Kunigunde (granddaughter of Ludwig the Stammler)

Kunigunde (* 888/895; † after 923) was a daughter of Ermentrud and a granddaughter of King Ludwig the Stammler . Her father is not recorded, Hlawitschka suspects him to be in Dux Reginar I. (Reginare).

To Kunigunde's life little is known, their meaning is mainly from one of the 11th century coming Tabula Genealogica , the Carolingian through which they as a grandmother of Empress Cunegonde of Luxembourg has been designated, which in turn the origin of the Empress of the Carolingians occupied.

Kunigunde's first marriage in 907/909 was the later Count Palatine Wigerich , who had died in 918/919. After his death she was married to Count Richwin / Richizo (of Verdun ), who was murdered in 923. Your third husband or husband, father of Siegfried and Adalberus, remains in the dark. According to the Vita Iohannis Gorziensis, Adalbero had royal (Carolingian) blood from his father and mother. With his assumed year of birth around 905 (he was elected Bishop of Metz in 929 at the age of 24 as a relatively young man) he was certainly not a legitimate child from Kunigunde's first marriage to Wigerich; but since Wigerich's ancestry is still in the dark, he is likely to leave as Siegfried's father at all. Since Kunigunde's second marriage to Richwin / Richizo, Comes (de Verdun) ended childless as a result of his murder in 923, Siegfried (963 Comes (from Luxembourg)) was born after 923. This is probably also the case with Wampach, No. 156 (footnote 3) given list of the Voll brothers Gozelons (Friedrich, Giselbert and Sigebert) must be correct. Adalbero and Siegfried are not named because they are half brothers from an undocumented "relationship" of Kunigundes. This also corresponds to the Vita Iohannis Gorziensis, which refers to several brothers (i.e. at least two) brothers "ex matre": only Adalbero and Siegfried come into question chronologically.

Kunigunde had seven children: due to the ignorance of the year of birth, instead of a number in front of the name is noted I. (first marriage with Wigerich), II. (Second marriage with Richwin childless) III. (before, after or during the two Wigerich marriages)

(III) Adalbero , * around 905, † 962, 929–962 Bishop of Met z

(I) Liutgarde; ∞ I Adalbert, Graf (probably Graf von Metz ), X 944 ( Matfriede ); ∞ II Eberhard IV. Graf im Nordgau , † 972/973 ( Etichonen )

(I) Friedrich I. , † 978, 942 Dux Lotharingiae , 962/966 Dux Lotharensium , 959/978 Duke of Upper Lorraine ; ∞ 954 Beatrix † after 978, daughter of Hugo the Great "Dux Francorum" ( Robertiner )

(I) Siegfried * 919, † 998, 963 Comes (from Luxembourg)

(I) Giselbert, † probably before 965, 963 Count in the Ardennes, who inherited his half-brother Count Siegfried

(I) Sigebert, attested in 942, died after July 14, 947

(I) Gozelon † 942/43, Graf

Some assume that Siegfried is identical to Sigebert, and that Sigebert's only appearance is a copyist's error. Cawley disagrees. Sigebert also names Wampach among Gozelon's full brothers.

In the research there is a discussion about who the fathers of Adalbero and Siegfried are. There is a note about Friedrich, Giselbert and Sigebert that they were Gozelon's brothers, but also evidence that Gozelin had several brothers through his mother ( frates plures ex matre ), whose father is not Wigerich. Of the known children of Kunigunde, as explained above, only Adalberon and Siegfried are eligible for this, whose maternal Carolingian descent (as with all of Kunigunde's children) is proven, but who (probably both) also have an unknown father of royal blood.

Since Kunigundes marriage with Richwin von Verdun is considered childless, on the other hand Siegfried's descent is beyond question due to the Tabula Genealogica , a third marriage of Kunigunde has already been suspected several times. The fact that both Kundigundes “third husband” or “husband” was also veiled, as well as the “husband” of her Carolingian mother Ermentrud, also seems to make an illegitimate “union” conceivable. It is obvious that geographically, chronologically and because of their royal Carolingian descent the reginaries are thought of as “missing links”. René Klein wrote a paper in 1998, with which he tried to prove that Kunigundes third "man" Giselbert II, the later (928) Duke of Lorraine , was. If he had entered into a marriage with Kunigunde, there would certainly be a contemporary reference. Although his brother Reginar II could also be considered for the same reasons, the son "Giselbert" of Wigerich and Kunigunde speaks a clear language. His thesis is highly controversial, especially among historians, who see Kunigunde as the daughter of Reginar I: Since Reginar I is Giselbert's father from his marriage to Alberada, Giselbert and Kunigunde would be half-siblings, which would rule out an official marriage, but not an extramarital relationship that might already be conceivable between her Carolingian mother Ermentrud and her presumed “husband” Reginar I. The Reginare as well as Ermentrud and Kunigunde descended from Emperor Ludwig I "the Pious", albeit from two different marriages.

Cawley clearly identifies Giselbert, 963 comte (en Ardennes, presumably died in 964 when he made his half-brother Siegfried his heir) as the son of Kunigunde and Wigerich. Through the chronology of the ancestors of Siegfried's mother, Cawley moves the period of birth of Siegfried to the years 930-940. The reason for this is that Cawley chose Siegfried's grandmother Ermentrud as the first child of the second marriage (around 875) of her father King Louis II of the West Franconia with Adelais, the daughter of Adalhard, comte Palatine (Angoulême). So Siegfried - after the assassination of Richwin in 923 - can neither come from him nor from Wigerich.

Literature / sources

• Erich Brandenburg : The descendants of Charlemagne . I. – XIV. Generation, Leipzig 1935. Reprint with corrections in 1998
• Heinz Renn : The first Luxembourg count house (963–1136) . Rhenish Archive, 39 (1941)
• Karl Ferdinand Werner : The descendants of Charlemagne up to around the year 1000 . In: Charlemagne , Volume IV: The afterlife . Edited by Wolfgang Braunfels and Percy Ernst Schramm , 1967
• René Klein: Who were Count Sigfrid's parents? A new hypothesis on the origin of the first Luxembourg count house. In: Luxembourg Society for Genealogy and Heraldry, Yearbook 1998 - Association Luxembourgeoise de Généalogie et d'Héraldique, Annuaire 1998 , pp. 9–27
• Detlev Schwennicke: European Family Tables , Volume I.2 (1999), Plate 202
• Eduard Hlawitschka : The ancestors of the high medieval German kings, emperors and their wives. An annotated table work . Volume I: 911–1137, 2 parts, 2006 ( MGH Aid 25, 1–2)
• Michael Margue:  Siegfried I .. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 346 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Armin Wolf : Ancestors of German kings and queens . In: Herold Yearbook , New Series, Volume 15, 2010
• Charles Cawley, Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, www.fmg.ac: LUXEMBOURG

Footnotes

1. ↑ Hlawitschka
2. ^ MGH Scriptores 2, 314: "Karolus rex Franchorum et patricius Romanorum. Primus imperator in Francia. Hludowicus rex cognomento pius, imperator. Karolus rex Franciae et Hispaniae. Hludowicus res Franciae. Irmindrud. Cynigund. Sigifridus comes. Cynigund imperatrix. "
3. ^ Henri-Camille Wampach , document and source book for the history of the old Luxembourg territories, Volume 1, Luxembourg 1935, No. 156
4. ↑ Hlawitschka, p. 203
5. ^ Friderici, Gisilberti, Sigeberti fratrum predicti Gozlini (Wampach, No. 156)
6. ↑ Vita locust Gorziensis, caput 110, MGH Scriptores 4, 368
7. ↑ so F. Geldner, M. Parisse, R. Le Jan, Chr.Settipani , see Wolf, p. 115