Otto (Ballenstedt)

Ballenstedt Castle, the ancestral seat of the Ascanians

Otto von Ballenstedt, the rich man (* 1070, † 9. February 1123 ) from the gender of Askanier was Count of Ballenstedt and in 1112 briefly Duke of Saxony .

Otto von Ballenstedt was the son of Adalbert , Count von Ballenstedt, and Adelheid von Weimar-Orlamünde . While Otto, as the elder, received the Ascanian inheritance from his father, his brother Siegfried inherited the Weimar-Orlamündischen claims of his mother and after the death of his stepfather and adoptive father became Count Palatine of the Rhine . Otto was the father of Albert the Bear , the founder of the Mark Brandenburg .

Life

The Ascanians were originally located in the East Saxon Schwabengau , which is why they are included in the Sachsenspiegel as part of the ancient Suebian nobility settled there . The first representative of the Ascanians to appear in contemporary documents was Count Esico ( comitatu Esiconis = in the county of Esico), who is mentioned in a diploma from Emperor Conrad II dated October 26, 1036 issued in the Palatinate Tilleda . It is very likely that Esico was a grandson of Margrave Hodo († 993) on his mother's side and inherited several allodial estates in Swabia and Serimuntgau after the death of his uncle Siegfried († around 1030) .

Count von Ballenstedt and Duke of Saxony

The historian Lutz Partenheimer dates Otto's year of birth to 1083 at the latest, when he was first mentioned in a document as the holder of count's rights in Schwabengau . However, Otto had already taken over the count's rights to Ballenstedt around 1080 after the murder of his father Adalbert by Egeno II of Konradsburg . A total of fourteen documents between 1083 and 1123 give information about the Ascanian. It is unclear to what extent his father can actually already be called Count von Ballenstedt, since this title is mentioned for the first time in a document 1106 in connection with Otto. According to a diploma from King Heinrich IV in 1073, the father had "count rights" in Ballenstedt.

Otto married Eilika Billung von Sachsen around 1094 (* around 1080; † 1142/1143), the daughter of Duke Magnus of Saxony . When the Billung family , who administered the Duchy of Saxony , died out in 1106 with Eilika's father Magnus in the male line, part of the Billungian inheritance fell to the Ascanians. This legacy probably founded the later rivalry between the Guelphs and Ascanians for Saxony, which was to accompany the son Albrecht for a lifetime, especially in the conflict with Henry the Lion . However, it is not clear which goods the inheritance comprised in detail. According to Partenheimer, Bernburg , Halle and Orte near Weißenfels could have been one of them. The ducal dignity of Saxony fell to Lothar von Süpplingenburg and not to one of the two sons-in-law of Magnus of Saxony.

In 1112, in a dispute , Emperor Heinrich V withdrew Count Lothar von Süpplingenburg's office and dignity from the Duke of Saxony and enfeoffed Count Otto von Ballenstedt. As Duke of Saxony, Otto was now one of the highest secular princes in the empire. However, this position was of a very short duration, because after a few months he lost this dignity again because Heinrich V was reconciled with Lothar von Süpplingenburg.

Reach to the east

The coat of arms of the Counts of Ballenstedt

As a signatory of the call for the Slavic Crusade of 1108, Otto belonged, according to Partenheimer, to the aristocratic forces who began with the reintegration of the East Elbe regions into the Holy Roman Empire . He probably also tried practically to expand the Ascanian family holdings beyond the Elbe . Evidence suggests an advance on the Fläming as far as Görzke . On February 11, 1115, the decisive battle of the Welfesholz between the army of Emperor Heinrich V and the Saxons took place near Hettstedt in the southern Harz foreland . On the way to this battle Otto received the news that Slavic warriors - taking advantage of the situation - had come across the Elbe. Otto and his men then changed their direction and inflicted a crushing defeat on the plundering Slavs near Koethen on February 9, 1115. The subsequent acquisitions of territory in the Zerbstgau made the Princely House of Anhalt a direct neighbor of the Heveller Principality , a Slavic people on the central Havel .

In the opinion of Stephan Warnatsch, this neighborhood prompted the prince of Heveller, Pribislaw-Heinrich , who had already been baptized Christian , to lean even more closely than before on the Ascanian house in the west. This approach brought Pribislaw not only economic advantages but also a certain stabilization of his rule. The policy initiated by Otto to get closer to the Heveller finally had the consequence that Pribislaw, since he had no biological heir, appointed Otto's son Albrecht as his successor and resulted in the transfer of the teeth to Otto's grandson Otto I as a godparent gift - decisive steps towards Development of the Mark Brandenburg under the Ascani.

Otto's death

In 1123, shortly before his death, Otto and his son Albrecht the Bear converted the Ballenstedt collegiate monastery of St. Pancratius and Abundus into a Benedictine monastery . Otto was buried in the monastery, which later became the castle.

Inheritance and descendants

After Otto's death in 1123 the rule passed to his very likely only son Albrecht the Bear . Albrecht founded the Mark Brandenburg in 1157 and was its first margrave . Albrecht pushed the German settlement in the east decisively; through him in the Great came Slavs uprising lost 983 Nordmark as Mark Brandenburg in fact back to the Holy Roman Empire .

Otto's daughter, who was probably also the only one, was called Adelheid. She first married Margrave Heinrich IV von der Nordmark and, after he died in 1128, Werner III. from Veltheim .

literature

• Helmut Assing : Albrecht the Bear. Margrave of Brandenburg (1150 / 57–1170) . In: Eberhard Holtz and Wolfgang Huschner (eds.): German princes of the Middle Ages. Twenty-five life pictures . Edition Leipzig, Leipzig 1995, pp. 221-233, ISBN 3361004373 .
• Michael Hecht: The Invention of the Ascanians. Dynastic Memorial Foundation of the Princes of Anhalt at the turn of the Middle Ages to the modern age , in: Journal for historical research Vol. 33 (2006), pp. 1–32
• Otto von Heinemann:  Albrecht the bear . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, pp. 237-243.
• Lutz Partenheimer : Albrecht the Bear. 2nd edition, Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2003. ISBN 3-412-16302-3
• Lutz Partenheimer: Albrecht the bear and his ancestors. (PDF; 2.2 MB) in: The early Ascanians. Contributions to the regional and state culture of Saxony-Anhalt. Vol. 28. Halle 2003, pp. 35–71. ISBN 3-928466-58-5 (online)
• Lutz Partenheimer: The emergence of the Mark Brandenburg. With a Latin-German source attachment. 1st and 2nd edition, Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2007.
• Lutz Partenheimer: The role of women in the rise of the early Ascanians , in: The early Ascanians. Protocol of the scientific conferences on the political and territorial history of rule as well as the social and cultural-historical aspects of the early Askanier period on 19./29. May 2000 in Aschersleben / Ballenstedt and on May 25th in Bernburg (= contributions to regional and state culture of Saxony-Anhalt, issue 28), Halle 2003.
• Friedrich von Raumer : Contribution to the genealogy of the Electors of Brandenburg, Askanischen tribe . In: General Archive for the History of the Prussian State. Volume 8, Berlin / Posen / Bromberg 1832, pp. 284–290 ( full text ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH) DD K II, No. 234, p. 319. Emperor Konrad II built a market in Kölbigk , which he lent to his wife Gisela .
2. ↑ Annalista Saxo , ed. by Georg Heinrich Pertz in: MGH SS 6 (1844), p. 678
3. ^ Partenheimer: The emergence of the Mark Brandenburg. Pp. 58, 61.
4. ^ Partenheimer: Albrecht the bear. P. 25.
5. ^ Partenheimer: Albrecht the bear. P. 26.
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Partenheimer: The emergence of the Mark Brandenburg. P. 62.
7. ^ Partenheimer: Albrecht the bear. P. 19 f., 30.
8. ^ Fritz Curschmann: The Diocese of Brandenburg. Studies on the historical geography and constitutional history of an East German colonial diocese. Publications of the Association for the History of the Mark Brandenburg, Leipzig 1906, p. 67 f., Note 2.
9. ^ Stephan Warnatsch: History of the Lehnin Monastery 1180–1542. Studies on the history, art and culture of the Cistercians. Vol 12.1. Freie Universität Berlin, dissertation 1999. Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2000, p. 31ff (see also note 18 in particular) ISBN 3-931836-45-2 .
10. ^ Partenheimer: Albrecht the bear. Pp. 189 ff., 218.
11. ^ Partenheimer: Albrecht the bear. Pp. 42, 116, 218.