Johann Adolph Kielmann from Kielmannsegg

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Johann Adolph Kielmann von Kielmannsegg (painting by Jürgen Ovens )

Johann Adolph (I.) Kielmann von Kielmannsegg (also Kielmannseck ; born October 15, 1612 in Itzehoe ; † July 8, 1676 in Copenhagen ) was a lawyer and court chancellor of the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf . He played an important role in the founding of the University of Kiel and founded the Kielmansegg family, based in Holstein and Hanover .

Life

Johann Adolph Kielmann was the son of the cloister master of the Itzehoe Monastery, Johann Kielmann (* before 1580; † 1629) and his second wife Anna Runge.

After attending the local school, Kielmann visited the Katharineum in Lübeck from 1626 , where he lived in the house of the rector Johann Kirchmann . As early as 1627 he enrolled at the University of Rostock , studied from 1629 in Leiden and after the death of his father in Wittenberg and Leipzig and received his doctorate in Jena in 1633. juris. After traveling through Holland , France and Germany, he settled in Itzehoe as a lawyer . After the knighthood of Schleswig-Holstein had briefly transferred the office of landscape syndic to him, he was appointed councilor to Duke Friedrich III in 1636 . Appointed to the Gottorf court in Schleswig .

Rise under Friedrich III.

In 1640 he represented the Duchy of Holstein at the Reichstag in Regensburg . There he made the acquaintance of Heinrich von Kielman von Kielmanseck, who was in the imperial service. Both decided to unite their families. On May 10, 1641, Emperor Ferdinand III. Johann Adolph Kielmann in the hereditary baron class and gave the two families a joint coat of arms, in 1652 Kielmann was raised to the personal count status and received the title of Kielmannsegg . For Holstein he negotiated successfully at the Reichstag on the County of Holstein-Pinneberg , which had become vacant after the death of the last Count of Schauenburg and Holstein in 1640 and now three-fifths of the Pinneberg rule was owned by the Danish and two-fifths went to the Gottorf family . He also succeeded in obtaining confirmation of the Primogeniture introduced by Duke Johann Adolf and provisional permission to found a university. After his return he was appointed privy councilor in 1641 and chancellor in 1644, making him the most important official of the Gottorfer Hof. Further offices and additional income followed.

Unlike his predecessors in office, who had pursued a policy of neutrality during the Thirty Years' War , Kielmann pushed for rapprochement with Sweden . A first success was the marriage of Hedwig Eleonora of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf to the Swedish King Karl X. Gustav in 1654 . During the Second Northern War in 1657, Kielmann negotiated a treaty of alliance with Sweden, which aimed at the full sovereignty of the duchy and the abolition of the joint government with Denmark. The Peace of Roskilde of February 16, 1658, however, brought Gottorf only a partial success, because with regard to the Treaty of Ripen , the joint government was not repealed. But on August 7, 1658, Sweden attacked Denmark again and this time Denmark remained victorious despite the one and a half year siege of Copenhagen. In the Peace of Copenhagen in 1660, Kielmann's previous successes in terms of the sovereignty of the Gottorf family were nullified.

Altar donated by Kielmann in 1664 in Schleswig Cathedral , the altarpiece of which was painted by Jürgen Ovens.

Power position under Christian Albrecht

In the meantime Duke Friedrich had died and his widow Maria Elisabeth von Sachsen tried together with the landed gentry to force Kielmann out of office. However, Friedrich's son and successor, Duke Christian Albrecht, confirmed Kielmann's position and appointed him to the chamber council and in 1662 to the government and chamber president, so that Kielmann now held power in his own hands.

As early as 1661, Kielmann signed a secret treaty with Sweden, which guaranteed the small Duchy of Gottorf full sovereignty. But hardly any other state was ready to confirm Gottorf's independence because they did not want to damage relations with Denmark. Because even if the feudal relationship between the Duchy of Schleswig and Denmark was abolished, the dependence on the joint government of noble estates continued. In addition, disputes over the county of Oldenburg , whose Count Anton Günther died in 1667 without heirs, made an agreement with Denmark necessary, because the count had appointed the king and the duke equally as heirs. Kielmann and his son Friedrich Christian managed to sign a marriage contract between Christian Albrecht and Friederike Amalie , the daughter of King Friedrich III. from Denmark to negotiate. At the same time the Glückstadt settlement was concluded, which normalized the relationship between Denmark and Gottorf. In the meantime Denmark had an absolutist constitution with the royal law of 1665 , by which the nobility were disempowered, the imperial council was dissolved and all fiefs were withdrawn.

University formation and personal enrichment

Kielmannsegg made particular merits in founding the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel , for which the emperor had already granted the privilege at his insistence in 1652. On this occasion, Duke Friedrich then obtained his elevation to the personal count status. It was not until 1665 that Christian Albrecht established the university. Kielmann represented the emperor at the inauguration ceremony and on the occasion of this event he was painted by Jürgen Ovens like a life-size prince. His two speeches given at the inauguration were printed in 1666 in the torquato historia inaugurationis .

Kielmann's increasing influence and wealth was also reflected in the fact that, in addition to the court offices already mentioned, over the years he was appointed bailiff in five offices, canon of Schleswig and provost of the St. John's monastery in Schleswig . These appointments were mostly made in return for credits given to the Duke, who was always lacking in money. Kielmann amassed a considerable fortune from the income from his offices - in 30 years it has grown by more than twenty times. In 1650 Johann Adolph Kielmann sold the Barmstedt office to Christian zu Rantzau ( County of Rantzau ), who gave him the position of provost in Hamburg.

Altar of the church in Bruges with the family coat of arms donated by Hans Heinrich Kielman von Kielmansegg

In 1662 Kielmann was accepted into the Schleswig-Holstein knighthood together with his sons. He acquired the four noble estates Satrupholm , Oppendorf, Kronshagen and Bundesbüll. In Hamburg he bought a palace at Speersort , which he later secretly sold to the Duke - through a straw man, since noblemen were forbidden from owning land in Hamburg . The portal of this palace, which was destroyed in World War II , is now in front of the Museum of Hamburg History .

Kielmann also took part in government affairs for his sons and provided them with offices and goods. His eldest son, Hans Heinrich Kielman von Kielmansegg, became landlord of Quarnbek and bailiff of Kiel and Bordesholm. Friedrich Christian received the offices of Trittau , Reinbek and Mohrkirch and became his father's vice-president.

Confrontation with Denmark escalates, arrest and death

With the accession of Christian V of Denmark , hostilities between Denmark and Sweden broke out again. As early as 1670, the new Danish king, bypassing the Gottorf claims to Oldenburg and Delmenhorst, signed a contract with Duke Joachim Ernst of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Plön , one of the gentlemen who were separated, who were related to the House of Oldenburg and therefore also entitled to inheritance had no political influence and suffered from constant financial difficulties. The late Anton Günther von Oldenburg was married to his niece Sophie Katharina von Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg. Joachim Ernst accepted financial compensation for the renunciation of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst and Christian V. declared himself the sole heir. Kielmann then traveled to Stockholm with Duke Christian Albrecht in 1671 and renewed the former Swedish-Gottorf alliance against Denmark. In Schleswig, close to the Danish sphere of influence, he no longer felt safe, which is why he withdrew to his Hamburg home. There he negotiated in 1672/73 with the representative of the Danish government Ulrik Fredrik Gyldenløve about compensation for the Gottorf renunciation of Oldenburg. But Denmark did not pay the agreed amount, for which Kielmann blamed his son Friedrich Christian, who had taken over his position at court. A new treaty with Sweden in 1774 stipulated that Gottorf could not negotiate Oldenburg with Denmark without Swedish support.

Although Kielmann continued to try to find a balance with Denmark, Sweden had meanwhile declared war on Brandenburg and Denmark feared that Sweden might stab him in the back via Gottorf. Duke Christian Albrecht, Kielmann and his sons were lured to Rendsburg with the offer to negotiate Kielmann's proposal to give the Duke the office of Tondern as compensation for Oldenburg . There, King Christian V instead compelled the Duke to enter the Rendsburg Recess on July 10, 1675, in which the Gottorf small state had to renounce its sovereignty and all foreign alliances. The Duke went to Hamburg to protest against the imposed treaty from abroad. Kielmann, on the other hand, who had to undertake not to leave the country, was captured by the Danes with his three sons and taken to Copenhagen. In a letter from a Danish nobility to his good friend in Germany ... it was alleged, among other things, that Kielmann had promoted the disagreement between the royal and ducal houses. Although Kielmann was able to buy relief and suspension of the trial by paying 100,000 Reichstalers, he died after four months in prison - rumor has it that he was poisoned. His sons were released the following year, but left Schleswig-Holstein because Christian Albrecht wanted to initiate a lawsuit against them and posthumously against Kielmann himself for embezzlement.

Kielmann's epitaph in the Schleswig Cathedral

Kielmann and his wife are buried in the family crypt in Schleswig Cathedral . In addition to a magnificent epitaph, he donated a painting by Ovens and several chandeliers to the cathedral. One of his descendants sold the crypt to Seneca Inggersen in 1784 , who, however, left the sarcophagi of Kielmann and his wife in the crypt.

Marriage and children

Kielman was married to Margarete von Hatten (* August 25, 1617, † December 12, 1656). There were eight children from this marriage.

For his sons and their descendants in 1670, for eternity in the landscape of Norderdithmarschen, he invested the sum of 30,000 Danish kroner as an indissoluble legacy. In the middle of the 19th century there was still a lawsuit over the distribution of the interest up to the Royal Higher Appeal Court.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry of Johann Adolph Kielmann's matriculation in the Rostock matriculation portal
  2. ^ Lohmeier: Kielman (since 1652 :) von Kielmanseck, Johann Adolph , p. 251
  3. From ~ 22,000 Reichstalers to almost 536,000 (Lohmeier: Kielman (since 1652 :) von Kielmanseck, Johann Adolph , p. 254).
  4. Kielmannsegg's Palace
  5. Portal
  6. Anonymous: Letter from a Danish nobility to his good friend in Germany ... (digitized version )
  7. Gertrud Silberhorn: Seneca Ingersen Freiherr von Geltingen , p. 51 (pdf accessed on September 5, 2013; 2.7 MB)
  8. Schleswig-Holstein ads 18 (1854), pp. 83-88 ( digitized version )