Blieskastel reign

The Blieskastel office was an administrative and judicial district in the Electorate of Trier . Later the office was owned by the von der Leyen family as the imperial rule of Blieskastel .

history

Kurtrier

The former Blieskastel Castle was the seat of the Counts of Blieskastel, who died out in 1237. The daughter of the last count, Elisabeth, founded the Gräfinthal monastery in Gräfinthal in 1234 . Castle and rule came to the Counts of Salm , then in 1284 to Bishop Burkhard von Metz , who transferred them to von Finstingen. Since 1337 Blieskastel belonged to Kurtrier .

In the 14th century, an office organization was established in Kurtrier. Elector Baldwin of Luxembourg formed an administrative office based on the French model. At the head of the offices there was now a bailiff . This formation of offices was not a single act, but was carried out in a multitude of individual steps, taking into account the local characteristics. The office of Blieskastel is one of the 30 offices that are mentioned in documents during Baldwin's term of office. In a list commissioned by Elector Johann II of Baden in 1498, the Blieskastel office is one of the 59 offices at that time.

The Counts of Veldenz are also mentioned among the Trier officials . In 1440, the Trier Elector Jakob I handed over half of the county and the "Hungericht" to the knight Friedrich von Loewenstein. In 1522 the castle was destroyed by Franz von Sickingen in his feud with the Elector of Trier. In 1553 the reign of Blieskastel was pledged to the Counts of Nassau-Saarbrücken . In the Thirty Years' War Blieskastel was depopulated.

Von der Leyen

With a contract dated March 4, 1660, the imperial barons von der Leyen , who had possessions in Blieskastel since 1456, acquired the Electorate Blieskastel as a Trier feudal fief and built a new castle in 1661–1676 on the site of the old castle . At that time the elector was Karl Kaspar von der Leyen , and his brother Hugo Ernst von der Leyen († 1665) was the buyer. At that time the office consisted of: Blieskastel, Habkirchen , Bebelsheim , Wittersheim , Erfftweiler , Würzbach , Ballweiler and half of Raubenheim (the other half was owned by those of Elz)

The von der Leyen family also acquired many other properties around Blieskastel and thus expanded the Blieskastel rule considerably. On February 8, 1659, they acquired for 4100 Upper Rhine guilders Claus Eberhard Bock of Bleßheim to Gerstheim and his wife, a born-Elz Wecklingen, the house Wecklingen , half of Ballweiler and the villages Bisingen , Rubenheim and Oberwürzbach . Later, von der Leyen acquired the possessions of the von Mauchenheim, von Helmstadt and von Häringen as well as the bailiwick of St. Ingbert, which once belonged to the County of Sayn .

On September 22, 1781, Count Philipp Franz von der Leyen concluded a border adjustment treaty with the Kingdom of France . The von der Leyenschen places Welsserding , Rülching , Hannweiler , Wüstweiler , Frey Mengen and the farms Dietzweisel and Schweigen came to France as "Baronie de Welferding". Von der Leyen lords remained there, but sold the barony in 1783 to the Comte de Vergennes Charles Gravier (French Foreign Minister from 1774 to 1787). In return, von der Leyen received the towns of Klein-Blietersdorf , Auersmacher, Altheim and Neu-Altheim , Nieder-Gailbach with the Erzenthal, Uthweiler , Gräfinthal Abbey and the Oberkirch dairy from France .

At the end of the HRR , the Blieskastel domain comprised 38 towns with 11,000 inhabitants. The other Leyen possessions in the area were also administered from Blieskastel. In addition to the Blieskastel rulership, the Oberamt Blieskastel was subordinate to the Münchweiler rulership as a Palatinate-Zweibrückensches fiefdom (7 places, 1450 inhabitants), the Otterbach rulership as a fiefdom of the Speyer monastery (2 places with 400 inhabitants) and the Oberkirchen rulership (5 places with 700 inhabitants) . The whole Oberamt counted 52 places with 13,550 inhabitants and was an annual income of 120,000 guilders from the Counts of Leyen.

With the capture of the Left Bank of the Rhine by French revolutionary troops , the office was dissolved after 1794. During the French period , the area belonged mainly to the canton of Blieskastel in the Arrondissement de Saarbrücken in the Département de la Sarre .

Bailiffs

• Hans Sulger [1553]

literature

• Johann Samuelersch: Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste edited in alphabetical order from the named font and edited by JS Verlag and JG Gruber, Volume 11, 1823, pp. 20-21, digitized .
• Hans Sulger. Edited by Wolfgang Krämer: The Blieskastel office based on the report by the Electorate of Trier Hans Sulger from 1553: a contribution to the legal and cultural history of the Bliesgau, in particular the places Alschbach, Ballweiler, Bebelsheim, 1933.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} City of Blieskastel: On the history of Blieskastel. Retrieved December 24, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Richard Laufner: The offices organization under Baldwin of Luxembourg; in: Johannes Mötsch , Franz-Josef Heyen (Hrsg.): Balduin von Luxemburg. Archbishop of Trier - Elector of the Empire. Festschrift on the occasion of the 700th year of birth. (= Sources and treatises on church history in the Middle Rhine . Vol. 53). Verlag der Gesellschaft für Mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte, Mainz 1985, pp. 289 ff., Digitized