Wartenfels (noble family)
The knights and barons of Wartenfels were an aristocratic family who named themselves after the castle of the same name near Lostorf . The first mention of representatives of the family comes from the early 13th century. The male line died out in the first half of the 14th century.
The first two representatives of the family were the knights Werner and Johann , both of whom were listed as witnesses in a document in 1250. Werner von Wartenfels is said to have participated in the Fourth Crusade and the conquest of Constantinople as early as 1204 and brought home valuable relics and bones of saints from this trip. It is not known whether the next generation descends from one of these two: Heinrich von Wartenfels bequeathed an estate to the St. Urban monastery in the village of Lostorf, while his alleged brother Rudolf was canon in Zofingen and from 1290 its provost. As provost, he also made donations to the St. Urban monastery in the name of his canon.
Heinrich von Wartenfels had two sons. Hug , probably the younger of the two, embarked on a spiritual career and became canon at the Grossmünster in Zurich . His older brother Niklaus von Wartenfels held the office of chairman at the court court of King Albrecht I of Habsburg in 1300 . His last known activity was in 1323, to lead the district court in the Landgraviate Buchsgau and the Landgrave Rudolf III. from Neuenburg-Nidau to report. The district court met this year at the "Allerheiligenhaus" dinghouse on the Siggern . Niklaus carried the title of baron. With him the family died out in the male line. He left behind a daughter named Adelheid , whose first marriage to a Montfort was childless. After his death she married the baron Johann von Tengen. Her son, Johann the Younger von Tengen, presided over the Buchsgau district court in 1371 like his grandfather.
It has not been established whether the two members of Bern's Grand Council in the 16th century, Vinzenz and Gilg von Wartenfels , belonged to this noble family. Later, the Solothurn patrician family Grimm named themselves after the Wartenfels Castle Grimm von Wartenfels . The Solothurn politician Heinrich Grimm von Wartenfels (1754-1821) belonged to this sex .
The owner families from Solothurn expanded the old castle complex into a country estate known as Wartenfels Castle .
coat of arms
Blazon : split by black and five diamonds in white and red.
literature
Urs Peter Strohmeier: 17th Wartenfels (Solothurn) . In: Gustav Schwab (Hrsg.): Switzerland in its knight castles and mountain castles historically depicted by patriotic writers . Third volume Johann Felix Jacob Dalp, Bern, Chur and Leipzig 1839, p. 141–148 ( digitized from Google Books [accessed December 19, 2011] with a historical introduction by Professor Johann Jakob Hottinger in Zurich).