Maria (Jever)

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Painting by Miss Maria 1572
Miss Maria monument near the castle of Jever

Maria von Jever , known in Jeverland as Fräulein Maria or Froichen , (* September 5, 1500 in Jever ; † February 20, 1575 there ) was the last regent of the Jever reign from the Wiemkens chief dynasty .

Life

Family and childhood

Maria von Jever was born as the third child of chief Edo Wiemken the Younger . Her mother Heilwig, Edo's second wife and sister of Count Johann V. von Oldenburg , died when Maria was one year old, probably when her youngest sister was born. Her father died in 1511. His brother-in-law, the Count of Oldenburg, took over the guardianship of the children and appointed five village heads appointed by Edo as regents . Above all, these pursued their own interests, embezzled the orphans' possessions and destroyed Edo's efforts to create a unified and centralized territorial state . Repairing the damage caused by the Antoni flood that hit the country shortly before Edo's death was neglected for years.

The upbringing of Maria and her two sisters was based on the typical female role of the time, namely to be married according to economically and politically favorable criteria. The only son Christoph enjoyed a knightly training at the court of Lüneburg in order to be able to do justice to his future duties as chief of the Jeverland . As a teenager he took part in the Saxon feud against Edzard I of East Friesland alongside Count Johann and Hero Omken . During this war, Jever was burned down by East Frisian troops in 1514. The castle Roffhausen conquered by Edzard was conquered by Christoph together with the dukes Erich and Heinrich von Braunschweig on May 26, 1517.

Jever under the East Frisian government

When Junker Christoph, the only male heir, suddenly died on June 21, 1517 at the age of 18, the Frauleins Maria and her sisters Anna (1499–1536) and Dorothea (1501 – before 1527) found themselves threatened from different sides: First of all appeared Balthasar of Esens before Jever. As the nephew of Edo's first wife Frouwa, the daughter of Sibet Attena , he saw himself as their legitimate heir. But he left without having achieved anything when he was not allowed into the castle.

As the brother's foster father, Heinrich von Braunschweig tried to gain the girls' trust in order to deport them to a monastery and to be able to keep Jever for himself, but was prevented from doing so by Johann von Oldenburg.

Count Edzard I of East Friesland, who had already been in a long-term feud with Edo Wiemken because of his alleged claims to the Jeverland, demonstrated his military strength at the Jeverland East Frisian border. He submitted a forged loan letter to document his allegedly from 1454 claim of the Cirksena on Jever. He obtained the consent of the regents and guardians of the girls to enforce protection over the Jeverland through a marriage contract. Within seven years, one of the young women was to marry one of the count's sons. The rule of Jever should represent the dowry . Until then, Jever should be ruled by East Frisia.

In the years that followed, the Fräuleins took little part in the government, but their names are on the documents and they also made sure that the dykes were finally restored ten years after the great storm surge. Apparently there was a good relationship with Count Edzard and his sons. He defended Jever several times against further attacks by Balthasar von Esens. But the wedding was delayed further and further. Count Edzard's eldest son Ulrich, who should have married the heir, Anna, was incapacitated because of mental illness. The younger sons of the Count, Enno and Johann von Ostfriesland , also did not keep their promise of marriage, but instead occupied the castle in Jever in 1527 and received homage . The sisters - Dorothea had since died - were now exposed to severe humiliation. Mediated by the deposed Danish King Christian II , a close relative of the Oldenburg counts, Enno, actually Maria's fiancé, concluded the Utrecht settlement with Anton von Oldenburg about the division of the Jeverland in 1529 and married Anna von Oldenburg to seal this treaty . The fräuleins were to be compensated with a dowry for giving up Jever. However, Enno's councilor Fulk von Innhausen and Knyphausen thwarted a befitting marriage with Ulrich von Regenstein .

Struggle for Jever's independence 1531–1540

Help came from an unexpected source in this situation. Drost Boing von Oldersum , appointed by the East Frisian counts, sided with Maria and finally drove the occupiers out of Jever in 1531. He is still considered Mary's fiancé and lover to this day. However, he did not want to marry until he would be cleansed of the reputation of the traitor. The Cirksena still regarded Jever as their property. Enno, seeing his claim to Jever dwindling, tried to persuade her to marry his brother Johann, but Maria declared that she would only marry of her own choice.

In this situation, Maria first appeared on her own responsibility when she concluded a friendship treaty with her cousin and previous opponent Balthasar von Esens in 1531 to protect each other from East Frisia. Not only through her strong will and the growing longing for independence , as it is said in some sources, but also through unusual decisions, Maria succeeded in the following years - initially together with her older sister, who ceded her claims as hereditary maid to Maria in 1532 to defend the paternal inheritance and gradually take the affairs of government into their own hands. So she turned to Emperor Charles V for help in 1531 . As Duke of Brabant and Count of Holland, he then took possession of Jeverland and gave it to Maria as a fief . With this, Maria had the imperial immediacy of the Jever rule, which had been in effect since 1417 , ended. However, the proceedings against the counts of East Friesland, which were brought forward at the same time, dragged on for a long time, as the defendant counts did not appear before the arbitral tribunal of Maria of Hungary , the governor of the Habsburg Netherlands . The negotiations in the Netherlands were partly led by Boing and partly by Maria herself. Anna, meanwhile, led the government in Jever.

He also invaded Jever several times with mercenaries. In 1532 the patch of Jever burned down. Maria immediately began with the expansion and fortification of the castle and place and asked the governor for military help. Although there was no support, Boing von Oldersum managed to drive the opponents out of the country with only recruited mercenaries.

On January 26, 1534, the claims of the East Frisians were finally rejected and Anna and Maria's rights to rule were confirmed. But Count Enno did not give up and appealed to the Reich Chamber of Commerce . In order to settle the disputes, the governor Maria of Hungary tried in 1536 to persuade Maria von Jever, who after the death of her sister was now the sole ruler, to get married to Johann von Ostfriesland. However, Maria stubbornly demanded her right to choose the spouse herself and demanded that Boing's honor be restored. She refused to obey the governor and to repay her debts and instead allied herself with other opponents of East Frisia.

Only on June 26, 1540, the tough guerrilla war ended with the Treaty of Oestringfelde . Maria had prevailed on almost all points. Enno declared Boing to be an honorable man, so that nothing stood in the way of a wedding. However, the contract contained the clause that Mary's child - not yet conceived - was to be married to one of the children of the East Frisian count couple.

But before the signing of the contract, Balthasar von Esens invaded Jeverland on June 15, contrary to all mutual obligations. In the defense, Maria was supported by Enno von Ostfriesland. The feud ended with the death of all leaders: Count Enno died on September 24th, Balthasar von Esens on October 16th. Most recently Boing von Oldersum also fell shortly before the planned wedding on November 12, 1540 during a siege near Wittmund . Like the successors, Enno's widow Countess Anna and Balthasar's sister Onna von Rietberg, Maria was also not interested in continuing the fight.

Peace years after 1540

In the years after 1540, Maria devoted herself to expanding the country's rule. Maria von Jever did a lot for her homeland. It had already raised Jever to town in 1536 - the town charter was not codified until 1572. Now she had the town expanded as planned into a residence, fortified and the castle converted into Jever Castle . In 1556 Maria von Jever had the choir of the town church in Jever, which had been destroyed several times, converted into a burial chapel, in which from 1561–1564 the Renaissance tomb of Edo Wiemkens the Elder, which has been preserved to this day . J. was established.

Maria strongly promoted the construction of the dyke. It did not limit itself to repairing the still unremoved damage caused by the Antoni flood, but expanded its territory through planned new dykes and had sluices built for drainage. The newly acquired land, a total of twelve Groden , remained domination property and was leased to the farmers of the neighboring villages. In Sande , not far from Mariensiel , which you later built , she had the Marienhausen summer house built.

She promoted the administration of justice. Trade flourished under their rule. Maria also had coins minted as a source of income for years even after she had already lost the right to do so in 1566 under the Imperial Coin Order .

reformation

The Fräuleins initially resisted the Reformation , which had also spread to Jeverland since the 1520s. When Heinrich Kremer (or Cramer) distributed the Lord's Supper in both forms in 1524 and married shortly afterwards, Maria and her sisters forbade any innovation. But Edzard von Ostfriesland prevented the threatened expulsion, but instead sent other Lutheran preachers into the country, including Remmer von Seediek († 1557), who ordered the dissolution of the vicarages as early as 1526 and had numerous valuable equipment from the churches confiscated for the benefit of the state treasury.

When Maria took over the government herself in 1531, she was initially critical of the Lutheran faith, because on the one hand it was promoted by East Frisia, on the other hand the emperor and his governor, on whose protection she was dependent, were strictly Catholic. However, in 1532 they ordered the Reformation to be carried out under the influence of Remmer von Seediek, who had in the meantime risen to become their rentmaster , chancellor and chronicler. There were hardly any arguments. At the end of the 1540s, the first Jever church order was issued. The preachers were not appointed by a bishop, but acted like officials in the service of the sovereign. Instead of the spiritual judge sent by the Diocese of Bremen , Martin Michaelis was given supervision over the preachers and the Christian way of life of all subjects. Since 1547 the legal scholar and former Bremen city secretary was in the service of Miss Maria as councilor and bailiff. In 1548 all churches were Lutheran . In the conflict between the interests of her own subjects and the pressure of the liege lord, Maria recommended that the preachers accept the Augsburg interim , but let them decide for themselves. At their request, the preachers wrote personal statements in which all 21 preachers gave detailed reasons why they rejected the interim. Maria did not commit herself to any denomination. It was not until the church ordinance of 1562 that preachers and subjects were uniformly obliged to follow the Lutheran faith. Anabaptists were not persecuted, but unlike in East Frisia, they found little following.

Unlike the Counts of East Friesland and Oldenburg, Maria left the ecclesiastical property largely untouched for the maintenance of churches and preachers. The secularization of the only monastery in the country, the Dominican convent Oestringfelde , was denied by Maria to her adviser Remmer von Seediek. Only in her will in 1573 did she let the monastery move in for the establishment of the Mariengymnasium . Before that, she had trained suitable young men at her own expense at the Johanneum in Lüneburg with Lukas Lossius . Now Jever also received its own Latin school . The basic inventory of the library of the new grammar school came from the Remmer von Seedieks estate.

Law

As early as the time of the East Frisian occupation, the formulation of a new land law was begun, which was based on Roman law and replaced the Frisian land law, as it is recorded in the Asegabuch . In addition, Maria issued two church ordinances (1540s and 1562), a town charter for Jever and a dike ordinance.

Maria continued the reconstruction of the Jeverland from the rule of individual village chiefs to an early modern territorial state . Against the former regents and the chiefs who had approached the East Frisians, she raised serious accusations that made it possible for her to bring the chiefs under her rule. Anyone who did not willingly accepted their previous property as a fief was expropriated and driven out, as was Garlich Duren and his son von Tengshausen in 1532 and Tido von Innhausen and Knyphausen in 1547 . In her civil service she replaced the dying old chief families with foreign nobles.

During Mary's reign, several women and men were burned as magicians .

Succession and death

After Boing von Oldersum died shortly before the apparently already scheduled wedding, Maria had not married. Countess Anna von Ostfriesland therefore applied to the Reichstag in Augsburg in 1548 that Maria should appoint an heir to fulfill the Treaty of Östringfelde , whom one of her children should marry. Maria then revoked the contract in 1552.

An attack by the East Frisians on Jeverland in 1567 reinforced their aversion again. In her will, drawn up in the event of a serious illness in 1572/73, she bequeathed Jeverland to the Counts of Oldenburg on the condition that they did not get involved with East Frisia. In the following years she tried to marry off her heir Johann VII von Oldenburg with Walpurgis , the heiress of the Harlingerland . However, both entered into other marriages after their deaths.

When she died in 1575, there was fear of another coup by the East Frisian counts. Her death was therefore initially kept secret. Her room was locked and meals were put outside the door. A servant is said to have secretly ate the plate empty so that no one could suspect until the rightful inheritance established in the will had arrived. The East Frisians vehemently challenged the will, but were unsuccessful.

Exactly where Mary is buried is not known, but she was probably buried with her parents and siblings under the tomb erected for her father .

Place of women Maria von Jever

On February 20, 2016, the Women's Council of Lower Saxony opened the FrauenORT Maria von Jever in Jever .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Petri: Miss Maria von Jever. Studies on personality and domination practice. Pp. 24-28.
  2. Petri: Miss Maria von Jever. Studies on personality and domination practice. P. 31.
  3. Schmidt: Maria, "Erbtocher und Fräulein" zu Jever , p. 441.
  4. Schmidt: Maria, "Erbtochen und Fräulein" zu Jever , p. 439.
  5. Petri: Miss Maria von Jever. Studies on personality and domination practice. P. 46.
  6. ^ Maria von Jever: Abandonment of imperial immediacy and withdrawal of the right to coin (PDF file; 157 kB) .
  7. ^ Friedrich W. Riemann: History of the Jeverland , 1896, 2nd volume, p. 56.
  8. Anneliese Sprengler-Ruppenthal: The right to broadcast in Jever ( Memento from August 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (pdf accessed on July 30, 2014) (excerpt from: Collected essays: on the church ordinances of the 16th century , Mohr Siebeck, 2004) .
  9. Rolf Schäfer (Ed.): The Jeverschen Pastor Confessions 1548 on the occasion of the Augsburg Interim . Mohr Siebeck Verlag , Tübingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-16-151910-9 , p. 15th f .
  10. Petri: Miss Maria von Jever. Studies on personality and domination practice. Pp. 90-93.
  11. Handbook of the historical book inventory. Niedersachsen AG , p. 35.
  12. Petri: Miss Maria von Jever. Studies on personality and domination practice. P. 130 ff.
  13. woman places Lower Saxony , accessed on 18 March 2016th