Joseph Carl Leopold Friedrich Ludwig (Ortenburg)

Reichsgraf Joseph Carl (* 1780 - † 1831), Reichsgraf von Ortenburg and Count von Ortenburg-Tambach.

Count Joseph Carl Leopold Friedrich Ludwig von Ortenburg (born August 30, 1780 in Ortenburg ; † March 28, 1831 at Tambach Castle near Weitramsdorf ) was the eldest son of Count Karl Albrecht von Ortenburg and Countess Christiane Luise, countess of the wild and the Rhine in Gaugrehweiler. He came from the Lower Bavarian noble house of Ortenburg . After the death of his father, his mother took over the government of the imperial county of Ortenburg as a guardian until Joseph Carl took over the rule himself in 1801 when he came of age. His reign was marked by the exchange of his rule of Ortenburg with the new rule of Tambach with Bavaria and the associated confusion as a result of the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation .

Live and act

youth

After the early death of his father Karl Albrechts in 1787, Joseph Carl was nominally the new Count of Ortenburg at the age of seven. Due to his youth, his mother Christine Luise, born Wild and Rhine Countess, took over the guardianship.

In the meantime the young count studied at the University of Leipzig and later also at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen . On October 6, 1799, Joseph Carl married Countess Karoline zu Erbach-Erbach in Erbach in the Odenwald.

In 1801 he was finally declared of legal age by Emperor Franz II , with which he was allowed to take over the reign of the direct imperial county of Ortenburg.

Regency

On December 13, 1801, the traditional ceremony of hereditary homage by the subjects took place at Alt-Ortenburg Castle. Joseph Carl officially took over the government from his mother. He was quick to discover, however, that his mother had led an extremely lavish lifestyle and left him with a worrying mountain of debt in excess of 200,000 guilders .

To save costs, he limited his mother's expenses and referred her to nearby Passau , where he only allowed her a modest household and an extremely low annuity. Despite these austerity measures, however, he was unable to prevent the further increase in debt. Despite annual income of 36,500 guilders from the count's businesses, the count's forest, the tax and trade income of the imperial county and income from the Bavarian possessions, the mountain of debt rose to approx. 254,000 guilders by 1804. The rigorous austerity course that Joseph Carl then embarked on reduced the debt only slightly. So he finally made the decision to sell his county.

Sale of the county

Joseph Carl was thus the third of his family who wanted to sell the imperial county of Ortenburg. Already his ancestor Georg I von Ortenburg thought about selling the county in 1408 after years of conflict with several Bavarian captives. Count Joachim was already one step further . After decades of conflict with the Duchy of Bavaria, in the 1590s he had several negotiations with the Bavarian dukes about a sale or exchange of the county. However, this failed due to the stubbornness of the then Duke Wilhelm V.

Now, in 1803, Joseph Carl approached the imperial vice-chancellor Gundakar von Colloredo-Mansfeld with renewed sales plans, which quickly led to negotiations. In the middle of the year the young count also approached the Electorate of Bavaria. They were also interested in acquiring Ortenburg, on the one hand in order to finally achieve a purely territorial state in Lower Bavaria and on the other for fear that the Austrian negotiations would be successful and that a loyal follower of the Habsburgs would represent the imperial interests in the middle of the electorate. In November, Alfred I. zu Windisch-Graetz , another prospective buyer, entered into the negotiations, who offered his rule Stiekna in Bohemia as an exchange object for Ortenburg.

The negotiations with the Electorate of Bavaria were extremely positive, however, so that a contract was agreed on February 28, 1804, in which the sale of Ortenburg and all of the count's possessions in Bavaria was decided. In return, the count received the promise to receive a Frankish rule, to be named, and the elector undertook to take over the debts of Joseph Carl.

For Joseph Carl this meant a good sign, the time to save was over for the time being. In addition, he could now imagine a much more positive future. Due to the success of the negotiations, he and his family left the imperial county of Ortenburg for good and temporarily moved to his in-laws in Erbach, who made the Eulbach hunting lodge available to them for the duration of the remaining negotiations .

In March 1805, Elector Maximilian IV presented the former Tambach monastery office on the border to the Duchy of Saxony-Coburg-Gotha , which came from secularized goods, as an object of exchange. This was extremely important for Joseph Carl, as it brought him closer to his political allies from the Wetterauischen counts' college . In further negotiations the future possessions and income were determined. On August 14, 1805, the exchange contract between Elector Max IV Joseph of Bavaria and Count Joseph Carl was signed. Joseph Carl thus sold the imperial county of Ortenburg and the Bavarian possessions to the newly created imperial county of Ortenburg-Tambach .

On December 26, 1805, the new Electorate of Würzburg was created through the Peace of Pressburg , which gave the new county a new powerful neighbor on the south-western border.

On January 20, 1806, Joseph Carl officially took over the reign as the new sovereign of Tambach. Thereupon he and his family soon left Erbach for his new county. The people paid homage when the family moved into Tambach Castle on February 17, 1806. Joseph Carl now looked forward to a secure future for himself and his family. However, the situation in the Holy Roman Empire of German Nations quickly changed to the disadvantage of Joseph Carl.

Downgrading to professional rank

On August 6, Francis II laid down the German imperial crown under pressure from Napoléon Bonaparte , and the Holy Roman Empire thus effectively ceased to exist. The imperial county of Ortenburg-Tambach lost its right to exist. This was preceded by the establishment of the Rhine Confederation under Napoleon's leadership with 16 other states from the empire, including the Electorate of Bavaria. They signed the Rhine Confederation Act , which was not only a defensive or offensive alliance , but also authorized the signatories to incorporate smaller areas of rule. Joseph Carl then reported to the Bavarian Minister Maximilian von Montgelas on August 21, 1806 with the fear of losing its sovereignty if the Electorate of Würzburg joined the Rhine Confederation. However, Montgelas was able to put an end to Joseph Carl's fears for the time being. In September now Ferdinand III. joined the Rhine Confederation and became the new Grand Duke of Würzburg . On September 25th, the fear of Joseph Carl was confirmed, but his county was not mediated by Würzburg, but by the Electorate of Bavaria. Ortenburg-Tambach was therefore downgraded to a class rule , which represented an immense loss of influence for Joseph Carl. In December Bavaria ceded the civil status to Würzburg.

In 1810 there was a state treaty between Würzburg and the Kingdom of Bavaria regarding common borders. In it the division of Tambach along the Rodach was decided. Joseph Carl tried to prevent the division of his rule and protested vehemently, but in vain. With the disintegration of the Rhine Confederation in 1814 and the resolution of the Congress of Vienna , large parts of Würzburg fell back to Bavaria, which reunited Joseph Carl's possessions. At the Congress of Vienna, Joseph Carl tried, like many other aristocrats, to regain their lost power or sovereignty, but with little success. Among other things, he wrote the memorandum of oppression of sovereignty to point out his grievances.

In the meantime Joseph Carl had joined the Bavarian army and in 1811 held the rank of colonel of the cavalry à la suite . In the following years he remained in the service of the Bavarian Army, in which he was last appointed major general of the cavalry à la suite in 1826 .

In 1816 he joined the association of the imperial estates suppressed by the Rhine Confederation and hoped to find a way there with like-minded people to regain his lost sovereign rights.

In 1818 a new constitution was introduced in Bavaria by Maximilian I. This also provided for compensation for the landlords, which gave Joseph Carl the hereditary seat in the Chamber of Imperial Councils . Due to the new political opportunities that this opened up for him, Joseph Carl initially took an active part in parliamentary negotiations. In 1819, for example, he introduced a bill for the execution of sentences, and he also gave a speech in the plenary session on issues relating to the class. In the following years he tried several times to be compensated for his confiscated sovereign rights by the Kingdom of Bavaria. After these efforts had all failed, he announced in a letter of protest to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior in 1821 that he was disappointed with his withdrawal from politics, with the official justification due to the financial situation of his house.

A year later, in 1822, he received news from his former subjects from Ortenburg in Lower Bavaria that the vacant family palace Alt-Ortenburg was to be sold or demolished by the Kingdom of Bavaria. The people of Ortenburg asked him to help maintain the landmark of the place. Since Joseph Carl had considered the history of his house, he had the desire to buy the castle again. So he reported to the government of the Lower Danube District on April 17, 1822 with his intention to buy. The negotiations dragged on for several years, because the kingdom wanted to comply with the request for the required compensation for the loss of sovereign rights over Tambach. The purchase was finally completed on April 30, 1827, and the castle was returned to the Count's family as part of the financial compensation with an estimated value of 10,000 guilders. The castle remained in the possession of the counts until 1971, when it was sold to a local hotelier.

Joseph Carl died at the age of 51; his successor as the noble Count of Ortenburg-Tambach was his eldest son Franz Carl Rudolf.

progeny

Count Joseph Carl was married to Countess Karoline zu Erbach-Erbach. The following children were born from this marriage:

• Karoline Luise Charlotte (born August 12, 1800 in Regensburg ; January 5, 1801 ibid)
• Franz Carl Rudolf (August 4, 1801 in Ortenburg; † February 23, 1876 in Tambach), Count zu Ortenburg , ∞ Julie von Woellwarth-Lauternburg (* December 20, 1819 in Stuttgart ; † January 13, 1883 in Tambach)
• Friedrich Carl Ludwig (born January 14, 1805 in Erbach; † November 10, 1860 in Mühlhausen) ∞ Ernestine Johanne Bentz (born December 9, 1807 in Mühlhausen; † January 23, 1891 in Coburg)
• Hermann (born January 4, 1807 in Tambach; † December 25, 1858 ibid)
• Christiane Charlotte Wilhelmine, (* August 18, 1802 in Ortenburg; † October 1, 1854) ∞ Prince Albrecht zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg (* May 12, 1777 in Berleburg; † November 11, 1851 ibid)

literature

• Markus Lorenz: The transition of the county of Ortenburg to Bavaria in 1805. In: Ortenburg - Reichsgrafschaft and 450 years of Reformation (1563-2013) , Ortenburg 2013 (pp. 270–280).
• Markus Lorenz: 200 years of Ortenburg in Bavaria , lecture on February 17, 2006, ( digitized pages 1 to 6 ; PDF; 929 kB) ( digitized pages 7 to 12 (PDF; 879 kB)).
• Markus Lorenz: Ortenburger Geschichtsblätter - The transition of the county of Ortenburg to Bavaria in 1805 , issue 2, Griesbach im Rottal 1997.
• Markus Lorenz: The transition of the county of Ortenburg to Bavaria (1805). Tradition and upheaval in an aristocratic rule , diploma thesis in the degree program Political and Social Sciences, University of the Bundeswehr Munich, Neubiberg 1996.
• Friedrich Hausmann : The Counts of Ortenburg and their male ancestors, the Spanheimers in Carinthia, Saxony and Bavaria, as well as their subsidiary lines , published in: Ostbairische Grenzmarken - Passauer Jahrbuch für Geschichte, Kunst und Volkskunde, No. 36, Passau 1994 (p. 9 -62).
• Heinz Pellender: Tambach - from Langheim monastery office to Ortenburg'schen Grafschaft - history of the Count's House of Ortenburg, the monastery office and Tambach Castle , 2nd edition, Coburg 1990.
• Karl Eduard Vehse : History of the German courts since the Reformation - The no German courts. Part ninth. The mediatized. , Volume 43, Hamburg 1858, pp. 204-209 ( digitized in the Google book search).
• Friedrich August Schmidt et al .: New Nekrolog der Deutschen , ninth year, first part, Ilmenau 1833 ( digitized in the Google book search).

Web links

Commons : Josef Carl von Ortenburg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Joseph Carl in the CERL Thesaurus
• Family tree from the Counts of Ortenburg to Joseph Carl
• Family tree of the Counts of Ortenburg from Joseph Carl

predecessor	Office	successor
Karl Albrecht	Count of Ortenburg 1787–1805
	Count of Ortenburg-Tambach 1805–1831	Franz Carl Rudolf