Udonen

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The Udonen were a noble family that administered the north and east of the Elbe-Weser triangle as counts from the 10th to the 12th century. Heinrich von Stade ("the bald", † 976) took his seat in Harsefeld , and built a castle there in 965/969. Probably in 1014 the counts moved their seat to Stade and called themselves Counts of Stade .

Heinrich's grandson Udo I became Margrave of the Nordmark in 1056 . The Nordmark comprised today's areas east of the Altmark on the Middle Elbe. Soon, but also after its extinction, the county on the Lower Elbe was referred to in documents as comitatus marchionis Udonis (county of Margrave Udo) . The Udons had the imperial directness for the county of Stade bought from the Archdiocese of Bremen in 1063 and ruled there as its vassals, but in the Altmark as imperial princes until 1134 . With the brothers Udo IV († 1130), Rudolf II. († 1144) and Archbishop Hartwig I of Bremen , the male line died out. The title of Count for the Nordmark went to the Ascanian Albrecht I as early as 1134 , who succeeded in its renewed expansion to the east - now as the Mark Brandenburg . Hartwig's right to inherit Rudolf was challenged by Heinrich the Lion , who ruled the county of Stade for several years from 1145 onwards. Only after his deposition by Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa did most of the county come under the direct secular rule of the Bremen archbishops .

Family history

The Udons are named after one of their key names . The name Udo came into the family through Judith, a daughter of Count Udo in Rheingau and Wetterau († 949), and was later combined with the other lead names Lothar and Luder to form Luder-Udo.

Since Kunigunde, the mother of the well-known historian Bishop Thietmar von Merseburg , was a Udonin, we can find reliable information about the beginnings of her family in his chronicle. Thietmar mentions that his two great-grandfathers named Liutheri died in the Battle of Lenzen (September 5, 929). His maternal grandfather was Count Heinrich, who was married to Judith.

The Ragyndrudis Codex has been kept in Fulda for over a thousand years . According to tradition, St. Boniface tried to protect himself with him in vain when he was martyred in Dokkum in 754. On the penultimate page there is a memorial entry of the Udons in a manuscript from the end of the 10th century, which begins with Count Heinrich, his wife Hildegard and their daughter Hildegard (illustration by Hucke, between pp. 10 and 11). It is unclear whether the head of the memorial entry is Count Heinrich the Bald or his son Count Heinrich II, known as the Good. The memorial entry shows Liutheri and Suuanihilt as first parents.

Thietmar von Merseburg emphasizes that his grandfather, Count Heinrich I, was closely related to Emperor Otto I. The degree of relationship is unknown. The proximity is confirmed that Count Heinrich same name as King Henry I was wearing. According to the memorial entry in Fulda, his clan included two Gerburgs and Gerburc that could not be precisely classified , which is reminiscent of King Heinrich I's daughter Gerberga . Count Heinrich the Kahle also had a daughter Hathui, secured by Thietmar von Merseburg, who was Otto the Great's godchild and through his influence became abbess of Heeslingen (near Zeven ) in 973 at the age of 12 . Hathui was already the name of King Henry I's mother. So far, a connection via Lothar, who fell in 929, is suspected. Since Lothar and Schwanhild named their two sons Siegfried and Heinrich (the bald) and Siegfried does not appear among the Ottonians , Lothar may have named his son Siegfried after his own ancestors. Therefore Schwanhild will have been a kings relative. A daughter of King Heinrich I from his first marriage to Hatheburg von Merseburg is conceivable. In any case, a married couple Liutker and Suanehilt , marked with an enigmatic F , are in 19th and 20th positions on a list of 72 names in the book of fraternities in St. Gallen, dating from before 929 . These are the relatives and vassals of King Heinrich I and Queen Mathilde at the top .

It is very likely that the first Udone Lothar / Luidger known by name did not come from the Stade area . The fate of his son Siegfried is unknown. Until the first half of the 20th century, it was assumed that Lothar's son Siegfried would become the progenitor of the Counts of Northeim , which would suit a kings relative. This is no longer upheld these days - perhaps wrongly. Siegfried's brother Heinrich the Bald was married off. with the administration of the counties of Billunger Wichmann d. Ä. in the Elbe-Weser triangle when he died in 944 and his two underage sons Wichmann d. J. and Ekbert the One-Eyed Man could not yet defend the lower Weser and Elbe. When Wichmann and Ekbert turned in several feuds against their uncle Hermann Billung and their cousin King Otto I - his mother Mathilde was a sister of her deceased mother - Heinrich I and his brother Siegfried fought on the side of the duke. In 957/58 Ekbert was reconciled with his relatives, while his brother Wichmann repeatedly took up arms. In 959 Count Heinrich der Kahle administered the county of Wichmanns in the districts of Helinge and Moside as a legacy . After Wichmann d. In 967, when he was outlawed, Heinrich the Bald was finally enfeoffed with the county on both sides of the Elbe and presumably also with other rights of the Wichmann line in the Elbe-Weser triangle. In 969 he received permission to build a castle in Harsefeld (also called Rosenfeld), which his descendants converted into a world monastery in 1001/10 and in 1100/01 into a monastery. The seat of the count had been moved to Stade, after which the gender and the county were later named.

In the 11th century Adam von Bremen reports that the Udonen county was scattered over the entire area of ​​the Archbishopric of Hamburg / Bremen . At the end of 1056, Count Luder-Udo I was additionally enfeoffed with the Nordmark as margrave and died a year later. His son Udo II inherited both fiefdoms, but agreed for a lot of money that the Grafschaft Stade became a fiefdom of the Archbishopric of Hamburg / Bremen. Margraves of the Nordmark remained the Udones until 1128 Margrave Heinrich IV died without sons. The county of Stade was alienated from them - beginning in 1106 - by Count Friedrich von Stade , who came from their ministerial status and who was replaced by King Lothar III in 1125 . was released and enfeoffed by the archbishop with the county of Stade. Only after Friedrich's death (April 13, 1135) was the last secular Udone Rudolph II von Freckleben enfeoffed with the county of Stade. After Count Rudolph II fell in Dithmarschen in 1144, his brother Hartwig was enfeoffed with the county of Stade as provost in Bremen. After his time as Archbishop Hartwig I (1148–1168), his fiefdom fell to the Hamburg-Bremen church. The Udons were extinct in the male line.

See also

literature

  • Richard G. Hucke: The Counts of Stade 900-1144, Genealogy, political position, Comitat and allodial possession of the Saxon Udonen , Diss. Kiel, Stade 1956 with extensive references to the sources and older literature.
  • Michael Hohmann: The ore monastery of Bremen and the county of Stade in the 12th and early 13th centuries, in: Stader Jahrbuch 1969 (Stader Archive New Series 59) pp. 49–118
  • Gerd Althoff : Noble and royal families as reflected in their memorial tradition, studies on the commemoration of the dead of Billunger and Ottonen, Munich 1984, H 33, G 19, G 28, G 45, G 63, G 68, G 84, G 88, G 112, G 131, G 140, G 145, G 155, G 175,
  • Klaus Frerichs / Diether Ziermann / Diethard Meyer (eds.): A place in the focal point of history - castle, monastery, chapels and monastery in Harsefeld , Stade 1989
  • Winfried Glocker: The relatives of the Ottonians and their significance in politics , Diss. Munich, Cologne / Vienna 1989, p. 356 f
  • Friedrich Adolf Schröder: Stade - Rinkhorst - Wigmodi, Karolinger and Ottonen between Weser and Elbe , Hildesheim 1990
  • Torsten Lüdecke: Findings of urban archeology on early urban development , in: Jürgen Bohmbach (Ed.): Stade, From the beginnings of settlements to the present , Stade 1994, pp. 51–83
  • Heinz-Joachim Schulze: The struggle for county and city: Stade from the end of the 10th to the middle of the 13th century , in: Jürgen Bohmbach (Ed.): Stade, From the settlement beginnings to the present , Stade 1994, p. 51 -83
  • Chronicon Monasterii Rosenfeldensis seu Hassefeldensis , in: Johann Vogt: Monumenta Inedita rerum germanicarum praecipue Bremensium , 1st volume, 2nd piece, Bremen 1741, pp. 106-292 ( digitized ); Reprinted by Harsefeld in 2002 with a translation by Pastor Seebo
  • Diether Ziermann / Dietrich Alsdorf / Hans Drescher: A place in transition - Harsefeld Castle, Abbey and Monastery , Stade 2002
  • Dieter Riemer : Harsefeld in the Middle Ages (Harsefelder Regesten) , in: Geschichte und Gegenwart 2005, pp. 38–55
  • Hartmut Rüß: Eupraxia-Adelheid, A biographical approach, in: Year books for the history of Eastern Europe , New Series Vol. 54 (2006) pp. 481-518
  • Karl Ernst Hermann Krause:  Lothar III. In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1884, pp. 257-261.

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Bremer Urkundenbuch, Vol. I: