Jakob von Lichtenberg

Jakob von Lichtenberg (born May 25, 1416 Lichtenberg Castle in Alsace ; † January 5, 1480 , Ingwiller , occasionally Jakob im Bart , French Jacques le Barbu ) was Vogt of the city of Strasbourg and the last male representative of the House of Lichtenberg . Jakob gained fame through his unusual life and his connection to Bärbel von Ottenheim .

family

Jakob von Lichtenberg was born in 1416 as the son of Ludwig IV of Lichtenberg and Anna von Baden (1399–1421), a daughter of Margrave Bernhard I of Baden . In 1429 he married Countess Walpurgis (Walburga) von Mörs und Saar Werden . She was a daughter of Count Friedrich IV. Von Moers and Engelberta von der Mark . Walpurgis died in 1450. The marriage with Jakob had remained childless.

In the following years he lived with Bärbel von Ottenheim, to whom he also entrusted the management of his household. With the close amalgamation of the “state” and private tasks of a sovereign in the 15th century, this automatically meant that Bärbel von Ottenheim also led part of the government business. Jakob had two children with Bärbel von Ottenheim. Both died at a young age.

The cohabitation between Bärbel von Ottenheim and Jakob strained the relationships with his younger brother, Ludwig V , and later with the designated successor in the rule, Philipp von Hanau-Babenhausen , married to the older daughter of Ludwig V, Anna , and Simon IV Alarm clock from Zweibrücken-Bitsch , married to the younger, Elisabeth.

government

After a lost war with Strasbourg, Ludwig IV laid down the rule in 1429 in favor of his underage sons, officially because of “mental illness”. He died in 1434.

Guardian for Jakob and his younger brother Ludwig was Friedrich von Moers-Saar Werden until 1436 , presumably because it had been agreed to marry his daughter Walburga and Jakob.

After reaching the age of majority, Jakob led the government of Lichtenberg together with Ludwig . The characters of the brothers were very different: Jacob was interested - in the spirit of the Renaissance - in astronomy and alchemy . Ludwig, on the other hand, was a skilled tactician and a ruler by nature. In important situations, however, they were initially able to come to an understanding, for example in the feud with the Leiningers in 1450/51 for supremacy in Lower Alsace, which the Lichtenbergers could decide for themselves. But the relationship remained tense. The brothers tried to take advantage of each other, feuded, and regarded each other with suspicion.

1462 it came to the so-called women war of Buchsweiler , a potentially fueled by Ludwig uprising against the administration of the country by Bärbel von Ottenheim. As a result, Jakob had to accept that she was deported to Speyer .

In order to avoid these conflicts, different paths were taken:

• In 1440 the brothers decided to divide the rule. In practice, however, Ludwig determined the policy of the entire rule, while Jakob devoted himself to his studies.
• Jacob tried his lands under the protection of the French King Louis XI in 1463 . in order to secure himself against Ludwig V's claims to power, which remained without consequence.
• In 1466 Jakob finally renounced his half of the county and received 1,000 guilders a year.

When Ludwig fell ill towards the end of 1470, a reconciliation took place before Ludwig's death on February 25, 1471. Jacob was now nominally again in possession of the entire rule. In fact, however, the sons-in-law of Ludwig V were already running the government, as Jacob had no heirs. After his death, Lichtenberg fell in equal parts to his nieces, the two daughters of Ludwig V.

Elevation of rank

In 1458 Jakob was taken over by Kaiser Friedrich III. raised to the rank of count .

death

Jacob outlived his brother by nine years. He died in 1480 after a hunting accident and was buried in the Jakobskirche in Reipertswiller , which he had renovated especially for this purpose. Presumably he wanted to be buried together with Bärbel von Ottenheim and his children outside the family burial place of the Lichtenbergers in the castle chapel. The two children from the connection are also in Reipertswiller. The broken Lichtenberg shield was placed on the grave as a sign that the male line had died out. The funerary monument was destroyed during the French Revolution .

reception

portrait

Stained glass around 1490. Possibly the bearded pilgrim is Jacob

According to a hypothesis by Gisela Probst, a glass window from Neuweiler around 1490 in the Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe shows members of the House of Lichtenberg or Hanau-Lichtenberg as pilgrims crowned by Jakobus the Elder. Jacob is said to be a bearded man.

Prophet with a beard - Jakob von Lichtenberg? (Original in the Musée de l'Œuvre Notre-Dame)

Sibylle - Bärbel von Ottenheim ? (Original in the Liebieghaus)

literature

Jakob von Lichtenberg's death was mentioned in Daniel Specklin's Collectaneen : he was a trained gentleman in astronomia, also in negromantia, he announced that he made strange bosses, also occasionally faren in the air.

Portrait busts

Art history

Jakob von Lichtenberg and Bärbel von Ottenheim achieved regional fame through the depiction of two portrait busts of the late Gothic / early Renaissance by Niclaus Gerhaert van Leyden (1464). A sibyl is depicted, as well as an older man with a flowing full beard as a counterpart - probably a representation of a prophet. Both figures originally adorned the portal of the New Chancellery in Strasbourg and looked at each other from two windows. For the first time in Specklin's Collectaneen , the couple was described as Bärbel and Jakob in 1587 and gained a certain fame.

Receipt

The busts have an eventful history of preservation. They were brought to the Strasbourg city library when the old Strasbourg city hall was demolished after the French Revolution. Only plaster casts of these half-body figures exist today, which must have been made before 1870, because the Strasbourg city library was destroyed by Prussian artillery during the Franco-Prussian War . The busts were thought to be lost. As it turned out later, the heads of the two busts were preserved in the original:

• In 1915 the prophet's head was rediscovered in the collection of the Hanau History Association . Until then, the badly battered head had been taken for the representation of an ancient satyr . Presumably a soldier from Hanau had brought him with him after 1870, knowing that the Lichtenberg rule was connected to the Hanau-Lichtenberg county . The association returned the valuable piece to the Strasbourg museum.
• 20 years later the head of the Sibyl was rediscovered in the Palatinate and bought by the Städel Art Institute in Frankfurt am Main .

The originals are now in the Musée de l'Œuvre Notre-Dame in Strasbourg (Jakob) and in the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt (Bärbel). In a joint exhibition by both museums about Niclaus Gerhaert, both heads were exhibited together again for the first time in 2011/2012.

literature

• Gisela Probst: The Memoria of the Lords of Lichtenberg in Neuweiler (Alsace). Adelphus carpets, high grave of Ludwig V († 1471), holy grave (1478), glass paintings. Berlin 2015 ISBN 978-3-87157-241-8 .
• Henri Helmut Aemig: Lichtenberg - the castle and the county. Chronological overview, information on things to know and see. Strasbourg 1993, ISBN 2-903850-08-9 , esp. Pp. 20-24.
• Fritz Eyer: The territory of the Lords of Lichtenberg 1202-1480. Investigations into the property, the rule and the politics of domestic power of a noble family from the Upper Rhine . In: Writings of the Erwin von Steinbach Foundation . 2nd edition, unchanged in the text, by an introduction extended reprint of the Strasbourg edition, Rhenus-Verlag, 1938. Volume 10 . Pfaehler, Bad Neustadt an der Saale 1985, ISBN 3-922923-31-3 , p. 33-37 (268 pages).
• Georges Livet, Francis Rapp (ed.): Histoire de Strasbourg des origines à nos jours. 2. Strasbourg des grandes invasions au 16e siècle. Strasbourg, 1981, ISBN 2-7165-0041-X , pp. 581-583.
• Fried Lübbecke : Hanau. City and county. Cologne 1951 p. 61f.
• Peter Karl Weber: Lichtenberg. Alsatian domination on the way to becoming a territorial state. Guderjahn, Heidelberg 1993.

Web links

Commons : Jakob von Lichtenberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Geography online: Jakob von Lichtenberg and Bärbel von Ottenheim

Individual evidence

1. ^ Probst, p. 245, note 1108; Jakob Wimpfeling in the catalog of the Strasbourg bishops (first edition 1508, p. 43v, digitized UB Munich ).
2. ↑ Eyer 1938 p. 35; Aemig 1993 p. 21.
3. ^ Probst, p. 191.
4. ↑ No. 2148.
5. ↑ For the history of conservation see Fried Lübbecke: Hanau. City and county. Cologne 1951 p. 61f.
6. ↑ Sculpture (Musées de Strasbourg) ( Memento of the original from July 18, 2011 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. 
7. ↑ Liebieghaus sculpture collection
8. ↑ Niclaus Gerhaert. The sculptor of the Middle Ages on the Liebieghaus website.