Johann (Kleve)

Johann von Kleve (* around 1292/93; † November 19, 1368 ) was Count of Kleve from 1347 to 1368 .

family

Johann was the second son from the second marriage of Count Dietrich VI./VIII. von Kleve with Margareta von Neu-Kyburg . Since he had initially embarked on a spiritual career, he married Mechtild von Geldern , the sister of Duke Rainald III, late, in 1348 . of money with which he did not father any offspring. However, Johann was the father of several illegitimate children.

Life

As a younger son, Johann initially had no prospect of a successor in the county of Kleve. By 1310 at the latest he had embarked on a spiritual career and was canon in Cologne , Mainz , Trier , Utrecht and Xanten ; from 1320 to 1347 he was dean at Cologne Cathedral . In 1318 he met with his brother Count Dietrich IX. von Kleve an inheritance through which Johann also became lord of Linn . Around 1333 there was a dispute between the two Klever brothers about the succession in the county, because Count Dietrich had three daughters but no son. From 1338 Dietrich apparently accepted the future successor to his brother. In the last years of his life, Johann was able to exert a great influence on Count Dietrich's politics.

Johann took over the rule in Kleve after the sonless death of his brother Dietrich on July 7th 1347 and renounced his spiritual dignity. Through a marriage connection with Mechtild von Geldern , Johann was involved in the Geldrischen fratricidal war between Duke Rainald III. drawn in by Geldern and his brother Eduard , with the Clever Count supporting Rainald and Hekeren. This commitment brought Kleve the profit of the city of Emmerich , but plunged the county into financial difficulties. Count Johann is considered to be an important modernizer of the Klever territory, who in particular expanded the count's chancellery into an efficient authority (register management since around 1360).

Succession

With Johann's death in 1368, the old Grafenhaus died out. Several applicants competed for the successor in Kleve . Finally, Johann's great-nephew Adolf von der Mark , the brother of Count Engelbert III, was able to prevail. from the marrow ; the competitors Dietrich von Horn and Otto von Arkel were unsuccessful. The House of Mark ruled Kleve until 1609.

literature

• Manuel Hagemann: Johann von Kleve († 1368). The acquisition of the Grafschaft Kleve 1347 , Cologne 2007 (Libelli Rhenani 21), ISBN 978-3-939160-10-6
• Manuel Hagemann: The Klever inheritance 1368 - preparation and stabilization of the takeover of rule by the House of Mark , in: RhVjbll . 83, 2019. pp. 80-109, ISBN 978-3-7749-4222-6
• Woldemar Harleß :  Johann (Count of Kleve) . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1881, pp. 206-208.
• Wilhelm Janssen :  Johann. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , p. 491 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Dieter Kastner: The territorial policy of the Counts of Kleve , Düsseldorf 1972 (= publications of the historical association for the Lower Rhine, especially the old Archdiocese of Cologne 11).
• Wolf-Rüdiger Schleidgen: Regest of the collection Kleve-Mark. Documents in the North Rhine-Westphalian main state archive in Düsseldorf (publications of the state archives of North Rhine-Westphalia. Series C: Sources and Research 13), Siegburg 1983
• Brigitte Sternberg: The oldest Klevian registers as a linguistic historical source , in: scripts, writing landscapes and tendencies towards standardization. Contributions to the Second International Document Language Colloquium from 16. – 18. September 1998 in Trier (Trier Historical Research 47), Trier 2001, p. 632f.
• Brigitte Sternberg: Mechtild von Geldern, Countess von Kleve . In: Van der Masen tot op den Rijn: A manual on the history of medieval vernacular literature in the Rhine and Maas area. Pp. 262f., ISBN 3-503-07958-0

Web links

• Dissertation project "Studies on the chancellery and registry at the Klevischen Hof under Johann von Kleve (1347-1368)
• Biography in the portal Rheinische Geschichte

predecessor	Office	successor
Dietrich VII./IX.	Count of Kleve 1347-1368	Adolf I.