Werner III. (Maggots)

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Werner III. (* around 1040/45; † February 24, 1065 ) was Reichssturmfähnrich and close companion of King Henrich IV. He was Count of Maden , on the middle Lahn ( Weilburg ), in Neckargau and in Thurgau .

origin

Werner III. was the only son of Count Werner II of Maden and Neckargau, who died on June 18, 1053 in the Norman Battle of Civitate together with his brother Adalbert II of Winterthur and their cousin Burkhard II of Nellenburg for their related Pope Leo IX. had fallen. Since Werner was still a minor when his father died, his unknown mother presumably administered the Hessian inheritance, while a cousin of his father, Eberhard der Selige von Nellenburg , is said to have taken on the role of guardian in Swabia and temporarily served as count in Neckargau .

Werner III. Werner von Grüningen was also called himself, probably to emphasize that he was a scion of the count family, who held the right of action and inheritance of the Reichssturmfähnrichs , which was connected with the imperial fief of the castle and city of Grüningen (today Markgröningen ).

Companion of the young king

From 1061, now of legal age, Werner was the official owner of the county of Maden in Hessengau , which included the areas around Fritzlar , Rotenburg , Spangenberg , Melsungen and Homberg an der Efze . In addition, from 1062 and 1065 at least parts of the Ohm - Lahn county ( Weilburg ), Grossen-Linden southwest of Gießen , and Homberg an der Ohm were added . His grandfather Werner I. von Winterthur also owned property and fiefs near the Kyburg in Thurgau , Neckargau , Rheingau and Worms .

Despite his youth, he seems to have had a considerable influence on the even younger King Henry IV, who was born in 1050 and is probably related to him. In any case, Lambert von Hersfeld, along with Empress Agnes and Archbishop Adalbert von Bremen, gave him a decisive influence on imperial politics in those years. However, the chronicler, a staunch opponent of the archbishop and the "powerful" and that his "wildness" evidently feared Count Werner, 1064 Lamberts monastery, who was imperial abbey Hersfeld , with the support of the king an estate in Kirchberg in Gudensberg had stolen.

Werner was married to Willebirg von Achalm , through which he and subsequently his son acquired further Swabian property. In January 1065 King Heinrich IV elevated Werner's underage brother-in-law Werner II von Achalm to the position of Bishop of Strasbourg - a favor ignoring canon law, with which those involved negotiated the allegation of simony and which was intended to contribute to the investiture dispute .

The End

On February 24, 1065, Count Werner got involved in a scuffle in Ingelheim in which his vassals are said to have gotten into because of looting. He was struck down on the head by the club of one of “the lowest serfs in our monastery or, as others say, a dancer”. According to Lambert von Hersfeld, the seriously injured man was then carried to the royal court, where the bishops present there ordered him to return the illegally appropriated Meierhof in Kirchberg to the Hersfeld monastery : “But he did not submit in any way until the bishops unanimously threatened to make the dying man holy Not wanting to serve the Lord's Supper if he had not first exonerated himself from such a great sin. ”When he finally gave in,“ he passed away immediately ”.

Werner III. left a five year old son, Werner IV. who, as the last representative of his house also on the side of Henry IV. and finally his son Henry V was to be found.

literature

  • Ludwig Friedrich Hesse & Wilhelm Wattenbach : The yearbooks of Lambert von Hersfeld . Leipzig 1893
  • Ludwig Friedrich Heyd : History of the Counts of Gröningen . Stuttgart 1829
  • Paul Kläui : The Swabian origin of Count Werner . In: Journal of the Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies , Vol. 69, 1958, pp. 9-18
  • Wilhelm Christian Lange:  Werner IV . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 42, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1897, pp. 22-27.
  • Karl Hermann May: Reichsbanneramt and right of litigation from a Hessian perspective . Münster / Cologne 1952

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paul Kläui : The Swabian origin of Count Werner . In: Journal of the Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies , Vol. 69, 1958, pp. 9-18.
  2. ^ Ludwig Friedrich Heyd : History of the Counts of Gröningen , Stuttgart 1829, p. 5ff.
  3. ↑ Annales von Lambert von Hersfeld , translation by Ludwig Friedrich Hesse a. Wilhelm Wattenbach: The yearbooks of Lambert von Hersfeld , Leipzig 1893, p. 65. Digitized
  4. ↑ According to Lambert von Hersfeld 1066.
  5. ↑ Ludwig Friedrich Hesse & Wilhelm Wattenbach: The year books of Lambert von Hersfeld , Leipzig 1893, p. 76. Digitized
personal data
SURNAME Werner III.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Count of Maden
DATE OF BIRTH around 1040
DATE OF DEATH February 24, 1065