gender should not be confused with the Thuringian - Hessian family von Stein zu Liebenstein or the Hessian family von Preuschen von und zu Liebenstein.
history
The ancestral seat of the Lords of Liebenstein was in southern Alsace near Liebsdorf near Ferrette (Pfirt) on Liebenstein Castle, which is still in ruins today. The Liebensteiner belonged to the old high nobility, a Bertold von Liebenstein was prince abbot of the Murbach monastery in 1299 . They can be traced in Alsace until shortly after 1300, when their ancestral seat fell to the Counts of Pfirt.
The oldest verifiable lord of the Neckarwestheim line is Reinhard von Liebenstein, named around 1200, on whom and his son Albrecht I, probably between 1200 and 1250, the construction of the oldest part of Liebenstein Castle near Neckarwestheim on the former property of the Count von, who died out between 1216 and 1219 Lauffen goes back. On January 15, 1235, Albert von Liebenstein was named as a witness in Wimpfen in a document from King Henry VII for the Schöntal Monastery . Reinhard's son Albrecht I von Liebenstein took part in a knight tournament in Würzburg in 1235 . Shortly before his death, Albrecht I, with the consent of his son Albrecht II, founded a Dominican nunnery in the Itzinger Hof in 1261 , which was also the burial place of the Lords of Liebenstein until 1666. Around 1290 the Itzingen monastery merged with the Benedictine nunnery in Lauffen .
The Lords of Liebenstein succeeded in the 12./13. Century, to bring both former imperial estates (including Itzingen and Ottmarsheim ) and surrounding fiefs (including parts of Neckarwestheim, Auenstein , Ilsfeld , Kirchheim ) and thus to establish a semi-closed domain that was surrounded by Baden and Württemberg possessions.
Several family lines developed under the sons of Albrecht II:
- Engelhardt I inherited half of the Sternenfels Castle from his grandmother, sold it to Württemberg in 1320, was married to one of Sturmfeder and founded the Rhenish Line , which later owned Liebenstein Castle near Boppard on the Rhine
- Konrad I. († 1363) is the progenitor of
- Ottmarsheim line
- Heinrichslinie
- Line of the upper house
- Line of the lower house
The lines of the upper and lower house are named after their shares in Liebenstein Castle and were created in 1445 when the estate was divided between his sons Peter II and Konrad after the death of Peter I. The Heinrichslinie was founded by Heinrich I († 1517) and went out with his grandson Franz I in the late 16th century. The Ottmar Heimer line had half the nearby town of Ottmarsheim , the other half shared the top and bottom line. Probably Bernhard († 1583) from the Ottmarsheimer line built the Ottmarsheimer Schloss after 1532, but his son Hans-Moritz died before him, so that after his death in 1583 the line expired and the property was divided between the upper and lower lines. In addition, parts of Bönnigheim , half of Cleebronn , Erligheim and Magenheim belonged to the upper house; half Liebenstein and half Kaltenwesten (today Neckarwestheim) to the lower line. In 1500 Peter III was von Liebenstein the ancestor of the upper house, Hanns III. Tribe holder of the lower house.
From 1504 to 1508 Jakob von Liebenstein (son of Peters II, upper house) was elector and archbishop of Mainz against his will . His nephew Moritz († 1559), son of Peter III., Gained fame in the imperial military service when he was colonel and lieutenant of Sebastian Schertlin von Burtenbach in 1544 . Later he was the Württemberg governor in Vaihingen.
Althans and Hans von Liebenstein and about 70 other nobles had promised to defend Duke Ulrich's children at Tübingen Castle , but they surrendered shortly after the siege of the castle by Georg von Frundsberg on Easter Monday 1519. Their names can therefore be found on the so-called scandal in the Tübingen Castle. In 1524, Hans von Liebenstein bequeathed his goods to seven sons and two daughters. Four became clergy, they all achieved the dignity of canons, and only one, Raban, Mainz bailiff at Olm and Algesheim ( Gau-Algesheim , about 20 km west of Mainz), continued the male line.
The Liebensteiner secular class were mostly in Württemberg service: Friedrich I and Hans V were Württemberg councilors in the 15th century, Bernhard († 1596) and Albrecht († 1608) were senior bailiffs in Lauffen am Neckar , Philipp († 1637, upper house ) was the Württemberg governor in Vaihingen an der Enz . Emperor Ferdinand moved part of the upper castle in 1631 because Philip had been too strong for the Swedes in the battle of Nördlingen . After the castle briefly belonged to Count von Trauttmannsdorff , who was the emperor's chief minister after Wallenstein's death , the upper castle was returned to the lords of Liebenstein in 1639.
With the death of Friedrich Albert von Liebenstein in 1657 the male line of the upper line became extinct. The goods were bequeathed to Philipp Konrad I of the lower house, who thus united the entire family property, but died in the following year 1658. His three sons Philipp Reinhard, Philipp Konrad II and Philipp Albrecht made an inheritance agreement in 1666, which provided for the indivisibility of the goods and their joint management, excluding female succession. After the death of Philipp Reinhard, the eldest of the brothers, there was a dispute between Philipp Konrad II and Philipp Albrecht around 1670, which meant that the owner of the lower house no longer went through the upper gate, but through the wall next to the castle chapel even had a gate cut for a path into the valley.
On September 4, 1673, Philipp Albrecht sold to Duke Eberhard III. von Württemberg (1628–1674) the upper castle, about two acres of the lake and half the rule for 50,000 guilders and 230 ducats. On May 28, 1678 Philipp Konrad II exchanged his remaining half of his rule and the lower castle with the House of Württemberg for the other half of the village of Köngen near Esslingen with its front castle and all affiliations and an additional 13,000 guilders. Duke Eberhard III. paid as a buyer from his private box and was the owner of the entire Liebenstein estate from Liebenstein Castle , Kaltenwesten , Ottmarsheim , the monastery and hamlet of Itzingen , half of Holzweiler, as well as goods and slopes in Ilsfeld and Auenstein . Württemberg set up a bar cellar there to manage the property and, incidentally, also acquired the village of Köngen back from Philipp Konrad II in 1687 for 41,000 guilders.
In addition to the estates around Liebenstein, the family had a second property focus since the 15th century around the village of Jebenhausen near Göppingen, which brought the family good income due to its Sauerbrunnen bath. Jebenhausen, mentioned for the first time in 1206, had come from the Lords of Ahelfingen to the Lords of Schlat in 1439, partly as a Württemberg fief, partly as own property . Kunigunde von Liebenstein, Caspar von Schlat's widow, sold the half of Jebenhausen she owned to her brother, a Konrad von Liebenstein, in 1468. He had already acquired the other half of the village of Württemberg a year earlier and now owned all of Jebenhausen as his own. After the death of his childless sister Kunigunde in 1476 he inherited the places Eschenbach , Schlat , Iltishof and Lotenberg near Jebenhausen and was able to round off his rule in Jebenhausen.
In 1670, before the Liebenstein Castle was sold, Philipp Konrad II had sold half of the Jebenhausen estate to his brother Philipp Albrecht. With the 50,000 guilders that Philipp Albrecht received for the sale of his half of Liebenstein, he was able to discharge his rule in Jebenhausen. In 1686 he had a castle built in the high baroque style in Jebenhausen, which was still inhabited by his descendants at the beginning of the 21st century. In 1773 Johann Friedrich Ludwig von Liebenstein tried, on the basis of a legal opinion from the University of Göttingen , to dispute the sale of the Liebenstein estate from 1673/78 through a sensational lawsuit. Due to the ius de non appellando , the lawsuit before the Württemberg courts was unsuccessful. The legal disputes with Württemberg ruined the Liebensteiner's finances to such an extent that they sold their shares in Eschenbach, Lotenberg and Schlat to Württemberg in 1789.
The Swabian main line of the Lords of Liebenstein was registered with the Swabian Imperial Knighthood in the knightly canton of Kocher . Their influence waned with the sale of the Liebenstein estate to Württemberg in the 1670s. In 1728 two lines were formed under the descendants of Philipp Albrecht, the Jebenhausener and the Eschenbacher line. The former died out in the male line in 1827, the latter formed a German and a Dutch-East Indian branch. Ludwig Wilhelm Friedrich Karl von Liebenstein was the owner of a Dutch command post in Batavia on the island of Java , his descendants lived in Padang on Sumatra .
coat of arms
The coat of arms is divided three times by silver and black. On the helmet with black and silver covers two buffalo horns marked like the shield .
Known family members
- Jakob von Liebenstein (1462–1508), Archbishop of Mainz
- Philipp Friedrich von Liebenstein (1730–1799), author of the Jewish protection letter of 1787 for Buttenhausen
- Ludwig von Liebenstein (1781–1824), Baden district director and state councilor, and from 1818 to 1824 a member of the first Baden state parliament. His great-grandson was Major General Kurt Freiherr von Liebenstein.
- Kurt Freiherr von Liebenstein (1899–1975), major general in World War II and in the Bundeswehr
literature
- Elisabeth Zipperlen: Liebenstein and the Liebensteiner. In: Ludwigsburg history sheets. Vol. 18, 1966, ISSN 0179-1842 , pp. 93-104.
- Maria Magdalena Rückert : The origin of the von Liebenstein family and their possessions in Liebenstein and Jebenhausen . In: Anton Hegele, Karl-Heinz Rueß (Hrsg.): 800 years Jebenhausen. From the knightly village to the city district (= publication by the Göppingen city archive ). tape 46 . City of Göppingen, Göppingen 2006, ISBN 3-933844-50-9 , p. 46-49 .
- Genealogical manual of the nobility . Nobility Lexicon. Vol. 7 = Vol. 97 of the complete series. Starke, Limburg (Lahn) 1989, ISSN 0435-2408 .
