Occupation of Upper Baden
The term " Upper Baden Occupation " is used in historical literature for the occupation of the upper margraviate of Baden-Baden by troops of Margrave Ernst Friedrich von Baden-Durlach under Wolf Dietrich von Gemmingen (1550-1601), which took place on November 21, 1594 . The term also includes the occupation and administration that lasted until 1622.
Occupied Territories
The main towns of Ettlingen , Baden-Baden , Kuppenheim , Stollhofen and Rastatt were occupied immediately . The Lordship of Graefenstein and the Front and Back Counties of Sponheim were not occupied; the dominions Rodemachern , Useldingen and Hesperingen formed the separate margraviate of Baden-Rodemachern and were ruled by Philip III, a brother of Eduard Fortunat . An attempt by Ernst Friedrich to take control of Graefenstein was repulsed.
Eduard Fortunat had the Baden share of the County of Eberstein in the spring of 1595 to Philip III. von Eberstein pledged, for which he was to receive over 20,000 guilders to finance his mercenaries. Since the pledging required the approval of the brothers and agnates Eduard Fortunat according to the laws of the entire Baden house , Ernst Friedrich requested the Ebersteiner first to terminate the invalid contract in good faith. After the latter did not comply, Ernst Friedrich also sent his troops to the County of Eberstein and Philip III. withheld his payment to Eduard Fortunat. The lords of Lahr and Mahlberg were soon occupied by Ernst Friedrich.
Legal basis
Ernst Friedrich based his intervention legally on the Pragmatic Sanction of Margrave Christoph I of Baden and the indemnity treaty of 1537 .
According to the house law of Margrave Christoph, the entire Baden area continued to form a unit despite all the divisions. After the death of Bernhard III. von Baden-Baden an extended contractual relationship was agreed between the guardians of his children and his brother Ernst . If a line of the House of Baden was in default in paying off common debts and the other line was claimed by creditors, the damaged line was given the right to hold the other line harmless by occupying the land. This case occurred after a creditor of Margrave Eduard Fortunat of Baden-Baden tried to collect interest payments from the towns of Durlach and Pforzheim in Baden-Durlach . Eduard Fortunat did not change his behavior despite all warnings from his Durlachian cousin and continued to live beyond his means.
Moral justification
The population of the margraviate suffered from the country's heavy debt, which led to an increased tax burden. In addition, there was considerable legal uncertainty under Eduard Fortunat, which culminated in judicial murder and princely street robbery. It can be assumed that, against the background of the religious conflicts, the Protestant side overemphasized Eduard Fortunat's misconduct, but his own Catholic advisers also testify to such misconduct and Eduard Fortunat's attempts to portray himself as the victim of a Protestant intrigue were only aimed at assistance to be won by the Catholic classes. His religious attitudes and character were heavily criticized from all sides.
Political security
Immediately after the occupation, Ernst Friedrich sent a memorandum to Emperor Rudolf II and a number of Protestant and Catholic princes in which he set out the legal and moral justification for his measure and did not suggest any religious-political motives.
The price
The price that Ernst Friedrich had to pay for the occupation was quite high. He had to recruit troops to occupy and to ward off the threatened reconquest by Eduard Fortunat. Their costs and the state's debt burden forced him to sell the offices of Besigheim and Mundelsheim in 1595 to Duke Friedrich I of Württemberg and in 1603 to swap the offices of Altensteig and Liebenzell for Malsch and Langensteinbach . As a result of these sales, Baden-Durlach lost rich forest holdings and shipping rights. The Duchy of Württemberg thus took on more and more positions in the former “Northeast” of Baden.
history
Margrave Ernst Friedrich (1577–1604) occupied the upper margraviate of Baden-Baden in 1594 and drove out Prince Eduard Fortunat, who ruled there . This act exacerbated the denominational differences on the Upper Rhine and politically brought Baden-Durlach even closer to the Calvinist Electoral Palatinate.
After the death of Eduard Fortunat (1600) the Catholic imperial princes wanted to help his children to inherit so that the Catholic margraviate of Baden-Baden would not fall to the Lutheran margravate of Baden-Durlach. Baden-Durlach's legal position, however, was that Eduard Fortunat and Maria von Eicken never entered into a legally valid marriage and thus the children were not capable of succession. In the event that a marriage could be proven, it would be a morganatic marriage and the children would not be equal, i.e. H. they could not receive the margraviate of Baden-Baden as an imperial fief.
Ernst Friedrich's successor, his brother Georg Friedrich , also continued to occupy Baden-Baden territory. On April 14, 1605 he was enfeoffed by Emperor Rudolf II with the entire margraviate of Baden, for which he u. a. did not have to undertake any religious change in Baden-Baden territory, to pay the debts of the margraviate of Baden-Baden and to leave the office of Kastellaun and the Baden possessions in Luxembourg to the children of Eduard Fortunat . In addition, he should accept any proceedings before the Reichshofrat and pay the widow and children of Eduard Fortunat a subsidy for maintenance and legal costs. The trial before the Reichshofrat was initiated in February 1606 by a complaint on behalf of the children of Eduard Fortunat, with the plaintiffs receiving significant support from the Bavarian Duke Maximilian I. While Georg Friedrich tried to enforce his legal claim with the help of the Protestant imperial princes, the guardian of Eduard Fortunat's children, Albrecht VII of Habsburg , and Duke Maximilian of Bavaria relied on a decision by the emperor in favor of the children and were not interested in a comparison with the margrave were. Emperor Matthias and his Chancellor Melchior Khlesl repeatedly encouraged attempts to negotiate settlement, as they did not want to fuel the conflict with the Protestant princes in the highly explosive religious and political situation in the empire. The legal dispute dragged on among three emperors from 1605 to 1622.
After Georg Friedrich's defeat in the Battle of Wimpfen (May 6, 1622), Emperor Ferdinand II awarded the Margraviate of Baden-Baden to Eduard Fortunat's eldest son, Wilhelm, on August 25, 1622 . In the further course of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), the margraviate of Baden-Baden was occupied again and for a short time (1634/1635) by Baden-Durlach.
In 1627 and 1629, agreements were made between Wilhelm and Friedrich on compensation for the occupation, which Friedrich later challenged as they were enforced under military pressure from the imperial troops. The Baden succession dispute kept the diplomats who negotiated the Peace of Westphalia busy in 1648 .
Although Friedrich was again amnestied and restored to his 1618 rights, the margraviate of Baden-Baden was lost because the Catholic estates and France blocked each other and Sweden was not important enough, which is why Friedrich was urged to accept the stipulations.
It was not until the inheritance contract of 1765 and the union of heirs in 1771 that the two Baden territories reunited under Margrave Karl Friedrich .
literature
- Werner Baumann: Ernst Friedrich von Baden-Durlach. The importance of religion for the life and politics of a south German prince in the age of the Counter Reformation (= VKGLBW B 20), Stuttgart 1962, p. 64ff
- Hugo Altmann: The role of Maximilian I of Bavaria in the occupation dispute in Upper Baden, especially 1614-1618. In: Journal for the history of the Upper Rhine , Volume 121 (1973), pp. 327-360
- Michael Buhlmann: History of Baden. Middle Ages - Modern Times (= VA 29), St. Georgen 2007, p. 27ff
- Hansmartin Schwarzmaier : Baden. Dynastie - Land - Staat (= Urban Tb 607), Stuttgart 2005, p. 128ff
- Margrave Ernst Friedrich: Basic Warhaffter and Bestendiger Report: What happened before and after not long ago by Mr. Ernest Friderichen Maggraven of Baden ... occupation, the upper part of the principality of the Margrave created Baden with the inclusion of several Margrave Eduardi Fortunati servants ... etc , 1595
- Johann David Köhler : A head of rare thalers from the notorious Margrave of Baaden in Baaden, EDUARD FORTUNATS, by A. 1590 , in: The weekly historical coin amusement, 16th part, 16th piece, April 15, 1744, p. 117 -124
- Ferdinand III., Kristina of Sweden: Peace of Westphalia - Treaty of Osnabrück ( Instrumentum Pacis Osnabrugensis ). Frankfurt am Main, Philipp Jacob Fischer 1649.
Abbreviations
- VA = Vertex Alemanniae
- VKGLBW B = Publications of the Commission for Historical Regional Studies Baden-Württemberg, Series B: Research
Web links
Individual references / comments
- ↑ s. Baumann pp. 78-80
- ↑ s. Baumann p. 79
- ↑ s. Baumann p. 89
- ↑ the Grafschaft Eberstein was a condominium in which the Counts of Eberstein and the Margraves of Baden-Baden ruled together
- ↑ s. Baumann p. 123
- ↑ s. GH Krieg von Hochfelden : History of the Counts of Eberstein in Swabia, Karlsruhe 1836, p. 192
- ↑ the dominions of Lahr and Mahlberg were condominiums in which the Counts of Nassau-Saarbrücken and the Margraves of Baden-Baden exercised the rule together
- ↑ s. Ferd. Stein: History and description of the city of Lahr and its surroundings , Lahr 1827, p. 55
- ↑ s. Baumann pp. 64/65
- ↑ s. Baumann pp. 64/65
- ↑ s. Baumann p. 76/77 speaks of a "right-wing regiment"
- ↑ Francis Bornius a Madrigal and Johannes Pistorius the Younger
- ↑ s. Baumann pp. 80/81
- ↑ s. Josef Bader: Badische Landesgeschichte , Freiburg 1836, p. 478/479
- ↑ see Altmann
- ↑ s. Koehler p. 123