Oberamt Winnweiler
The Austrian Oberamt Winnweiler was one of about ten superordinate administrative districts of the Habsburg part of the empire Front Austria . It was located in the area of today's Rhineland-Palatinate north and south of Kaiserslautern and also had eight villages as exclaves in Rheinhessen , south of Mainz .
territory
The territory of the Austrian Oberamt Winnweiler comprised around 150 km² with around 5000 inhabitants in three non-contiguous parts. The administrative seat was the town of Winnweiler with the Oberamt and the Oberamtmann residing there. It was also often referred to as the Oberamt Falkenstein (before the formal annexation to Austria in 1782) or as the "Upper Rhine District" of Upper Austria. It was mainly surrounded by territories of the Electoral Palatinate and Nassau-Weilburg .
The Oberamt Winnweiler was an Austrian administrative district inherited from the Dukes of Lorraine and was formally attached to the Upper Austria part of the empire in 1782 , i.e. the Habsburg countries that were to the west or north of the actual Habsburg Empire but did not belong to the Austrian Netherlands . Vorderösterreich did not exist as a coherent entity, but consisted of many territorially separated, smaller and smallest individual areas. The Oberamt Winnweiler was also an enclave in what is now Rhineland-Palatinate, south of Mainz .
The Oberamt itself consisted of three parts lying close together, but they did not form a coherent country. The largest part was the contiguous area of the County of Falkenstein with the main town Winnweiler in today's Palatinate and eight exclave villages as scattered holdings in Rheinhessen . To the north of the closed territory of the County of Falkenstein, there was a smaller area, the "Herrschaft Stolzenberg" around Dielkirchen , which was administered jointly with Pfalz-Zweibrücken . South of the County of Falkenstein was the so-called "Wirichshube" near Trippstadt , a small area made up of 3 localities, which also belonged to the County of Falkenstein as an exclave , but was claimed and mostly administered by the Electoral Palatinate , which again gave it to the Baron von Hacke as a fief.
In the "Geographical Handbook of the Austrian State" by Ignaz de Luca, Vienna 1790, the area is described as follows:
"Upper Rhine District. Falkenstein, an imperial county in the Upper Rhine district at the foot of the Tannenberg ... The area of the same is determined to be 2½ square miles. Iron and wine are the most excellent natural products in this county. The forests bear firs, oaks, beeches, larks, etc. The population in this county is determined to be 4200 souls. It should be noted here: the Falkenstein market, the town of Winnweiler, where the Oberamt is based. At the same stand 1 senior magistrate, 2 senior magistrates, and a secretary. In addition, the district contingent captain, the landscape physician and the forestry office with a forestry supervisor, 6 hunters and 2 wolf circles belong here. The Oberamt is subordinate to the state government in Freyburg. "
In 1786 the traveler Philipp Wilhelm Gercken gives his own impressions of the Oberamt as follows:
“The whole county is very natural, rough, rocky and barren, a sad creation. Haber and potatoes are the main product. Localities are included which, however, are not in one district, but are partly scattered around. The spot of Winnweiler is the main town where the Imperial Chief Bailiff also lives. The old Falkenstein castle and parent house is about half an hour from the Donnersberg in complete ruins. It must have been handsome and cosmopolitan, as the ruins and very thick walls show. The small patch of Falkenstein, which consists of a few houses, lies close to it in a very deep valley, so deep that one can hardly see the top of the church tower. There is supposed to be something of iron mines here, and Kobold too. The incomes of the whole county must be little because of the poor, poor area. Enough wood, but also very bad. "
Localities
The localities of the Oberamt are:
County of Falkenstein
- Winnweiler
- Alsenbrück
- Langmeil
- Imsbach
- Borrstadt
- Jakobsweiler
- Falkenstein
- Schweisweiler
- Hochstein
- Höringen
- Potzbach
- Wage field
- St. Alban
- Hengstenberg (former name for the Hengstbacher Hof, today a district of St. Alban)
- Gerbach
- Obergaugrehweiler (the parts of today's municipality of Gaugrehweiler lying on the right bank of the Appelbach .)
- Lime kiln
- Ilbesheim
Wirichshube (an exclave area of the County of Falkenstein, south of Kaiserslautern, in dispute with the Electoral Palatinate)
- Trippstadt (half of the village)
- Mölschbach
- Stilt mountain
Rheinhessen exclave villages (to the county of Falkenstein, not contiguous)
- Hohen-Sülzen
- Framersheim
- Eckelsheim
- Biebelsheim
- Ippesheim (Nahe) (half of the village)
- Dalheim (Rheinhessen)
- Hillesheim (Rheinhessen) (half of the village)
- Harxheim (Rheinhessen)
Reign of Stolzenberg
history
In 1731, Duke Franz Stephan von Lothringen received the imperial fief of the County of Falkenstein from the estate of his father , to which half of the rights to the "Herrschaft Stolzenberg" , some Rhine-Hessian villages south of Mainz and also the smallest area claimed by the Electoral Palatinate and mostly administered by the " Wirichshube ” near Trippstadt. In 1736 the Duke of Lorraine married the Austrian Hereditary Princess Maria Theresa ; from 1745 both ruled the Holy Roman Empire as Emperor and Empress. As a result of the marriage, the County of Falkenstein and its neighboring areas fell to the House of Habsburg-Lothringen and were given their own administrative center, the Oberamt in Winnweiler . As a Lorraine property, which the non-Habsburg husband had brought into the family, the county was initially only administered by Austrian officials, without formally belonging to Austria. It was not until 1782 that Emperor Joseph II incorporated the County of Falkenstein or the Oberamt Winnweiler into his part of Upper Austria under constitutional law.
The area was mostly French occupied from December 1792 and was ceded to France as part of the left bank of the Rhine at the Campo Formio peace treaty (1797) , where it remained until 1815. At this time it belonged to the French department du Mont-Tonnerre with the seat of government in Mainz . In 1815/1816 there was a joint Austrian-Bavarian government in Bad Kreuznach , in 1816 the territory fell to the new Rhine district of the Kingdom of Bavaria ; the Rhine-Hessian exclave villages to the Grand Duchy of Hesse , since 1946 all former areas have belonged to the State of Rhineland-Palatinate . Apart from the villages of the “Wirichshube” and the Rhine-Hessian free float, the localities of the old Winnweiler district office are now exclusively in the Donnersberg district .
Austria took exemplary care of the rather remote and insignificant country. The brochure "Falkenstein, Donnersberg, Winnweiler" by Richard Hellriegel (Speyer, 1965) states that Winnweiler's heyday was in the Austrian period, when it was the state capital and seat of government. Austria dispatched proven civil servants to the provincial administration on this “outpost”, including members of the Camuzi family , who worked for two generations in the service of the Oberamt and later settled in Dirmstein in the Upper Palatinate .
Emigrants
The Oberamt Winnweiler played a very special role in the emigration movement of the 18th century. Quite a few Danube Swabians and Galician Germans in the old Habsburg areas of Hungary , Romania or Poland can look back on ancestors from the Palatinate. These often came directly from the villages of the Oberamt or - coming from other areas of the Palatinate - could at least be recruited there. As part of the Austrian settlement of Galicia , a special recruitment office was even set up in Winnweiler around 1781.
Special
Emperor Joseph II basically used the title of "Count of Falkenstein" when he traveled incognito.
The Kreuzkapelle with hermitage, donated in 1728 by Baron Langen , an administrative officer of the territory, is located on the Kreuzberg above the Winnweiler administrative office. The House of Habsburg later contributed significant sums to the expansion. A painting is said to come from a student of Raphael and it is said that Empress Maria Theresa even donated a self-made chasuble for the house of God, which is why it is popularly known as the “Maria Theresa Chapel” . The church served as a burial place for the officials of the senior office.
In Hochstein there is a votive cross that the Winnweiler Oberamtsbote Johann Haag had erected in 1767 in fulfillment of a promise after he got lost in the Soonwald on a business trip to Luxembourg - then the Austrian Netherlands .
The local coat of arms of Eckelsheim bears the heraldic symbol of Lorraine as well as the wheel of the County of Falkenstein in remembrance of the historical affiliation to the Habsburg-Lorraine district of Winnweiler .
The town hall of Hohen-Sülzen still has historical double-headed chairs and door fittings from the Austrian era.
literature
- Michael Frey: "Attempt at a geographical-historical-statistical description of the Royal Bavarian Rhine District" , Speyer, 1836
- Richard Hellriegel: "Falkenstein, Donnersberg, Winnweiler" , Speyer, Verlag Karl Graf, approx. 1965
- Alemannisches Institut Freiburg: “Vorderösterreich” , Freiburg im Breisgau, 1967, page 572
Web links
- Website of the "Wiener Zeitung" on the County of Falkenstein and the Oberamt Winnweiler. ( Memento of November 8, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
- Website on Upper Austria with mention of the Winnweiler Regional Office
Individual evidence
- ^ Ownership of the Austrian Oberamt Winnweiler when the territory was dissolved
- ↑ Michael Frey : Attempt of a geographical-historical-statistical description of the royal. Bayer. Rheinkreises , Volume 3, Page 80, Speyer 1837; (Digital scan)
- ↑ Historical website on the Wilenstein rule and the Wirichshube ( Memento from February 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Ignaz de Luca: Geographical Handbook from the Austrian State . Volume 2, Vienna 1790. Pages 599/600 ( Description Oberamt Winnweiler )
- ↑ Philipp Wilhelm Gercken: "Travels through Swabia, Baiern, neighboring Switzerland, Franconia, the Rhenish provinces, Moselle, etc." Volume 3, page 403, 1786 ( GoogleBooks )
- ^ Directory of the Palatinate localities of the Austrian Oberamt Winnweiler
- ↑ Directory of the Rheinhessischen localities of the Austrian Oberamt Winnweiler (all belonging to the County of Falkenstein)
- ↑ ( page no longer available , search in web archives: http://www.hengstbacherhof.de/ )
- ^ Report on the French occupation of the Oberamt Winnweiler, 1792
- ↑ On emigration from the Oberamt Winnweiler
- ^ Note regarding the commissioning of the Winnweiler Regional Office with the Danube-Swabian and Galician-German emigrant affairs in the Rhine region
- ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Illustrated website for the Kreuzkapelle Winnweiler )
- ↑ ( Page can no longer be called up , search in web archives: on the furnishing of the Winnweiler Kreuzkapelle by the House of Habsburg )
- ↑ Illustrated website about the votive cross in Hochstein
- ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: To the Austrian relics in the town hall of Hohen-Sülzen )