Maydell (noble family)

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Coat of arms of the Maydell family

Maydell the name is a German Baltic to the nobility belonging to sex, which for several centuries in Estonia was established and there was one of the notorious families. In documents and texts of the first centuries, the family name is occasionally given in the spelling Maydel or Maidel .

history

Presumably the family came to Estonia like some other knight families from northern Germany, when the regions of Harrien and Wierland in the north of the country belonged to the territory of the Danish king (1219–1227 and 1238–1346). It is probably named after its first verifiable fiefdom in Estonia, the Wilderness village of Maidla . The village is mentioned as Maydalae as early as 1241 , but was then owned by the Danish governor of Reval Dominus Saxo .

Which name the von Maydell originally had and which northern German region they once came from is unknown. It is documented that there was a von Wittorf (also Wittorp) family in Lüneburg and in the Duchy of Lauenburg / Holstein as early as the 13th century, whose coat of arms is identical to that which the Maydells initially wielded: three upright swimming fish in an inclined left stream. Related to these and originally a coat of arms were those of Thun, who gained influence and possession in Mecklenburg and the Principality of Rügen.

Taken from the corresponding volumes of the New Siebmacher: Extinct Mecklenburgischer Adel (J. Siebmachers's great coat of arms book, volume 6, section 10) for Wittorf 1328 u. Thun 1324, The nobility of the Russ. Baltic provinces, (J. Siebmachers's large book of arms, volume 3, section 11) for Maydell

It remains uncertain for the time being whether these families are of the same tribe as the Maydell. The spread of a family from northern Germany in the course of the Christianization of the Baltic Sea area under several names is not an isolated case. The assumption of a new name based on real estate in Estonia can also be found in the von Wrangel and von Uexkülls . Estonian historians have repeatedly endorsed the thesis that the Maydell were not immigrants, but a family that had resided in Estonia before Christianization and was enfeoffed by the Danish king.

The oldest documented mention of the family comes from the year 1363, when Hennekinus Maydel bought a house together with councilor Gerhardus Witte in Reval, today's Tallinn . The existence of other namesake, whose fathers have different first names, and further documents about property and house ownership in the late 14th century suggests that Henneke Maydel did not bear the name in the first generation. In the following period, the sex spread strongly in the west of Estonia and in neighboring Livonia . Later it was also represented in Courland for a while .

A branch of the family that had been based in Hanover and later in Mecklenburg since the second half of the 17th century died out in 1869.

The descendants of the Danish court squire Gertken Meidel founded a Scandinavian line in the 17th century, which still flourishes in Norway today as Slekten Meidell. This branch bore the coat of arms of the Barclay de Tolly partly because of a marriage and was temporarily not in direct contact with the Maydells in the Baltic States. At the beginning of the 20th century, however, the mutual recognition as kin, the adoption of a Meidell and the admission into the family association as Haus Liselund.

The von Maydell family belonged to the Estonian knighthood , with some branches of the family, however, to the Livonian or Kurland knighthood . On June 26, 1693, the Swedish King Charles XI. Georg Johann Maydell, who is in Swedish service, was given the title of baron for his military services . Associated with this was his acceptance into the Swedish knighthood. However, the branch of the family founded by the Swedish baron Georg Johann Maydell died out in 1814.

Coat of arms of the Swedish line

German university records from the 17th and 18th centuries keep members of the family as barons, for example Jakob Friedrich in Leipzig in 1671 and Georg Gustav in Halle in 1752.

As with other well-known families of the Baltic primal nobility, the Baltic provinces of Estonia, Livonia and Courland were officially recognized as a baron during the Russian period, respectively the use of the title, most recently for the entire family with the ukase of the Imperial Russian Senate on December 7, 1854.

As a result of the Hitler-Stalin Pact , the von Maydell residents of the Baltic States, like most Baltic Germans, had to leave their homeland in 1939 and were relocated to the area around Posen ( "Warthegau" ) occupied by German troops . Today the members of the von Maydell family mainly live in Germany, but some branches of the family also live in other countries such as Austria, South Africa and Canada.

coat of arms

On a blue background a silver oblique left-hand stream covered with three natural fish, accompanied by four at the top and three golden balls at the bottom. On the helmet with blue-gold and blue-silver covers a bulge with three silver ostrich feathers. The balls (bread according to another reading) and thus the color gold and the ostrich feathers are later ingredients. Older coats of arms show a pile of peacock feathers as a crest ornament. The colors of the helmet covers in older depictions are red, blue and gold, as well as red as the color of the fish (as is the case with the Norwegian Meidell). Until the early 19th century, the fish clearly swim upstream. Older coat of arms lexicons refer to the fish as salmon. The fact that the fish later appear turned to the left (heraldically looking to the right) corresponds to the rule for heraldic animals that was common in the late period of heraldry.

Maydell, Baltic coat of arms calendar, Kunstanstalt Tode, Riga 1902
Coats of arms in the knight's house of the Estonian knighthood on Toompea in Reval / Tallinn

people

literature

  • Paul Johansen : The Estonia List of the Liber Census Daniae. Copenhagen and Reval 1933
  • Carl Arvid von Klingspor : Baltic heraldic book. Stockholm 1882 link
  • Karl Baron von Maydell: The baronial family of Maydell. Helsingfors 1868, digitized
  • Bogdan Baron von Maydell: The Baron House of Maydell. 1. Continuation 1868–1894, Reval 1895
  • Eduard u. Kurt Baron von Maydell: The baronial family of Maydell. 2. Continuation 1895–1978, Tostedt and Bonn 1979
  • AT Gløersen: Slægten Meidell i Norge og Danmark med nærstaaende linier hvorunder særskilte meddelelser om slægterne Barclay de Tolly og de Rochlenge , Kristiania Vol. 1, 1900, Vol. 2, 1903
  • Julius Graf von Oeynhausen: The von Maydell in Hanover. In: Der Deutsche Herold VIII., Berlin 1877, pp. 143-144
  • Wilhelm Baron von Wrangell: The Estonian knighthood, their knighthood captains and district administrators. CA Starke Verlag, Limburg / Lahn 1967
  • Genealogical Handbook of the Baltic Knighthoods , Part Estonia, Vol. I, Görlitz 1933, pp. 131–158 , supplements pp. 22–23 , corrections link
  • Genealogical Handbook of the Baltic Knighthoods , Part Livonia, Vol. I, Görlitz 1935, pp. 609–633
  • Genealogical manual of the Baltic knighthoods , part of Kurland, Vol. I, Görlitz 1936, pp. 537-546
  • Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels , Freiherrliche Häuser A, Volume V, 1963, pp. 223–287; Vol. X, 1977, pp. 207-248; Vol. XVI, 1992, pp. 183-230; Vol. XXII, 2002, pp. 304-356, CA Starke Verlag, Limburg / Lahn

Web links

Commons : Maydell (noble family)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Reichsarchiv Copenhagen, Liber Census Daniae , p. 52 recto
  2. ^ Joh. Friedrich Pfeffinger: History of the Braunschweig-Lüneburg house and the same lands. Hamburg 1731. Therein about the von Wittorf family: pp. 741–771 A picture of the coat of arms of Heinrich von Wittorf, 17th Ratzeburg bishop 1368–1388, can be found in: Lauenburgische Heimat . Ratzeburg 1931, p. 16
  3. ^ Eugen von Nottbeck (ed.): The second oldest legacy book of the city of Reval (1360-1383). No. 96. In: Archives for the history of Liv, Estonia and Curland. Episode 3, Vol. 2, Reval 1890
  4. ^ Gustav von Lehsten: The nobility of Mecklenburg since the land constitutional hereditary comparisons (1755). Rostock 1864, p. 165.
  5. ↑ Slekten Meidell
  6. ↑ Store norske leksikon ( online version ).
  7. ↑ Anders Anton von Stiernman: Matriculation öfwer Swea rikes ridderskap och adel. Stockholm 1754, p. 133 (Swedish)
  8. ^ Genealogical Handbook of the Nobility, Freiherrliche Häuser A, Volume V, 1963, p. 286
  9. ^ Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels, Volume FAV, p. 283
  10. ^ Genealogical handbook of the nobility, Freiherrliche Häuser A, Volume V, 1963, p. 243
  11. ^ Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels, Volume FAV, p. 232
  12. ^ Genealogical handbook of the nobility, Freiherrliche Häuser A, Volume V, 1963, p. 250
  13. ↑ Ludwig Richter: Memoirs of a German Painter. Frankfurt a. M. 1885
  14. ^ Genealogical Handbook of the Nobility, Freiherrliche Häuser A, Volume V, 1963, p. 253
  15. ^ Genealogical handbook of the nobility, Freiherrliche Häuser A, Volume V, 1963., p. 265
  16. ^ Genealogical handbook of the nobility, Freiherrliche Häuser A, Volume V, 1963, p. 264
  17. ^ Genealogical Handbook of the Nobility, Freiherrliche Häuser A, Volume V, 1963, p. 257
  18. ^ Genealogical handbook of the nobility, Freiherrliche Häuser A, Volume V, 1963, p. 244
  19. ^ Genealogical handbook of the nobility, Freiherrliche Häuser A, Volume V, 1963, p. 266
  20. ^ Genealogical handbook of the nobility, Freiherrliche Häuser A, Volume V, 1963, p. 251
  21. ^ Genealogical handbook of the nobility, Freiherrliche Häuser A, Volume V, 1963, p. 259