Sondershausen (noble family)

The knight family von Sondershausen is a branch of the landgrave marshal von Eckartsberga that split off in the 13th century .

history

Sondershausen came into being around 775 AD, when, according to Franconian law, in Thuringia, too, the "one tenth" of all arable land was "segregated" as imperial property and a network of royal courts (such as Nordhausen, Sangerhausen, Müllhausen, etc.) was expanded on these.

The church institutions also wanted to participate in the considerable imperial property in Thuringia. Before 989, the royal court in Sondershausen, like other imperial courts in Thuringia (Erfurt, Heiligenstadt, Rottleberode) that had not yet been given away, was transferred by King Otto I to the Archbishopric of Mainz . The document from the year 989, which documents the archbishopric lands in Thuringia for the first time, also lists the Gichenburg (Jechaburg Monastery, formerly a pagan sanctuary of the North Sea Germans) with "Sundirshusen". This document also mentions the Mainz Ministerials in Sondershausen in the 12th century.

The first special houses gentlemen

In this document and in a document issued by Mainz in 1103, the two Mainz ministerials in Sondershausen and the Jechaburg monastery, "Widego et Rumarus fratres de Sundershusen", appear as witnesses. Several knight families of Thuringia descended from these brothers, who had three crescents in their coats of arms, namely those of Hanstein , von Bodenhausen , von Rottleberode, von Arnsberg, von Stockhausen and von Nohra. With the death of the childless Dietmar, the first special house gentlemen died shortly before 1200. They managed their territory well and developed the great rule of Sondershausen from the rather modest "Königshof-Sonder" through skillful expansion of ownership.

The second special house mansion

After the extinction of the first gentleman family as an administrative body over the great "rule of Sondershausen", the Archbishop of Mainz, Siegfried II. Gave the entire territory to Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia as a Mainz fief. He passed it on to his closest confidante, Marshal Heinrich II, who received the Ebersburg as early as 1190 and was lent to the Eckartsberga property complex as paternal or grandfather's inheritance.

After the division of the entire Marschall estate in 1226, Heinrich II's younger son Kunemund I received the rule of Sondershausen and became the progenitor of the Knights of Sondershausen, the second family of separate lords.

The rule of Sondershausen was also associated with high jurisdiction , high hunting and the right to mint coins. Kunemund I began building his own manor castle and setting up a court that was customary for the counts. In some of the documents issued for the Walkenried monastery, knightly persons appear as witnesses who were his castle men, vassals and recipients of after-fiefs . He enlarged the already large land holdings received from the landgrave with the goods, allodes and Honstein lendings acquired from his own capital . He also gave goods to the church, including for the salvation of his first wife Jutta von Werthern.

The economic boom of the sex did not even last 100 years. In the autumn of 1294 King Adolf von Nassau broke into Thuringia and devastated the northern parts of Thuringia from Nordhausen to Mühlhausen during his campaign. The goods of the Lords of Sondershausen were leveled with the earth, so that they could not meet their obligations and were forced to sell the entire property with the exception of a few allodes on March 18, 1295 to the Count of Honstein.

The family, which has continued for over 14 generations, has not recovered after the stroke of fate in 1294. The descendants of the family who did not enter the Sachsenburg knightly service, the "Friedrich Line", tried to farm on the unsold alloden Ober- and Niederspier; they died out in the 16th century. The "Saxon Knight Line" was also exempted from Burgmann service when Landgrave Friedrich III. In 1407 Sachsenburg took over. Apparently he noticed the above-average intelligence and the noble demeanor of the knight Kunemund VII stationed there and he appointed him his ministerial. And when the Landgrave acquired the town and castle of Sangerhausen through purchase in 1372 , he put Kunemund in the castle of Sangerhausen. In addition to the Beichling fiefs, he received the old special houses as fiefs for the whole family in full ownership. During this time at least this branch blossomed again.

Knight Heinrich III., Son of Kunemund VII., Was entrusted in 1411 by the Landgrave "for the sake of his faithful ministerial service ..." and also by Count v. Honstein he received additional fiefdoms in Kelbra . According to a document from 1417, knight Michel and knight Hermann VI., Sons of Heinrich III. 18 more feudal farms in the special houses rule as well as the Beichling and Honstein feudal estates.

Knight Melchior I, grandson of Michel, no longer inherited the position of landgrave ministerial and at the end of the 15th century the first signs of the collapse of this second special house property of the family were noticeable. After the loss of most of the former Honstein and now Schwarzburg fiefdoms in 1496, the Knights v. Sondershausen the Burglehn bridges with the marshals v. Bridges and in 1563 Bastian I bought the Mansfeld estate in Emsloh. There, the promising ore mining was forbidden after the first delivery to Suhl by the liege lord Count Albrecht von Mansfeld and Bastian lost all of his fortune and the loan he had taken out.

Despite this repeated impoverishment, the Lords of Sondershausen remained a highly respected family. Melchior I had the highest position in the knighthood of Sangerhausen and was a writer from 1507 . Thanks to this respect from the venerable family, the penniless Dr. jur. Bastian II., The Ultimus von Sondershausen, the rich, noble Catharina v. Marry Zerbst ad H. Gammer around 1600.

The group of people on the provisional family tree should be expanded through further document research. Because there are z. B. in the Nordhäuser document book names of family members of those from Sondershausen who cannot be classified due to the lack of their other data.

Personalities

Hermann IV., Vogt on the Sachsenburg (urk. 1310-1361).
Kunemund VII., Landgfl. Ministeriale (1369, 1391).
Melchior II., Councilor (1554) and court master (urk. 1556) in Wolfenbüttel.
Bastian II., Dr. jur., did his doctorate around 1605 at the University of Halle.

Clergy

Kunemund II, dean and canon in Naumburg Abbey (urk. 1261–1302).
Friedrich III., Canon in Naumburg Abbey (urk. 1268, 1311).
Kunemund V, canon in Naumburg Abbey (urk. 1288, 1310).
Dietrich I., pastor in Thalheim (dated 1310).

coat of arms

Only the double scissor seals (without crest) of several family members are known. The coat of arms with the deer antlers belongs to the "third special houses gentlemen", a vassal family of the Counts of Schwarzburg unknown in aristocratic literature.

Family table

The family tree was created according to information from Otto Posse, Fritz Fischer, Friedrich Schmiedt (see literature) and according to additional data from the document books.

literature

Dobencker, Otto: Regesta diplomatica necnon Epistolaria Historiae Thüringiae (Jena 1896-1939).
Fischer, Fritz: "On the genealogy of the Marschall family" (in: Ahnenreihen ... 1977).
Linke, Günther: "Nordhäuser Urkundenbuch" (1936).
Meissner, Gerhard: "Document book of the imperial city of Nordhausen 1267–1703" (1939).
Mayer, Karl: "The oldest history of the city of Sondershausen" (1931).
Posse, Otto: The seals of the nobility of the Wettin region until 1500 (Dresden 1901-1917).
Schmiedt, Friedrich: "The von Sondershausen in Brücken" (1906).
Siebmacher's heraldic books (1596–1999).
Stimming, Manfred - Acht, Peter: Mainzer Urkundenbuch (Vol. 1 1932, Vol. 2 1968).