Konrad repeated

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Konrad Widerholt, wax embossing, second half of the 17th century

Konrad Widerholt , also Wiederhold or Wiederholt (born April 20, 1598 (?) In Ziegenhain near Treysa; † June 13, 1667 in Kirchheim unter Teck ) was a German commander in the Thirty Years War , best known as the defender of the Hohentwiel fortress .

biography

Konrad Widerholt was in the service of the Hanseatic League in Bremen and Hamburg as a rider and musketeer from 1615 . In 1617 he married the daughter of the commandant of Helgoland , Anna Hermengard Burckhardt from Delmenhorst. In the same year he went into the service of Venice . There he met Duke Magnus , who had embarked on a military career as Duke Johann Friedrich's younger brother . This brought him into service in Württemberg . From the drill master he rose to captain-lieutenant in 1622 and to captain-major in 1627. In August 1633 he excelled in taking Schramberg and was appointed commandant of Hornberg . In April and May 1634 he stood with the Swedish field marshal Gustaf Horn (unsuccessfully) in front of Überlingen . In June 1634 he became deputy commandant of the Hohentwiel fortress under Joachim von Rochau . After the battle of Nördlingen he was appointed commander.

Monument on the Hohentwiel Fortress

Shortly after taking up his post as commander of Hohentwiel in 1634, Widerholt had the surrounding castles in front of Austria, including Mägdeberg and Hohenkrähen, burned down so as not to offer any hiding place to possible enemies of Hohentwiel. He was also involved in the water siege of Villingen in 1634 under Georg Friedrich von Holtz zu Niederholz. Konrad Widerholt successfully defended the Hohentwiel between 1634 and 1648 and defied five sieges. Since Eberhard III. fled from Württemberg to Strasbourg and the Duchy of Württemberg fell to the emperor, the Hohentwiel remained the last Württemberg bastion between 1634 and 1638. In November 1637 Konrad Widerholt entered the service of Duke Bernhard von Weimar and therefore refused to hand over the Hohentwiel Fortress to the Emperor, as laid down in the Peace of Prague of 1635. Instead, Duke Eberhard III stepped. the Hohenasperg fortress . After Duke Bernhard's death, Widerholt entered the service of the French King Louis XIII in 1640 . and was placed under the command of the Breisach Fortress , General Johann Ludwig von Erlach . His bitterest opponent was Archduchess Claudia of Austria-Tyrol, who led the guardianship of her underage son in Innsbruck until 1646. In contrast, Emperor Ferdinand III supported. and Elector Maximilian I of Bavaria did not try to conquer Hohentwiel with the same determination.

His design work includes the construction of a horizontal windmill on the Hohentwiel. Windmills of this kind, independent of the wind direction, were published in Venice as early as 1616, and it is there that Widerholt may have learned about the principle. The horizontal windmill he built on the Hohentwiel was possibly the first wind turbine on German soil.

In Upper Swabia, Konrad Widerholt pursued a guerrilla tactic and a strategy of terror and intimidation. He raised contributions and other war contributions from around 90 gentlemen. Therefore it was feared in all of Upper Swabia and beyond. He stayed at the fortress until the end of the war and let his soldiers undertake raids across the whole of southwest Germany in order to weaken his opponents. He extorted regular payments of "contributions" from many rulers (see Naval Warfare on Lake Constance 1632–1648 ).

With the Peace of Westphalia between Münster and Osnabrück in 1648, the Hohentwiel fortress was returned to Württemberg , but the actual handover to Eberhard III. von Württemberg was delayed until July 1650.

For his services Konrad Widerholt received the fiefdom of the Neidlingen manor and was raised to the rank of war council and chief bailiff in nearby Kirchheim. Konrad Widerholt died childless and left a considerable fortune, from which u. a. a foundation for students that existed until 1928 was financed. However, Widerholt's fortune did not only come from his income as Obervogt, but mainly from the rich booty from his campaigns when he was in command of the Hohentwiel.

A strictly religious Protestant zeal is ascribed to Konrad Widerholt, which is said to have been the drive for his perseverance. On the fortress he also had a church built “from strange Christian godly Eiffer for the sole sanctifying teaching of the holy gospel of the true unaltered Augsburg Confession”. For him and for all other leading participants in the Thirty Years' War (and countless others) this did not contradict his warfare. In Württemberg, Widerholt's deeds were soon transfigured. As an example, an excerpt from Christian Gottlob Barth's story of Württemberg, retold for the citizen and farmer , Calw, 1843, p. 212 applies:

Epitaph for Wiederhold and his wife in the Martinskirche in Kirchheim unter Teck
Grave at the Martinskirche in Kirchheim unter Teck

“He made bold excursions and forays into the neighborhood, where he either liberated oppressed places or protected the threatened crop fields, or made rich booty, which he had brought up to his castle. His table was always open to the sick, wounded and poor. When he did not have a pastor, the pious hero would himself go about the beds of the sick to bring them the consolation of the divine word, and read a sermon to his warriors himself in the church. Amid the horrors of the siege, he built a new church on the castle. In his financial need, he sent Duke Eberhard, through a soldier disguised as a beggar, a hollowed out thick knot stick filled with gold. To get his new church an organ, he raided and conquered the city of Überlingen on Lake Constance. He is offered a large sum of money. But all he wants is an organ, and he gets it. The Überlingers will have had more than one. His war discipline was strict; he tolerated no debauchery among his warriors, no oppression of the peaceful citizen, no swearing and swearing. "

epitaph

In the choir of Martinskirche in Kirchheim unter Teck there is an ornate epitaph for Widerholt and his wife Anna Hermengeard née. Burckhart († 1666) received. The epitaph was created in 1698 to supplement the original Widerhold tomb on the outer wall of the church. The grave slab was discovered by chance at the end of 2008 during construction work on the outside of Martinskirche in Kirchheim unter Teck. He was apparently buried there with his wife.

Konrad Widerholt in fiction

In 1903 Albrecht Thoma published the novel "Konrad Widerholt - Kommandant vom Hohentwiel" as No. 15 in Julius Lohmeyer's fatherland youth library for boys and girls .

In 1936 Josef Weinberg published "Der Kommandant vom Hohen-Twiel - A novel based on historical motifs".

In 1941 a story (second edition in 1943) by Ernst Baur with the title "Konrad Widerhold" was published by W.Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart. She breathes the spirit of her time, one finds passages like: "... war draws its laws with a hard pen; one must be able to sacrifice the small in order to preserve the great."

In 1960 Ludwig Finckh published "Konrad Widerholt - A Man in Hegau" in the Silberburg publishing house in Stuttgart. One reviewer calls the "booklet" "a welcome addition to our local literature".

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sigfrid von Weiher: Widerholts Windturbine auf dem Hohentwiel, in: Badische heimat, issue 3/1953, p. 221 ff.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Kramer, 2015 (see list of references), p. 81
  3. ↑ Helmut Billig (see list of literature), p. 25
  4. ^ Ernst Baur, Konrad Widerhold , Stuttgart, 1943 (2nd edition), pp. 17/18
  5. ↑ Herbert Berner in Hegau - magazine for history, folklore and natural history of the area between the Rhine, Danube and Lake Constance , 1960/61, p. 355

literature

  • Ottmar Friedrich Heinrich Schönhuth, Conrad Widerhold, the loyal commandant of Hohentwiel at the age of 30. War depicted according to its life and essence , Schwäbisch Hall and Leipzig, 1844.
  • Walther Ernst Heydendorff: Front Austria in the Thirty Years War. The loss of the foreland and the attempts to regain it . In: Communications from the Austrian State Archives 12/1959, pp. 74–142, and 13/1960, pp. 107–194. [There you can find some information about the military situation of the Hohentwiel Fortress during the Thirty Years War]
  • Walther Killy and Rudolf Vierhaus (eds.), Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie, Volume 10 KG Saur, Munich 1999, p. 480
  • Helmut Billig, Konrad Widerholt (Festschrift on the 300th anniversary of death), Kircheim / Teck, 1967.
  • Christian Gottlob Barth: History of Württemberg, retold for the citizen and farmer . Calw 1843. Facsimile reprint with an afterword by Hansmartin Decker-Hauff, Stuttgart, 1986.
  • Casimir Bumiller: Hohentwiel. The story of a castle between everyday fortress life and great politics . Stadler, Konstanz, 1990, ISBN 3-7977-0208-6
  • Jens Florian Ebert: Konrad Widerholt and der Hohentwiel, Tuttlinger Heimatblätter NF 78 (2015), pp. 17–85.
  • Eugen Schneider :  Wiederhold, Konrad . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 42, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1897, pp. 386-388.
  • Eberhard Fritz: Konrad Widerholt, commandant of the Hohentwiel Fortress (1634–1650). A war entrepreneur in the European power structure . In: Journal for Württemberg State History 76 (2017). Pp. 217-268. Baden-Württemberg online archive
  • Wolfgang Kramer, "Konrad Widerholt, for the 400th birthday of the Hohentwiel commandant". In: Singener Jahrbuch 1997/98 , pp. 93-100 (ISSN 0933-1107 / ISBN 3-9805081-7-X )
  • Joachim Brüser, "The city and its hero. The city of Kirchheim and how it deals with Konrad Widerholt", in a series of publications by the Kirchheim unter Teck city archive , Volume 37, 2014, pp. 143–165.
  • Wolfgang Kramer, "Konrad Widerholt - Approaching a Hero Figure". In: Latest research results on the history of the mountain & the fortress Hohentwiel - Scientific colloquium on the occasion of the cultural focus on the 1100-year first mention of the Hohentwiel from 17.-18. October 2015 in Singen , published by the Singen City Archives, pp. 76–83, ( ISBN 978-3-933356-87-1 )

Web links

Commons : Konrad Widerholt  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Repeatedly, Konrad
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Widerhold, Konrad; Repeat, Konrad
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German commander in the Thirty Years War
DATE OF BIRTH around April 20, 1598
PLACE OF BIRTH Goat grove
DATE OF DEATH June 13, 1667
Place of death Kirchheim unter Teck