Berka County

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The Grafschaft Berka was a small imperial immediate county of the Counts of Berka in Thuringia , which existed around Bad Berka in the 12th and 13th centuries . In addition to the main town Berka an der Ilm, it included the towns of Bergern , Hetschburg , Meckfeld , Munich , Saalborn and Troistedt . The Counts of Berka were first mentioned in 1154; the rule of the last count ended in 1272. From then on the territory continued to exist as the Berka rule under various lords until around 1370.

history

Little is known about the Counts of Berka. Their origin and ancestry are also unclear. The historian Elle suspected in 1868, based on some documentary evidence, a descent from a sideline of the Ludowingers , starting with Ludwig the Bearded and his daughter Uta, who was married to Count Dietrich von Linderbach and had a son Beringer. This in turn had two sons, on the one hand Ludwig von Lohra and on the other hand Dietrich I von Berka, who would thus be great-grandson Ludwig the Bearded. Dietrich I, the first Count of Berka, was first mentioned in a document in 1154.

In the following years, the counts were named as witnesses in numerous documents, which made their prominent position within the Thuringian nobility (they were often at the beginning or at the top of the ranked secular witness lists ) and good connections to neighboring nobles. In contrast to this is their very small territorial holdings, which hardly corresponded to the rank of a county. Financial difficulties were the order of the day, for example when Dietrich III. in 1251 real estate had to be sold.

Count Dietrich III. founded the Berka monastery in 1243 , which existed until the Reformation. The seat of the counts was a moated castle in the area in the area of ​​today's forestry office on Ilmstrasse, nothing of which has survived, while the old castle north of the town was only built around 1280 immediately after the counts died out.

The end of County Berka has not been proven for certain. Either Dietrich IV. (And his younger brother) died childless or the family's financial difficulties led to the sale of the county. In 1272 a Ludwig von Meldingen appears as a co-owner of Berka, in 1275 it was then completely owned by Count Hermann von Mansfeld - Osterfeld , who with a daughter of Dietrich III. was married. The former would rather suggest a sale, the latter for an extinction in the male line and subsequent inheritance.

From then on, the territorial unit continued to exist as the Berka rule . As such, it passed to the Counts of Rabenswalde as early as 1280 through the daughter of Hermann von Mansfeld-Osterfeld . Since she had no son either, Berka went to the Counts of Orlamünde a generation later around 1310 , whose count married the daughter of the Rabenswalder. The Counts of Orlamünde held the rule of Berka until 1370, when they had to sell it in the course of their decline after the Thuringian Count War . The neighboring lords of Blankenhain , who integrated the rule into their neighboring territories, became the new owners .

The only historical treatise to date on the Counts of Berka was written by the Berka superintendent Constantin Elle until 1868 and published posthumously in 1905/1906.

Count

  • Dietrich I. (first documented mention 1154, probably 1172)
  • Dietrich II. (Mentioned in a document in 1192, possibly the mention in 1172 already refers to him)
  • Dietrich III. (first documented mention in 1218, died secured 1251)
  • Dietrich IV. (Ruling 1251 to 1272)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Truhart : Historical Dictionary of States: States and State-like Communities from Their Origins to the Present / Lexikon der Historische Staatennamen: States und staatsähnliche Gemeinwesen , KG Saur Verlag , 1996, ISBN 978-3598112928 Paragraph 17.879
  2. ↑ Constantin Elle: The old rule (county) Berka ad Ilm . Section V., in: Otto Dorbencker (Hrsg.): Journal of the Association for Thuringian History and Archeology. Sixth volume. The complete set of the twenty-fourth volume, published by Gustav Fischer, Jena 1905
  3. ^ Ludwig Häfner: Bad Berka and its historical castle hill. Published on bad-berka.de ( PDF ( Memento of the original from August 15, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ), accessed on August 15, 2017 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bad-berka.de

literature

  • Gerhard Köbler : Historical lexicon of the German countries. The German territories from the Middle Ages to the present. 7th, completely revised edition. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-54986-1 .
  • Constantin Elle: The old rule (county) Berka ad Ilm . Section V., in: Otto Dorbencker (Hrsg.): Journal of the Association for Thuringian History and Archeology. Sixth volume. The entire set, twenty-fourth volume, published by Gustav Fischer, Jena 1905. pp. 65–122 (Part I).
  • Constantin Elle: The old rule (county) Berka ad Ilm . Section V., in: Otto Dorbencker (Hrsg.): Journal of the Association for Thuringian History and Archeology. Sixth volume. The complete set of the twenty-fourth volume, published by Gustav Fischer, Jena 1906. pp. 261–302 (Part II).