Königsegg (noble family)

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Family coat of arms of the Counts of Koenigsegg ( Zurich coat of arms roll )

Königsegg (also Königseck ) is the name of an old Swabian noble family that belonged to the high nobility in its direct imperial lines Rothenfels and Aulendorf and also formed an East Prussian line with the Teutonic Order .

history

origin

Originally the family was called Fronhofen after the castle Fronhofen (today part of the municipality Fronreute in the district of Ravensburg ) and appears for the first time in 1171 with the Guelph ministerial Mengoz de Fronhove . Members of the sex were ministerials of the Hohenstaufen and later of the Holy Roman Empire . The brothers Eberhard and Berthold von Fronhofen called themselves ministerialis regis as early as 1209 . A younger Eberhard ( "frater domini Bertholdi de Fronhoven" ) was then called from 1251 Eberhardus de Kunigsegge (after Königsegg Castle , now part of the community of Guggenhausen in the Ravensburg district).

Status surveys and dissemination

In 1347 Ulrich I was elected by the Habsburgs as the first bailiff in Upper Swabia from the House of Königsegg. With a few interruptions, the family held this office until the end of the Old Kingdom .

Johann Jacob von Königsegg bought in 1565 from his brother-in-law, Count Ulrich von Montfort , the immediate imperial county of Rothenfels in the Allgäu with the capital Immenstadt . On March 6, 1621, his sons Marquard and Georg received confirmation of the status of imperial baron after they had already received the predicate well-born in 1613 . Georg is the progenitor of the Rothenfels and Aulendorf lines . His sons Hugo , Rothenfelser Linie, and Johann Georg , Aulendorfer Linie, were raised to the rank of imperial count by Emperor Ferdinand II on July 29, 1629 .

Rothenfels line

Map with the county of Königsegg-Rothenfels

The residence of the Rothenfels rulership was moved around 1600 from Rothenfels Castle to the city palace in Immenstadt, which was built as an official building around 1550 and was expanded into a palace by Georg Freiherr zu Königsegg between 1595 and 1620. The Counts of Königsegg-Rothenfels then lived for generations mainly in Vienna , where they held important positions at the imperial court. Count Leopold Wilhelm von Königsegg-Rothenfels (1630–1694) played a key role in the defense of Vienna during the Turkish siege in 1683. His son Joseph Lothar von Königsegg-Rothenfels (1673–1751) commanded the imperial army in many campaigns as imperial field marshal and president of the Austrian court war council. His nephew Christian Moritz von Königsegg-Rothenfels was defeated by the Prussians in the Seven Years War in 1757 in the battle near Reichenberg . Christian Moritz's brother Maximilian Friedrich von Königsegg-Rothenfels was Archbishop and Elector of Cologne from 1761 and from 1762 until his death in 1784 also Prince-Bishop of Münster .

After the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss , Count Fidel Franz exchanged the county of Rothenfels and his remaining possessions in the Allgäu with Austria and received the rule of Boros- Sebiș in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1804 ; the Rothenfels line has not been extinguished; descendants of the family still live in Hungary to this day.

Aulendorf line

The family acquired the former Guelph, then Hohenstaufen property, Schloss Aulendorf in 1381. An Ulrich first called himself from Königsegg zu Aulendorf in 1386 . Hans von Königsegg (1440–1484) moved the family crypt here. Johann Georg expanded Aulendorf into his residence around 1620. The immediate imperial county, belonging to the Swabian Reichskreis , existed until its end through the Rhine Confederation Act in 1806, when it was added to the new Kingdom of Württemberg and the former ruling counts became the state lords of Württemberg . In 1829 they were given the title of exaltation . After the mediatization , Aulendorf was only temporarily inhabited, but was extensively modernized at the beginning of the 20th century. The descendants sold the castle in 1941, which passed to the state of Baden-Württemberg in 1987.

The place Königseggwald had been under the control of the Lords of Fronhofen since 1174 ; The Lords of Königsegg acquired it in 1311 and moved their seat from Königsegg Castle to Königseggwald in 1681 , where a new castle was built on the site of a previous medieval building from 1765–1770 under the advice of French architect Pierre Michel d'Ixnard . The descendants of the Counts of Königsegg-Aulendorf still live in the castle in Königseggwald and, as a result of inheritance, have recently also owned Halbturn Castle in Burgenland. There they run a renowned winery.

East Prussian Line

There were close ties to the Teutonic Order since 1268, so from 1351 various family members are known as Teutonic Knights and Commons , such as Eberhard von Königsegg 1378-1384 as Commander on the Mainau . The existence of a Prussian line began in a document in 1405, when Eberhard VI. from Königsegg to the Hatzenturm was already in the East Prussian order . Wilhelm Fabian von Königsegg , who came from this line, was raised to the Prussian baron status in 1694 . Descendants of the baronial line are still alive today.

Name bearer

The Königsegger Codex

In 1455 commissioned Junker Lutold III. von Königsegg instructed fencing master Hans Talhoffer to have a fencing book made for him. This Königsegger Codex (Hs. XIX 17.3) with over 100 panels depicting different ways of fighting is still in the Count's library in Königsegg-Aulendorf. In 2010 a facsimile volume and a commentary volume were published.

coat of arms

Blazon : The family coat of arms is awakened diagonally to the left in gold and red (roughened); on the crowned helmet is a bush of seven red ostrich feathers; the helmet covers are red and gold.

Municipal coat of arms

The gold-red coat of arms can be found today in some municipal coats of arms in Baden-Württemberg and, thanks to the Rothenfels line, also in the Bavarian administrative district of Swabia :

literature

Epitaph Fidel Anton v. Königsegg-Rothenfels (1750–1804)

Web links

Commons : Königsegg  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Orig. In the General-Landesarchiv Karlsruhe, printed in the Württemb. Document Book IV, 368
  2. ↑ Württemb. Document Book IV, 281
  3. ^ Bernhard Wucherer: Bernhard Wucherer author. Retrieved April 30, 2016 .
  4. ↑ http://geneall.net
  5. ↑ As of January 2011