Ottilie von Katzenelnbogen

Ottilie (right) with her five daughters, detail from the margrave table

Ottilie von Katzenelnbogen (* probably 1453 at the Starkenburg near Darmstadt , † August 15, 1517 in Baden-Baden ) was Margravine of Baden by marrying Christoph I of Baden . Through her two sons Bernhard and Ernst , she is the ancestor of the Baden-Baden and Baden-Durlach lines .

Life

Ottilie was the only child of Count Philipp von Katzenelnbogen the Younger and his wife Ottilie von Nassau-Dillenburg (* 1437, † 1493) in the Starkenburg in Heppenheim . She was baptized on March 22, 1453. On her father's side, she was a granddaughter of Count Philipp von Katzenelnbogen the Elder and Anna of Württemberg .

Ottilie was still a child when her grandfather Philip of Katzenelnbogen the Elder shortly after the death of the last male Katzenelnbogen heirs Eberhard in 1456 a marriage agreement with Frederick I , the Elector Palatine , hit by he and his nephew Philip engaged . When Ottilie reached a marriageable age eleven years after the appointment in 1467, the groom refused to marry her for personal reasons. Instead, at the instigation of the Archbishop of Trier, Johann II of Baden , she was betrothed to his nephew, the Margrave Christoph I of Baden. The marriage contract was signed on June 20, 1468. The marriage took place the following year on January 30th in Koblenz as part of a double wedding, because Christoph's sister Cimburga married Count Engelbert II of Nassau-Dillenburg on the same day .

Her dowry was the highest that was ever brought into the Baden margrave house in the Middle Ages . In addition to Stadeck Castle with all its accessories, her trousseau consisted of 26,000  guilders as well as further 48,000 guilders, due later. It amounted to a total of about 80,000 guilders.

The marriage between Ottilie and her husband is described as happy. Between 1470 and 1493 she gave birth to a total of 15 children, 13 of whom reached adulthood:

• Ottilie (* 1470; † 1490), abbess in Pforzheim
• Jakob (* 1471; † 1511), Archbishop of Trier
• Maria (* 1473; † 1519), abbess at Lichtenthal Abbey
• Bernhard (* 1474; † 1536), Margrave of Baden
• Karl (* 1476; † 1510), canon in Strasbourg and Trier
• Christoph (* 1477; † 1508), canon in Strasbourg and Cologne
• Philipp (* 1479; † 1533), Margrave of Baden
• Rudolf (* 1481; † 1532), canon in Mainz, Cologne, Strasbourg and Augsburg
• Ernst (* 1482; † 1553), Margrave of Baden
• Wolfgang (* 1484; † 1522)
• Sibylle (* 1485; † 1518), ⚭ 1505 Count Philip III. von Hanau-Lichtenberg (* 1482; † 1538)
• Raisin (* 1487; † 1554), ⚭ I) 1503 Count Franz Wolfgang von Hohenzollern (* 1483/84; † 1517), ⚭ II) Johann von Ow zu Wachendorf († 1571)
• Johann († 1490)
• Beatrix (* 1492; † 1535), ⚭ 1508 Count Palatine Johann II. Von Simmern (* 1492; † 1557)
• Georg (* 1493; † 1493)

After Ottilie's grandfather died in 1479, there were arguments with her aunt's husband, Landgrave Heinrich III. von Hessen , for her share of the inheritance of the Katzenelnbogen possessions, which were negotiated before an arbitration tribunal in accordance with the provisions in Ottilie's marriage agreement. After lengthy negotiations, the two parties to the dispute came to a comparison, in which the margravine initially waived her claims for a sum of 4,000  guilders . As Landgrave Wilhelm III. von Hessen died in 1500, Ottilie received a further 12,000 guilders as compensation, so that the Baden house finally renounced the County of Katzenelnbogen in March 1501 .

Margravine Ottilie died on August 15, 1517 in Baden-Baden and was buried in the collegiate church there. Your Epitaph of bronze shows an image of it with the arms of Württemberg and Katzenelsohn bow at her feet.

literature

• Karl E. Demand: The last Katzenelnbogen counts and the struggle for their inheritance . In: Nassau Annals . Volume 66. Association for Nassau antiquity and historical research, Wiesbaden 1955, pp. 93–132 ( online ).

Footnotes

1. ↑ Marriage speech between Baden and Katzenelnbogen from June 20, 1468 (Regest-Nr. 9569). Regest of the Landgraves of Hesse. (As of March 17, 2019). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
2. ↑ KE Demandt: The last Katzenelnbogen counts and the struggle for their inheritance. 1955, p. 109.
3. ^ Friedrich Wielandt:  Christoph I .. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , p. 243 ( digitized version ).
4. ↑ Many older publications wrongly give December 19, 1468 as the date of marriage.
5. ↑ ^{a b} K. E. Demandt: The last Katzenelnbogen counts and the struggle for their inheritance , accessed on October 28, 2011.
6. ↑ Arthur Kleinschmidt :  Christoph I . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 228.
7. ↑ ^{a b} K. E. Demandt: The last Katzenelnbogen counts and the struggle for their inheritance. 1955, p. 128.
8. ^ The tombs of the Margraves of Baden in the collegiate church ( Memento from January 6, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) In: Landeskunde online. (PDF; 666 kB).