County of Rantzau
The imperial county Rantzau was by decree of Emperor Ferdinand III. from 1650 a direct imperial territory in southern Schleswig-Holstein , around today's city of Barmstedt .
The area of the later county, the Amt Barmstedt, was part of the County of Holstein-Pinneberg until 1640 and then fell to the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf . The Rantzau family acquired the office of Barmstedt in 1649. Christian zu Rantzau was raised to the rank of count with the dignity of a count palatine with a double diploma in 1650, with the emperor making Barmstedt an immediate loan. The county was belatedly included in the Lower Saxony Reichskreis in 1662 . The rule of the now high aristocratic house lasted only 76 years from 1650 to 1726. After the murder of Count Christian Detlev zu Rantzau , Barmstedt was illegally confiscated from the Danish royal family in 1726 on the pretext of no male heirs as a "settled man fief". The Rantzau remained counts, but were no longer part of the empire's high nobility . The imperial county was thus finished.
overview
Historical background
At the beginning of the 17th century, the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were a patchwork of different administrative units, the so-called offices and the goods districts . The rule over the states was largely divided between the Danish royal family and the dukes of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf and the separated lords of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg . The county of Holstein-Pinneberg in southwestern Holstein represented a specialty, which , as a remnant of medieval ownership, still belonged to a line of the Counts of Schauenburg and Holstein . This line died out in 1640 with Otto V in the male line and the County of Pinneberg was subsequently divided between the Danish crown and the Gottorf duchy: three fifths of the lands were owned by the Danes as the dominion of Pinneberg , two fifths - including the Barmstedt office The north of the county belonged to the Gottorf family, which, however, was still under Danish suzerainty (until 1658). The Barmstedt office , along with other Rantzau territories, formed the basis for the imperial county of Rantzau that was created in 1653/1654.
The extensive Rantzau family belong to the long-established knight families in Schleswig and Holstein, the so-called Equites Originarii . At times they owned more than seventy estates in the duchies and many of their members were involved in state politics. The Breitenburg branch of the family developed into one of the most important lines, including several royal Danish governors . In 1627 the then twelve-year-old Christian zu Rantzau succeeded his father Gerhard Rantzau as master of the Breitenburg possessions. He spent the following years, among other things, as a junker at the Danish court. As a young man, Christian Rantzau was often in the service of the Danish king and over the years gained various offices and dignities. In 1639 he was appointed bailiff of Rendsburg and in 1643 general war commissioner. In 1648, in recognition of his services, he was accepted into the elephant order and appointed royal governor. Christian Rantzau was a country nobleman from the Schleswig-Holstein knighthood and already achieved a high social position through his offices. However, he also strove for the dignity of count, and in order to be able to be raised to the rank of count - a title that has not been awarded in Holstein since the Middle Ages - he needed his own territory on the soil of the Holy Roman Empire . His focus was on the Barmstedt office, which was only a few kilometers south of his ancestral seat in Breitenburg and was owned by the Duke of Gottorf. who in turn was under the suzerainty of the Danish kings until 1658.
The way from the county to the imperial county
In 1649 Christian Rantzau was able to pass the Gottorf Duke Friedrich III. move to a sale of the office Barmstedt. He had the support of the Danish king, to whom his governor, as the owner of the Barmstedt office, was always better than the Gottorf dukes. The purchase price was 101,000 Reichstaler and 100,000 Reichsthaler for the exchange of the Rantzau headquarters near Plön and the Koxbüll estate near Tondern, which were valued with this sum, in favor of the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf. Christian Rantzau took possession of the land in 1650 and designated the old moated castle on the Barmstedt Palace Island as the new residence. In the same year he traveled with a large entourage to Vienna to the imperial court, where he appeared as the ambassador of the Danish kingdom. Rantzau was soon appointed Imperial Chamberlain and was able to - with generous subsidies - in the autumn of 1650 with Emperor Ferdinand III. obtain his appointment as count . In the diploma, the Barmstedt office was declared a direct imperial ("free") territory, which of course it was not as a Danish office. The county was belatedly included in the Lower Saxony Reichskreis in 1662.
The following was first published correctly and very completely by Karl von Rantzau in 1865:
In the Rantzau case, the emperor turned the usual procedure on the way of a count to the imperial estate on its head, since in 1653, when he was not yet a member of any of the 10 imperial districts, he ordered Christian to attend the Reichstag, where he took a seat in the Wetterau imperial count college without objection and thus could perceive the Reichsstandschaft with seat and curate vote in the Reichstag. Behind schedule in 1662, the inclusion in the Lower Saxon Circle 1662. In the Reichsmatrikel . his entry was omitted. It was not until Zedler in 1742 that the usual matriculation (for the contributions to the Reich Chamber of Commerce) was evaluated, where the "Grafschaft Rantzau" figured in 1719 with a stop of 7 Reichsthalers, 9 Kr.
The count's diploma from 1650 with the dignity of the count palatine (comitiv and palatinate), a "double diploma" summarized in one book, made Christian Rantzau de facto the "first imperial count" of the empire: never before had an imperial count been given so many regalia (royal rights) , from the right to create nobility to territorial superiority (sovereignty). Only the imperial vicars were and remained more powerful.
Karl von Rantzau - who is handwritten as the author in the digitized copy of the work "Das Haus Rantzau: Eine Familien Chronik", Celle (JG Müller) 1865 - explains in detail how it was then and in this case again possible that the Imperial Majesty, contrary to the custom, bypassing the Reichstag with this double diploma, not only deciding on the imperial immediacy of the Barmstedt office, but also literally turning the procedure on the often lengthy path from count diploma to imperial count dignity with imperial standing on its head.
For the owner of a sufficiently significant, imperial direct allods (own property) or imperial fiefdom (also imperial direct), this means first obtaining membership in one of the "ten imperial circles", which then define his "stop" (estimate) for the "imperial contingent": a direct one "Imperial tax" on certain occasions: Rome train, Turkish aid or reparation payments (e.g. 1650 to Sweden after the Thirty Years' War). The attack is published in "Mann zu Ross" ("Reutern") and Mann auf Fuß, alternatively as a sum of money, in the registers of the Reich. Occasionally, as in the Rantzau case, this entry was messed up so that the imperial immediacy of a territory can only be proven via the so-called Usualmatrikel, which publishes the contributions to the maintenance of the Imperial Imperial Chamber Court.
Karl von Rantzau and others correctly state that Christian Rantzau obtained the necessary admission into the Lower Saxony Empire in 1662 at the (Reich) district council of Lüneburg. The late KJ Lorenzen Schmidt erroneously stated in his essay “Die Reichsgrafschaft Rantzau” (www.geschichte-sh.de/reichsgrafschaft-rantzau) that the admission into the Wetterau Reichsgrafenkollegium had been made in 1662, as did the addendum to the Reich register. Rauert, on the other hand, was right to note that the imperial county was not to be found in the imperial registers of 1842.
At Wikisource "Zedler: Reichsmatrikel", in the large, complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts, Volume 31, Leipzig 1742, columns 114–158, Zedler transcribes the Reichsmatrikel according to the "current state of the Reich". where many changes from the end of the 17th century are noted, although not much has changed in the group of people recorded between 1690 and 1740. A reference to the Rantzau should have been found at this location as well.
But only in the usual register of the Kayserl. and salvation. Rom. Reichs-Cammer -gericht, "like those from the Pfennigmeisterey-bills, from the year 1719", following at the end at Zedler, there is the "Grafschaft Rantzau", which with 7 Rthlr. and 9 Kr. is assessed, the first evidence that the Counts of Rantzau were considered imperial masters.
Heinrich Sigmund Georg Gumpelzhaimer in: The realm matriculation of all circles: in addition to the ordinary register of the imperial and realm = chamber court ..., Ulm 1796, notices the lack of Rantzau in the realm register, but notes it in the ordinary register in 1776, where she was 31 Reichsthalern 6 Kreutzers are estimated, with the interesting addition "belonging to the King of Denmark". According to this, after the "reversion" of Barmstedt in 1726, the Danish crown offered the now lower-aristocratic county of Rantzau to the emperor as a fief and, like all members of the imperial circles, paid his attack to the court as a feudal man of the emperor.
This means that after 1728, when the Emperor awarded various Rantzau counts as compensation for the imperial counties that disappeared in 1726, there was another county of Rantzau outside the family of the same name in the Holy Roman Empire.
Usually, after 1662, Christian Rantzau should have been accepted into one of the four Imperial Counts' colleges. Here Karl von Rantzau, quoted above, is probably the only one who explains the unusual thing about his path: as early as 1653 and 1654 he was “sent to the Reichstag in Regensburg” by the Emperor, where he “was seated in front of him under the Count of the Wetterauische Bank and obtained a vote and signed the famous Last Reichs Farewell of 1654 ”. He had now really become an Imperial Count - eight years before the Lower Saxony District deigned to accept him into its ranks.
Further development
The former manor house in Barmstedt was expanded into a modest residence in addition to the castles of Breitenburg and Drage from 1657 and the village quickly developed into the capital of the small county. Christian Rantzau, who was often on the road because of his numerous offices, rarely stayed there. In 1655 he was able to buy back the Rantzau family estate near Plön. The county experienced a brief economic boom after the end of the so-called Polack War . After Christian Rantzau died in 1663, his son Detlev zu Rantzau took over the inheritance. Detlev Rantzau concluded with the Danish King Friedrich III in 1669 . signed a (voluntary?) inheritance contract, according to which the county should fall to the Kingdom of Denmark in the event of no male heir. But even under Detlev Rantzau's rule, the first tensions arose in relation to Denmark, which were triggered, among other things, by an abuse of the count's right to coin. Detlev's brother-in-law, Count Friedrich von Ahlefeldt (1623–1686), governor of Schleswig and Holstein and 1676–1686 Danish chancellor, tried from 1669 by acquiring two dominions in Alsace and Lorraine to follow suit with his father-in-law on the way to the imperial estate, but in vain. Reichsgraf Detlev died in 1697 and was inherited by his son Christian Detlev zu Rantzau . The third imperial count was considered contentious and despotic . He exhausted the small county economically and got into numerous conflicts with his subjects. Relations with the Danish kingdom deteriorated noticeably after Christian Detlev broke the promise to marry the daughter of Ulrik Fredrik Gyldenløve, the illegitimate half-brother of King Christian V. Rantzau got into territorial disputes with the king, who was also Duke of Holstein in personal union. After the imperial count complained to the emperor about the duke, he briefly withdrew all honorary posts.
Christian Detlev Rantzau's exploitation of the county led to uprisings, which he tried to put down in 1705 with the help of the Gottorf duchy. The Gottorf regent Georg Heinrich von Görtz sent soldiers to help, who put an end to the unrest, but then kept the county occupied. The Gottorf family offered to take over the property for the former purchase price of 201,000 thalers, which the imperial count refused. The resulting disputes lasted until 1713. In that year, the Gottorf Duchy was largely occupied by Denmark in the course of the Great Northern War , and the power of the Gottorf Dukes was thereby restricted. The disputes over the small county were replaced by other conflicts. During this time Christian Rantzau traveled to Berlin, where he was arrested in 1715 after allegations of sodomy - the then common name for homosexual acts. He was represented in the county by his younger brother Wilhelm Adolf zu Rantzau , whose reign , in contrast to Christian Detlev's reign , was described as relatively benevolent. The new building of the Barmstedt Holy Spirit Church goes back to this short phase.
Wilhelm Adolf tried to persuade the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I to permanently incarcerate his brother, but this was unsuccessful. Christian Detlev returned to Barmstedt with a small group of mercenaries in 1720 and forcibly took over his old property.
End of County Rantzau
In 1721 Christian Detlev Rantzau was shot and killed from an ambush while hunting near the Barmstedt Palace. As a direct reaction to this, the Danish king had the possessions of the imperial count's family occupied. The real perpetrator could never be determined, but Christian Detlev's younger brother Wilhelm Adolf was made responsible for the crime. His alleged co-conspirators were imprisoned and branded, the alleged shooter, the son of the Elmshorn church bailiff, was executed in 1725. Wilhelm Adolf himself was tried and the imperial count was imprisoned in the Norwegian fortress Akershus in 1726 . He died there in 1734, childless.
The Imperial Counties were still under the direct control of the Emperor in Vienna and the trial of the Imperial Count before a Holstein court posed a risk for the Danish king, especially since the Danish crown, according to the inheritance contract of 1669, was supposed to receive the Rantzauer Grafschaft in the event of a non-inheritance. The Danish King Friedrich IV took the risk, however, because he saw a possibility of putting a further end to small states on and in the Danish-administered territory - after the annexation of Schleswig-Gottorf in 1721. The completion of the so-called state as a whole was ultimately one of the greatest political goals of the Danish Empire in the 18th century and largely concluded with the Treaty of Tsarskoye Selo in 1773.
Friedrich IV officially called in the occupied county in the year of the trial against Wilhelm Adolfs. Catharina Hedwig, the sister of the two brothers, was able to recover the goods from Breitenburg, Drage and Rantzau in a costly process, but Danish officials were used to manage the former county of Rantzau. The so-called administrators took their seat on the Barmstedt Castle Island. August Adolph von Hennings was administrator from 1808 until his death in 1826.
The attempt by Kuno zu Rantzau-Breitenburg , in the course of the political changes caused by the German-Danish War, to restore the family entails, was unsuccessful. With the incorporation of the province of Schleswig-Holstein into the Prussian state, the Danish administration was ended and the former county was assigned to the Pinneberg district in 1867 .
List of Imperial Counts
| Reign | Surname | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| 1653 / 54-1663 | Christian zu Rantzau | Founder of the Reichsgrafschaft, 1st Reichsgraf |
| 1663-1697 | Detlev to Rantzau | 2. Reichsgraf, son of Christian |
| 1697-1721 | Christian Detlev zu Rantzau | 3. Reichsgraf, son of Detlev zu Rantzau, represented in the county from 1715 to 1720 by his brother Wilhelm Adolf, was murdered in 1721 |
| 1721-1726 | Wilhelm Adolf zu Rantzau | 4th and last Reichsgraf, brother of Christian Detlev, accused of murder |
List of administrators
| Term of office | Surname | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| 1726-1730 | Heinrich Blome | |
| 1730-1738 | Christian Albrecht by Johnn | |
| 1738-1768 | Georg Wilhelm Baron von Söhlenthal | |
| 1768-1784 | Christian von Brandt | |
| 1784-1789 | Johann Otto Niemann | |
| 1789-1795 | Friedrich von Bardenfleth | |
| 1795-1807 | Nicolaus Otto Baron von Pechlin | |
| 1808-1826 | August Adolph von Hennings | |
| 1826-1829 | Hans Christian Diedrich Victor von Levetzow | |
| 1829-1849 | Otto Johann von Stemann | |
| 1849-1865 | Adolf von Moltke | from 1868 first district administrator of the Pinneberg district |
topography
Places in the county
The area of the county with an area of about 230 km² corresponded roughly to the northern third of today 's Pinneberg district . The territory included Barmstedt and the parts of Elmshorn north of the Krückau , as well as the surrounding communities, some of which are now part of the Rantzau district. These included Heede , Langeln , Shirtingen , Ellerhoop , Seeth-Ekholt , Kölln-Reisiek , Bullenkuhlen , Klein Offenseth and Sparrieshoop as well as Groß Offenseth , Westerhorn , Brande-Hörnerkirchen and Lutzhorn .
The goods Breitenburg and Drage belonged to the Rantzau family, but were located north outside the area of the county in the Duchy of Holstein in today's Steinburg district .
The former county of Rantzau in the present
Although the county was owned by the Rantzau for only a few generations, the region has been shaped by this time to the present day. The communities around the city of Barmstedt, which largely correspond to the former county, are now administered from the Rantzau office. The area around the Barmstedter Schlossinsel , whose current building stock dates from the time of the Danish administration, is simply called Rantzau by the population , a road there, the Rantzauer See and the Rantzauer Forst also bear the name of the count's family.
The Barmstedter Heiligengeistkirche was rebuilt from 1717 to 1718 under Wilhelm Adolf Rantzau as a successor to a medieval church. In it is still the patronage box of the imperial counts with the so-called count's chair. A museum of the County of Rantzau was set up in the former district court on the castle island . A memorial stone at the suspected crime scene in the forest near the castle island commemorates the murder of Imperial Count Christian Detlev. Some of the members of the count's family are buried in the Itzehoer Laurentiikirche .
The Jewish cemetery in Elmshorn also goes back to the Rantzauer Grafschaft .
Web links
- Barmstedt Wiki on the history of Barmstedt and the County of Rantzau
- Website of the city of Barmstedt: History of the city
- Museum of the County of Rantzau on museen-sh.de
- The Reichsgrafschaft Rantzau on geschichte-sh.de
literature
- Kuno zu Rantzau-Breitenburg : The robbery of the county of Rantzau and other goods belonging to the Rantzau-Breitenburg family entails in Holstein by the kings of Denmark. A public report to save the truth and the violently bent law of the Rantzaus. Hamburg: Perthes, Besser & Mauke, 1865
- Hans Dössel: Barmstedt, a historical show. Husum-Verlag 1988
- Richard Haupt: Barmstedt and Rantzau. Vollbehr & Riepen, approx. 1920
- KJ Lorenzen Schmidt, Die Reichsgrafschaft Rantzau (as of May 27, 2015), on the website of the Society for Schleswig-Holstein History: www.geschichte-sh.de/reichsgrafschaft-rantzau
- Gumpelzhaimer, Heinrich Sigmund Georg, The realm matriculation of all circles: in addition to the Usulamatricles of the Imperial and Reich = Kammergericht ...., Ulm 1796.Digitalisat of the Regensburg (State Library) copy, Sign. 12484785 in: Bayrische Staatsbibliothek, Digital, MDZ Reader , http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de
- Rauert, Matthias Heinrich Theodor, Die Grafschaft Rantzau, Altona (Johann Friedrich Hammerich) 1840, unaltered reprint 1983 (JM Groth) Elmshorn (with introduction by Klaus J. Lorenzen-Schmidt)
- Zedler, Johann Heinrich, "Reichs-Matrickel" in: Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts, Vol. 31, Leipzig 1742, columns 114–158, especially # 10, Nieder-Sächsischer Kreis. Digitized in http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Zedler:Reichs-Matrickelxemplars
- (Rantzau, Karl von), Das Haus Rantzau: Eine Familien: Chronik, Celle (JG Müller) 1865, digitized copy with signature Gen 84-3 of the Bavarian State Library in Munich, print without indication of author; whose name is handwritten under the title; www.digitale-sammlungen.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Hubertus Neuschäffer: Schleswig-Holstein's castles and mansions . Husum Verlag, 1992, p. 24
- ↑ Map of Schleswig-Holstein at the beginning of the 17th century ( memento of the original from May 14, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. The county of Holstein-Pinneberg, from which the smaller county of Rantzau emerged, is shown in blue
- ↑ a b c d e f Hubertus Neuschäffer: Schleswig-Holstein's castles and manors . Husum Verlag, 1992, p. 25
- ↑ Hjördis Jahnecke: The width castle and its gardens in the course of centuries . Verlag Ludwig, 1999, p. 72
- ↑ R. Haupt: Barmstedt and Rantzau . Vollbehr & Riepen, 1920, p. 231
- ↑ a b R. Haupt: Barmstedt and Rantzau . Vollbehr & Riepen, 1920, p. 232
- ↑ a b Hjördis Jahnecke: The Breitenburg and its gardens through the centuries . Verlag Ludwig, 1999, p. 89
- ↑ a b R. Haupt: Barmstedt and Rantzau . Vollbehr & Riepen, 1920, p. 234
- ↑ Hjördis Jahnecke: The width castle and its gardens in the course of centuries . Verlag Ludwig, 1999, p. 90
- ↑ a b Hjördis Jahnecke: The Breitenburg and its gardens through the centuries . Verlag Ludwig, 1999, p. 91
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Spiritual principalities: Archbishopric Bremen | Halberstadt Monastery | Hildesheim Monastery | Lübeck Monastery | Archbishopric Magdeburg | Ratzeburg Monastery | Schwerin Monastery . Imperial prelatures: Riddagshausen Monastery | Gandersheim Monastery . Secular principalities: Duchy of Bremen | Principality of Blankenburg | Principality of Calenberg | Principality of Grubenhagen | Duchy of Holstein ( Gottorf shares and royal shares ) | Principality of Lüneburg | (Partial) Duchy of Mecklenburg-Güstrow | (Partial) Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin | County of Rantzau | Duchy of Saxony-Lauenburg | Principality of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel | Regenstein County . Imperial cities: Bremen | Goslar | Hamburg | Lübeck | Mulhouse | Nordhausen .