Johann II (goat grove)

Tomb of Count Johann II von Ziegenhain in the monastery church of Haina

Johann II von Ziegenhain († February 14, 1450 ), second son of Count Gottfried VIII von Ziegenhain and his wife Agnes von Braunschweig, was the last ruling Count of Ziegenhain and Nidda . He probably owed his nickname “the strong one” to his corpulence; However, as a young man he is said to have had particular muscle strength. His younger brother Otto was Archbishop of Trier from 1419 until his death in 1430 .

Life

Johann initially pursued a church career. In 1393 and 1406 he was proclaimed canon in Trier and in 1403 as canon in Mainz ; It is also recorded that he studied in Vienna in 1394 and in Heidelberg in 1396. After the early death of his brother Engelbert III. († 1401) he followed this as Count of Ziegenhain and Nidda. Johann married Countess Elisabeth von Waldeck on January 5, 1417 , but the marriage remained childless.

Act

In the Hessian-Mainz War from 1401 to 1405, in which Ziegenhain was on the Mainz side, Johann was captured by Landgrave Hermann II in October 1401 and only released in January 1402, after he had vowed to the Landgrave that he was no longer hostile in this feud to stand against Hesse and also his brother Gottfried IX. to move to the same posture. In 1414 Johann and Gottfried von Ziegenhain were banished from the Reich because of their involvement in a violent feud with Siegfried von Ferkenhausen . In 1415 Johann and Gottfried took Lißberg Castle by force, on the grounds that it was a fief that had fallen back in 1396 with the death of Friedrich von Lißberg and that Johann von Rodenstein , a cousin of Friedrich, had illegally taken possession of it; three years later (1418) they sold half of the castle to Landgrave Ludwig von Hessen .

In 1420 Johann gave his allodial property in the counties Ziegenhain and Nidda to the Roman-German King Sigismund as a fief and in return, the later emperor with the county Nidda , castle and town of Nidda, the county Ziegenhain with the associated towns, villages and Lean castles and two tariffs to Treysa and Gemünden (Wohra) . The elevation to the imperial count status connected with the preservation of these imperial fiefs ended in principle the previous strong feudal dependence on the Abbey of Fulda as the supreme liege lord of the Counts of Ziegenhain and Nidda. At the same time, however, this weakening of the relationship with the Fulda Abbey also increased the appetite of the Landgraves of Hesse and the Archbishops of Mainz for the property of the Ziegenhain family, whose future was uncertain due to the lack of inherited offspring.

With the decisive victories of the Hessian Landgrave Ludwig I in the Mainz-Hessian War in 1427 over the Mainz general Gottfried von Leiningen in the battle on the Großenengliser Platte near Fritzlar (23 July) and over Leiningen and Archbishop Konrad III. von Dhaun near Fulda (August 10th) the landgraviate sealed its territorial supremacy in Upper and Lower Hesse. Ziegenhain could no longer lean on Kurmainz to maintain its own independence. Instead, on June 29, 1428, Johann concluded a protection treaty with Landgrave Ludwig, with which he practically became dependent on Hesse. With this the Landgrave came considerably closer to his goal of connecting Upper and Lower Hesse geographically by incorporating the County of Ziegenhain.

As early as 1434, the Fulda abbot Johann von Merlau enfeoffed the Hessian Landgrave Ludwig I with the Fulda part of the county of Nidda. On February 2, 1437, Johann II gave his two counties to the landgrave as fiefs . The abbots of Fulda and Hersfeld , as previous overlords, approved this contract and transferred their shares in the two counties of Johann as a fief to the landgrave in return for a cash settlement. (Ziegenhain and Nidda were partly allod property, partly imperial fiefdom, partly Fulda fiefdom and partly Hersfeld fiefdom.) However, the rule of the landgrave was to begin only after the death of Johann.

Johann II died on February 14, 1450. He was probably buried in the church of the Haina monastery.

Succession dispute

Despite the contractual agreements between Johann and Landgrave Ludwig, which had been confirmed and reinforced several times between 1437 and 1450, after Johann's death there was a long and bitter dispute between two applicants about his inheritance:

• Landgrave Ludwig I of Hesse declared the county to have fallen back as a Hessian fiefdom, now part of Hesse, and occupied the area militarily;
• The Hohenlohe family , however, asserted inheritance claims because a granddaughter of Count Gottfried VIII, Elisabeth von Hanau (her mother, Elisabeth von Ziegenhain , was married to Count Ulrich V. von Hanau ), was married to Albert I von Hohenlohe .

The brothers Albrecht (II.) And Kraft (V.) von Hohenlohe-Weikersheim, sons of Albrecht I, initially succeeded in getting from King Friedrich III. on May 14, 1450 to be enfeoffed with the Ziegenhain imperial fiefs and at the same time to be raised to hereditary imperial count. Ludwig von Hessen ignored the loan and occupied the county. The inheritance dispute lasted until 1495, led to military and legal disputes, and ended with the victory of Hesse, but only after Landgrave Wilhelm II had settled the Hohenlohe claims with the payment of 9,000 guilders. The Ziegenhain territory remained with the Landgraviate. Since then, “Graf zu Ziegenhain” has been part of the name in the Hesse family and is still used today. However, the Hohenloher family retained the coveted title of count, which they had only acquired through the enfeoffment of the Ziegenhain County, and continued to use the six-pointed Ziegenhain star in their coat of arms.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Friedrich Karl zu Hohenlohe-Waldenburg: Hohenlohe. Pictures from the history of house and country. 4th edition. Family association of the Princely House of Hohenlohe, Öhringen 1983. p. 15.

literature

• Martin Röhling, The History of the Counts of Nidda and the Counts of Ziegenhain, Niddaer Geschichtsblätter No. 9, Ed. Niddaer Heimatmuseum eV, Nidda 2005 ISBN 3-9803915-9-0 .
• Gerhard Köbler : Historical lexicon of the German countries. The German territories from the Middle Ages to the present. 7th, completely revised edition. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-54986-1 .
• Gerhard Taddey , "How the Hohenlohe Counts Were", in: Contributions to regional studies. Regular supplement to the state gazette for Baden-Württemberg. No. 5 (1976), pp. 1-9.