Prechtal reign

Coats of arms of the margraves of Baden and the counts of Fürstenberg at the "Ladhof" in Elzach, the former joint official building in the Prechtal condominium.

The Prechtal lordship was a condominium of the Margraviate Baden-Hachberg (or their legal successors, Margraviate Baden and Margraviate Baden-Durlach ) on the one hand and the Counts (later Prince) of Fürstenberg on the other hand, from 1409 to 1810 . The rule was geographically in the upper Elz Valley .

history

Since the first documentary mention of “Bregen” in 1178, the manorial rule in the Prechtal had been in the Waldkirch monastery of St. Margarethen , whose governors had been the barons of Schwarzenberg since the 12th century . The "Tal Gebreche " formed one of the five mines of the monastery. The barons of Schwarzenberg took advantage of the decline of the Benedictine monastery in the 14th century to develop their position as governors to a legally and economically dominant position. In an effort to achieve sovereignty, the Schwarzenbergs leaned against the Habsburgs and were considered feudal people of the Habsburgs from the end of the 14th century. They now had bailiwick rights over the Prechtal as a Habsburg fief. The Counts of Habsburg-Laufenburg , Hans , Rudolf and Götz (Gottfried) gave the Prechtal to Count Hug von Fürstenberg-Haslach as a fief in 1362 . His successor, Count Johann von Fürstenberg-Haslach, died in the Battle of Sempach in 1386 , which ended his branch of the Fürstenberg family. The Habsburgs viewed the fief as having reverted to them and did not enfeoff Count Heinrich IV of the Fürstenberg main line. Count Hans IV. Von Habsburg-Laufenburg enfeoffed the Margrave Hesso von Baden-Hachberg with the Prechtal, who appeared as a fiefdom in 1390. The Habsburg had promised that in the event of his death without a male heir, the fief would become the property of the margraves. This case occurred in 1408. However, in October 1406, Count Hans had awarded the Prechtal fiefdom to Counts Konrad, Heinrich and Egon von Fürstenberg, for which they waived debt claims.

Heinrich IV von Fürstenberg also died in 1408 and Margrave Hesso in 1409. Count Konrad von Fürstenberg-Wolfach - a son of Heinrich IV - had already taken over the government of the Kinzig valley and the dispute with Baden over the Prechtal in 1407, whereby he also used military force . In 1409 the city of Strasbourg and Count Eberhard von Württemberg acted as mediators, and Strasbourg reached an armistice between Margrave Hesso and Count Konrad. Margrave Hesso died in September 1409 before other planned quality appointments. From the letters of Count Eberhard it can be deduced that Hesso's heirs continued the negotiations. It is assumed that there was an arbitration as early as 1409 and that the Prechtal has been a condominium since then.

As early as 1415, the last margrave of Baden-Hachberg, Otto II. , Sold the margraviate to his distant cousin, Margrave Bernhard von Baden , with which the margraves of Baden assumed co-rule in the Prechtal. In the 1414 inventory of assets drawn up by Margrave Otto for the planned sale, a value of 450 guilders was set for “zu Gebrech das tal” and a dispute was not mentioned. However, the only place in the Prechtal was the addition “so set it in friden”, which indicates that the situation was still assessed as unstable.

How the conflict over rule in the Prechtal between Hachbergers / Badeners on the one hand and Fürstenberger / Habsburgs on the other hand played out remains fuzzy. In any case, it was documented in a document from the Fürstenbergers from November 11, 1419 that they only own a share in the Prechtal.

Partial freedom of religion

In the division of the estate under the sons of Margrave Christoph I , the Margraviate of Hachberg came to Ernst , the founder of the Baden-Durlach line, with the claim to the Prechtal rule . His son Charles II introduced the Reformation in 1556. In 1570 he also sent a Lutheran preacher to the Prechtal. In the Kinzig valley in Fürstenberg, the Reformation was introduced under Count Wilhelm as early as 1540, but was quickly and permanently suppressed by his brother, Friedrich II. It is not known whether Lutheran preachers were active in the Prechtal during the reign of Count Wilhelm and Margrave Ernst. The Fürstenbergers were unable to restrict the activities of the Lutheran preachers. Oberprechtal became predominantly Protestant, while the lower Prechtal remained predominantly Catholic because of its orientation towards Elzach. In the Prechtal, because of the different denominations of the two condominates, the subjects were free to choose between the Catholic and Lutheran denominations.

The end of the condominate

Traditional costume from the Prechtal

As early as the 16th and 17th centuries, Fürstenberg had made attempts to dissolve the condominium and to divide up the common property, which Baden refused in each case. Later there were efforts from Baden to buy the share of the Fürstenbergers, but this did not lead to any success.

In 1806, the Rheinbundakte (Art. XXIV) resulted in the mediatization of the Principality of Fürstenberg and its division into Baden , Württemberg and Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen , with the largest part falling to Baden along with the Prechtal. Under constitutional law, the condominium was terminated on September 10, 1806. In terms of private law, the common property was not yet separated. It was not until January 1, 1810 that the condominium ended under private law due to a contract between the rulers of Fürstenberg and the Grand Duchy of Baden.

The Prechtal in the Grand Duchy of Baden

In the Grand Duchy of Baden, Prechtal was initially assigned to the new Hornberg office but was assigned to the Triberg district office as early as 1808 . In 1815 the valley came to the Elzach district office . After its dissolution, it was added to the Waldkirch district office in 1819 . From 1936 to 1939 Prechtal belonged to the Wolfach district and since then it has been part of the Emmendingen district .

The domain and center of domination

The ruled area included Prechtal , Oberprechtal , Landwasser and Hintertal, Reichenbach, Frischnau, Fisnacht and Ladhof. The area was about 50 km². The Baden margraves' claim to include the Heidburg and Breitebene in the condominium could not be enforced, but this claim repeatedly gave rise to disputes between Baden and Fürstenberg.

The center of the rule was the Ladhof which was bought from 1522-1525 by the condominiums and rebuilt. The first known documentary mention of the Ladhof dates from 1465/66. Its name is traced back to its function as a reloading station for goods traffic between Breisgau and Swabia. The meetings of the Baden and Fürstenberg officials took place here. Around 1550, the so-called governing year was introduced, with which the bailiffs of a condominant carried out the ordinary business of the rulership on an annual basis - for extraordinary or fundamental business, the direct coordination of both parties was still necessary. If the officials stayed in the Prechtal for several days, they were accommodated in Ladhof, which also served as the seat of the court, archive and prison. After being destroyed by a major fire, the Ladhof was rebuilt in 1745 and the coat of arms still visible today with the coats of arms of the two condominiums was attached there.

population

Around 1816 after the Napoleonic Wars, 2185 people lived in 219 houses in the Prechtal, of whom 328 were Protestants.

economy

Fruit and hemp were grown and livestock was farmed. Forestry played an important role.

Legal Status

The condominians in the person of the respective Margrave von Hachberg and the Count von Fürstenberg formed a community at all hands , which in each case required joint decisions on all questions of rule. On the Baden side, the Prechtal was subordinate to the Hachberg Oberamt, Fürstenberg had the administrative seat of his rule in Haslach, Kinzigtal , to which the Prechtal was assigned in the Fürstenberg administration. With the increasing influence of the Baden and Fürstenberg central administrations in Karlsruhe and Donaueschingen , the coordination of the joint administration in the Prechtal became more difficult.

In the middle of the 16th century, the Prechtal was an independent high court district and represented an independent entity in terms of constitutional law. Despite all the differences between the condominiums, they endeavored to uphold the rights of their condominium vis-à-vis the neighborhood - in particular, Habsburg front Austria and the city of Elzach . The manorial rights of the Waldkirch Abbey were limited to a purely private right to use its property. The village community was able to preserve some rights , especially in the area of lower jurisdiction .

literature

Karl Siegfried Bader : The Baden-Fürstenberg condominium in the Prechtal , Prechtal local authority, 1996; Reprint of the 1934 edition

Ronald G. Asch, Dagmar Freist (editor): State-building as a cultural process: structural change and legitimation digitization

Karl Siegfried Bader: The split in faith and the development of the ecclesiastical simultaneous relationship in the Prechtal (1934) - In: Schau-ins-Land, Volume 61 (1934), pp. 57-65 digitized

Karl Siegfried Bader: The Church Simultaneous Relationship in the Prechtal. In: Journal of the Society for the Promotion of History, Antiquity and Folklore of Freiburg, the Breisgau and the Adjacent Landscapes, Volume 48 (1938), pp. 123–128 Digitized

Franz Xaver Kraus (Ed.): The art monuments of the Grand Duchy of Baden. Descriptive Statistics , Volume 6: District of Freiburg, First Department: District of Freiburg. Tübingen and Leipzig 1904, p. 506 digitized

Albert Krieger : Baden Historical Commission (Hrsg.): Topographical Dictionary of the Grand Duchy of Baden , Volume 2, Heidelberg, 1904, column 502 warriors

Johann Baptist Kolb (ed.): Historical-statistical-topographical lexicon of the Grand Duchy of Baden. 3rd volume (O-Z), Karlsruhe 1816; Pp. 70–73 digitized version

Philipp Ludwig Hermann Röder (editor): Geographical Statistical-Topographical Lexicon of Swabia , Volume 1 (A – K), Ulm 1791, Column 292–294 Entry Brechthal online Bayerische Staats-Bibliothek digital

Sigmund Ritter von Riezler : History of the Princely House of Fürstenberg and its ancestors up to 1509 . Tübingen 1883, p. 313 digitized , p. 355 digitized

Web links

Commons : Prechtal - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

↑ the margrave was said to have a tendency to Lutheranism, although he did not take a clear position for fear of the Habsburgs.
↑ s. Kolb; in Röder column 293, only 800 inhabitants are mentioned in 1791.

Individual evidence

^ Fürstenbergisches Urkundenbuch: Sammlung d. History sources d. House of Fürstenberg u. his country in Swabia. 5. Sources on the history of the Fürstenbergische Lande in Swabia from the years 700 - 1359 , 1885, No. 106, p. 67 Digitalised version of the ULB Düsseldorf

↑ s. Bader p. 17

↑ s. Bader p. 22

^ Fürstenbergisches Urkundenbuch: Sammlung d. History sources d. House of Fürstenberg u. his country in Swabia. 2. Sources on the history of the Counts of Fürstenberg from the years 1300 - 1399 , 1877, No. 542, pp. 358–359 digitized from ULB Düsseldorf

^ See Arnold Münch: Regesten der Grafen von Habsburg, Lassenburg line 1198–1408. In: Argovia , 10 (1879), p. 255, No. 753 and 754 ( doi: 10.5169 / seals-22568 )

^ Fürstenbergisches Urkundenbuch: Sammlung d. History sources d. House of Fürstenberg u. his country in Swabia. 3. Sources on the history of the Counts of Fürstenberg from the years 1400 - 1479 , 1878, No. 59, p. 46 and No. 60, p. 47 digital copy of the ULB Düsseldorf

↑ see Riezler p. 355

↑ see Bader pp. 28/29

↑ see Richard Fester : The acquisition of the dominions of Hachberg and Höhingen by Margrave Bernhard I of Baden. In: Journal for the history of the Upper Rhine , Volume 49, 1895, p. 658 in the Internet Archive

^ Fürstenbergisches Urkundenbuch: Sammlung d. History sources d. House of Fürstenberg u. his country in Swabia. 3. Sources on the history of the Counts of Fürstenberg from the years 1400 - 1479 , 1878, No. 141, pp. 109–110 digitized version of the ULB Düsseldorf