Lands Lauenburg and Bütow
The Lande Lauenburg and Bütow are historical territory in the east of Pomerania . It included the cities of Lauenburg and Bütow with the surrounding area .
Belonging to Pomeranian and Pomeranian (until 1309/1329)
The area that later became the Lauenburg and Bütow lands belonged to the Pomorans settlement area in the early Middle Ages . Precise knowledge of the political structure is only available from the 12th century onwards.
The area of the later Land Lauenburg, then called Land Belgard after the Belgard Castle on the Leba , belonged to the Duchy of Pommerellen of the Samborid dynasty since the 12th century, but at least since the 13th century .
The area of the later Land of Bütow belonged to the Duchy of Schlawe-Stolp , in which the Ratiboriden , a side line of the Greifenhaus , ruled. With the extinction of the Ratiboriden in 1227 their land, including the area of the state of Bütow, fell to the Samborids .
After the Samborid dynasty died out in 1294, the Pomeranian succession dispute ensued . In the course of this, the area of the Lauenburg and Bütow regions came under the rule of Margrave Waldemar von Brandenburg, who was supported by the local noble family of the Swenzonen . This ceded his claims on most of Pomerania by the Treaty of Soldin (1309) to the Teutonic Order ; this also included the area of the state of Lauenburg.
Margrave Waldemar initially retained the Schlawe-Stolp area, including Bütow, but in 1317 ceded it to Duke Wartislaw IV of Pomerania-Wolgast. This transferred the land of Bütow in 1321 to its chancellor Henning Behr . His sons then sold it to the Teutonic Order in 1329. The land of Tuchen, west of Bütow, was still exempt from transfer in 1321. The order initially acquired this area in 1385 as a pledge. It later formed part of the state of Bütow.
Part of the Teutonic Order State (1309/1329 to 1466)
Thus, the Teutonic Order acquired the area of the Lauenburg and Bütow lands in the 14th century. It formed the western edge of the Teutonic Order State . In 1341 the order elevated Lauenburg and 1346 Bütow to cities under Kulm law . At the end of the 14th century he put on order castles in Lauenburg and Bütow. The order had a tight administration, which made it unpopular with the landed nobility and the cities.
The Lauenburg estates joined the Prussian Confederation in 1440 , an anti-order alliance of the Prussian landed nobility and the cities, which, together with the Kingdom of Poland, led the Thirteen Years War (1454–1466) against the order. The lands of Lauenburg and Bütow also belonged to the extensive territorial assignments that the order had to accept in the Second Peace of Thorner , 1466. The order ceded the area to the Polish King Casimir IV .
Property of the Pomeranian dukes (1466 to 1637)
King Casimir IV of Poland passed the Lauenburg and Bütow lands on to Duke Erich II of Pomerania in 1466 as a reward for his support against the order. Duke Erich II joined the Second Peace of Thorner in 1467.
In this way, Erich II succeeded in extending his rule territorially, but the Lauenburg and Bütow regions received a special position within the Duchy of Pomerania. Because he had initially only received the land as a trustee. Later, at least from 1490, the Pomeranian dukes held the lands as pledges.
It was not until 1526 that the dukes of Pomerania, George I and Barnim IX succeeded. to transform the legal title of a mere pledge into the stronger legal title of a hereditary fief of the Crown of Poland. The feudal letter provided that the fief should revert to the Kingdom of Poland in the event that the Pomeranian ducal house, the Greifenhaus , died out. The dukes were exempt from paying homage and other feudal obligations. With every new king, however, they had to obtain confirmation of the fiefdom .
After the Treptower Landtag of 1534, at which the Pomeranian estates joined the Protestant denomination , the Lauenburg and Bütow regions also became predominantly Protestant.
From around the middle of the 16th century, the Pomeranian dukes carried the title of "Lord of Lauenburg and Bütow". On the epitaph of Duke Philip I in the St. Petri Church in Wolgast from 1560, the list of his titles follows at the end: "et Domini in Lovvenborch et Butovv". With the death of Duke Bogislaw XIV in 1637, the Greifenhaus died out in the male line.
Immediate possession of the Crown of Poland (1637 to 1657)
The lands of Lauenburg and Bütow were drawn in as a settled fiefdom in 1637 by the King of Poland. They were united with the Royal Prussia in 1641 and formed two Starosteien in the Pomeranian Voivodeship . Reinhold von Krakow for Lauenburg and Jakob von Weiher for Bütow were appointed Starosten .
The Catholic Counter-Reformation , which was raging in Poland at the time, did not spare the Lauenburg and Bütow regions either. Those churches, in which the church patronage lay with the sovereign, were forcibly re-Catholicized without regard to the belief of the population. This affected 7 out of 20 churches in the state of Lauenburg and 8 out of 10 churches in the state of Bütow. Only those churches in which a nobleman was the church patron were exempt from recatholicization. Most of the inhabitants remained in the Protestant faith.
Fiefdom of Brandenburg-Prussia (1657 to 1771)
In the 1657 Treaty of Bromberg , Poland gave the Lands Lauenburg and Bütow to the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg, since 1640 Duke in Pomerania, as a hereditary fief. The terms of the feudal letter corresponded to those under which the earlier dukes of Pomerania had the lands as a fief. In addition, the property of the Catholic Church was laid down, i.e. the recatholization of church buildings that has just been carried out. The title of "Lord of Lauenburg and Bütow" was part of the title of the Brandenburg-Prussian rulers until 1817.
The transfer of ownership took place in 1658. As a fiefdom of the crown of Poland, the Lauenburg and Bütow regions had a special position in Brandenburg-Prussia , as they did in the Duchy of Pomerania. They were administered by a special chief captain. The first chief captain was Lorenz Christoph von Somnitz , who was also Chancellor of Western Pomerania , who had come to Brandenburg-Prussia in 1648. In 1696, Georg Albrecht von Jatzkow († 1732) followed as governor of Brandenburg in Lauenburg and Bütow.
One of the newly established authorities was the Lauenburg Consistory as the judicial and administrative authority for the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
Integration into the Prussian state (from 1771)
King Friedrich II of Prussia fully integrated the Lauenburg and Bütow regions into the Prussian state. In 1771 he abolished the position of chief captain and placed the area under the provincial administration in Stettin , the so-called Pomeranian War and Domain Chamber . As part of the First Partition of Poland in 1772, the King of Prussia received neighboring Polish Prussia . In the Warsaw Treaty of 1773 the previous fiefdom became a sovereign part of Prussia. With regard to judicial matters, the Lauenburg and Bütow regions were initially incorporated into the West Prussian province formed from the newly acquired territories in 1773 . In terms of administration, they still belonged to Pomerania and formed the Lauenburg-Bütow circle here since 1777 . The Lauenburg consistory was abolished in 1773.
For some time the Lauenburg-Bütow circle retained a special position in some relationships. Until 1803/1804, the district was not subordinate to the higher court in the Pomeranian provincial capital Stettin, but to that in Marienburg in West Prussia. In 1815 the district became part of the Köslin administrative district of the Pomerania province .
On January 1, 1846 Lauenburg-Bütowsche district was divided and it emerged the Lauenburg and Bütow county .
Left
literature
- Ellinor von Puttkamer : The Lauenburg and Bütow lands - international border area. In: Baltic Studies . Volume 62 NF, 1976, ISSN 0067-3099 , pp. 7-22.
- Roderich Schmidt : The Lauenburg and Bütow regions with their changing affiliation to the Teutonic Order, to Pomerania and Poland and to Brandenburg-Prussia . In: Dietmar Willoweit, Hans Lemberg (Hrsg.): Empires and territories in East Central Europe - historical relationships and political legitimacy . Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-486-57839-1 , pp. 93-106 ( digitized version ).
- Reinhold Cramer: History of the Lands Lauenburg and Bütow . EJ Dalkowski, Königsberg 1858.
- Volume 1: The Story. ( Digitized version )
- Volume 2: Certificates. ( Digitized version )
Footnotes
- ^ Karl Spannagel : Somnitz, Lorenz Christoph von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 34, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1892, pp. 617-619.
- ^ Julius Theodor Bagmihl : Pommersches Wappenbuch . Volume 5, Stettin 1855, p. 17.