Kunigunde of Orlamünde

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Epitaph of the Kunigunde

Countess Kunigunde von Orlamünde (* around 1303; † 1382 in Großgründlach ) was a German nun, founder of the Himmelthron monastery and its first abbess. According to legend, it is the historical model of the Hohenzollern White Woman .

Life

She came as the daughter of Ulrich I from the house of the Landgraves of Leuchtenberg and married Count Otto VI from Orlamünd in 1321 .

According to legend, she fell in love with Albrecht the Beautiful , son of the Nuremberg burgrave Friedrich IV . He let it be known that he would marry her if four eyes weren't in the way. This meant his parents who refused such a connection. Kunigunde, however, misunderstood the message and applied it to her two children, a girl of two and a boy of three. She stabbed the children in the head with a needle and killed them. Thereupon Albrecht broke away from her. Kunigunde went on a pilgrimage to Rome and obtained the forgiveness of her sins from the Pope, with the condition that he found a monastery and enter there. In penance, she slipped on her knees from the Plassenburg into the valley of Berneck and founded the Himmelkron monastery . In a variant of the legend, she was sentenced to life in prison. The two children and their murderess were buried in the monastery.

Julius von Minutoli finds this story in the chroniclers Kaspar Brusch , Enoch Widmann , Martin Hofmann, Lazarus Carl von Wölkern and Gotthilf Friedemann Löber told essentially in agreement. A similar description of the child murder is given in the rhymed monastery chronicle of the Melkendorfer pastor Johann Löer from 1559.

According to the Minutolis investigations, the legend has no basis, mainly because Kunigunde and Otto died childless. They had adopted a relative, Podika von Schaumberg, as a child. The hereditary fraternization agreed between the Nuremberg burgrave Johann and Otto von Orlamünde in 1337 provided for the following: Otto had already received a loan of 4000 pounds Heller to the Plassenburg. If he died without a male heir, the Plassenburg would go to Nuremberg against payment of a further 3,000 pounds sterling to the widow. If he left sons, she would keep the Plassenburg against repayment of the loan and deposit of 3000 pounds of Heller. If he left daughters, they would be protected and equipped by the Nuremberg burgrave.

When Otto died in 1340, according to this inheritance regulation, 3,000 pounds of Heller was paid to the widow, the foster daughter Podika von Schaumberg was given 1,500 groschen in 1341 when she married the knight Poske Schweritz.

Kunigunde bought Heller Castle and the village of Gründlach from Johann and Albrecht the Beautiful for £ 5,000 and built the Himmelthron Monastery there . Konrad Groß, from a wealthy Nuremberg council family, was also involved in founding the monastery . In the purchase contract of 1342 she is addressed as "our dear aunt , Mrs. Kunigunde", a form of address that is rather unusual among child murderers. The remaining income from the inheritance was given to the Himmelthron Monastery, which she later entered and which she died as its abbess. The eternal mass of the soul , which she ordered in 1343 for 5,000 pounds sterling, makes a penitent child murderer very unlikely, since she only ordered masses for her parents, her husband and herself.

Modern reception

The band Silverlane set the legend to music in the form of four connected pieces of music, The White Lady Part I to IV , on their album Above The Others in 2010 .

Sources of the legend

literature

  • Karl Heinrich Friedrich Chlodwig von Reitzenstein: Regesta of the counts of Orlamuende from Babenberger and Ascanischen tribe. With family tables, seal images, monuments and coats of arms . Bayreuth 1871
  • Julius von Minutoli: The White Woman. Historical examination of the legend and observation of this phenomenon from 1486 to the most recent times . Duncker, Berlin 1850

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In fact, Otto III did. , the grandfather of Kunigunde's husband, founded Himmelkron in Kunigunde's time a long time ago.
  2. ↑ Grasse: Book of Legends of the Prussian State Vol. 1, 1868/71, p. 15
  3. ^ Johann Heinrich von Falkenstein: Codex Diplomaticus . Neustadt an der Aisch & Schwabach 1788, Vol. 4, pp. 138, 140.
  4. ^ Johann Heinrich von Falkenstein: Codex Diplomaticus . Neustadt an der Aisch & Schwabach 1788, vol. 4, p. 140.
personal data
SURNAME Kunigunde of Orlamünde
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German nun, founder of the Himmelthron monastery and its first abbess
DATE OF BIRTH around 1303
DATE OF DEATH 1382
Place of death Großgründlach