Wichmann II.

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. Wichmann II (also with the suffix the Younger called) from the Saxon noble family of Bill Unger , (* 930, † 22 September 967 ) was Count in many districts in Engern and became known as the "rebel of the Ottos -rich".

Saxony in the 10th century

Origin and family

Wichmann was the son of Count Wichmann I (the elder) from the Billunger family (* around 900, † April 23, 944).
His mother was most likely a sister of Queen Mathilde , the wife of King Heinrich I. Thus Wichmann was a nephew by marriage of Heinrich I and a cousin of Emperor Otto I.

Wichmann's father had two younger brothers:

Wichmann had the following siblings:

  • Bruno, (* 920/925, † February 14, 976), who in 962 as Bruno I of Saxony succeeded his uncle Amelung in the diocese of Verden ;
  • Ekbert , (* around 932; † April 994) (also called Ekbert the one-eyed );
  • Hadwig, (* 939, † July 4, 1014), also known as Hathui, married to Siegfrid von Merseburg, the son of Margrave Gero ; after his death first abbess of Gernrode

Whether too

was a brother of Wichmann, is controversial in historical research. An at least close family relationship to the Billungers seems to be certain.

Wichmann was married. His wife was probably called Hathwig.

Little is known about Wichmann's descendants either. To be named:

  • Amelung, son of Hathwig
  • Imma and Frideruna (also Frederuna), († February 3, 1025?), Both abbesses of Kemnade .

Life path

King's seal of Otto I.

childhood

Wichmann was brought to Otto I's court as a child and brought up there like a king's son, together with his brother Ekbert and Otto's son, Liudolf , who was about the same age . Although still young in years, he will not have missed the quarrels that raged both within the royal family and between the king and Wichmann's father.

The sovereignty created by Otto's father, King Heinrich I , over the Slavic tribes in the area between the Elbe / Saale and Oder / Neisse lines was not yet consolidated. Immediately after King Heinrich's death in 936, the Redarian tribes that had settled southeast of the Müritz rose up. Heinrich's successor Otto I appointed Wichmann's uncle, Hermann Billung, as military leader and tasked him with suppressing the uprising. Hermann Billung forced the Redarians to pay tribute again, for which the king appointed him margrave over the Slavic territories of the Redarians, Abotrites , Wagrians and also against the Danes who repeatedly invaded from the north .

Wichmann's father was outraged against this preference for the younger brother. However, since his objections were not heard by the king, he left the army, pretending to be ill, and sided with Duke Eberhard von Franken , who was in open conflict with Otto I over a feudal dispute. In 938, however, he gave up his resistance to the king and remained devoted to him from then on.

When Wichmann lost their father in 944, he and his brother Ekbert were still too young to take on the count's duties in their districts between the Elbe and the Lower Weser , so that their uncle Hermann Billung, as their legal guardian, was in charge of the administration of their inheritance and Count Heinrich I. von Stade , a close relative of the king and probably related by marriage to Hermann Billung, who took over the legacy of their counties. The uncle took the opportunity to curtail his two nephews' inheritance. The fact that their complaints with the king in this regard were unsuccessful, justified the resentment of the two brothers against both the uncle and the king.

Participation in the Liudolfin uprising

King Otto I also found fierce opponents within his own family. His son Liudolf in particular found himself in violent arguments with his father, worried about his own succession to the throne. When he married Adelheid of Burgundy for dynastic reasons in 951 , who bore him a son in 953, Liudolf feared a reversal of the succession and began an armed rebellion against the royal father. Many princes, especially in Saxony, Lorraine and Bavaria , who were also in conflict with the king, joined the uprising.

In July 953 Otto I moved with an army to Mainz , where his son had holed up and was waiting for his father in arms. There were weeks of fighting, costing both sides. The king asked Hermann Billung for a replacement army, which Margrave Dietrich and Wichmann brought in from Saxony. This army, however, was lured into an ambush by Liudolf and his brother-in-law Konrad , the husband of Otto I's daughter Liutgard. Liudolf tried to get the two military leaders on his side with promises. Dietrich's attempt failed, but Wichmann changed sides because of his anger at his uncle and the king and now fought his cousin in front of Mainz.

About sixty days after Otto I began besieging Mainz, neither party had gained any significant advantage and it was decided to negotiate. The king sent Ekbert, Wichmann's brother, who had lost an eye in a careless fight, as a hostage into the city in order to ensure safe conduct to the army camp at all times . Liudolf and Konrad came before the king, pleaded guilty to the rebellion and were ready to atone, but stipulated that their co-conspirators remained unpunished. The king rejected this condition. Thereupon Liudolf ended the negotiations and moved with his army from Mainz to Regensburg , since the Bavarians had meanwhile also joined him.

After Wichmann met his brother Ekbert again in Mainz, who was angry with the king because he interpreted his eye injury as self-inflicted recklessness, they both decided to rebel against their uncle in Saxony, because they publicly referred to him as the robber of their paternal inheritance and Thief of their treasures . They moved with their entourage to Saxony, where Hermann Billung acted as the king's representative (procurator regis), and tried to organize an uprising. Her uncle was able to prevent this and take his two nephews prisoner. After Otto I had been unsuccessful against his son even before Regensburg, he retired to Saxony at the end of 953. There Hermann Billung brought his captured nephews before the king and accused them of rebellion. The councils suggested chastising them, but the king was lenient: Ekbert was released and only Wichmann was sentenced to imprisonment at court.

Alliance with Slavic tribes

At the beginning of 955 the king moved to Bavaria to conquer Regensburg. Wichmann was supposed to accompany the king, but he had other plans and put forward illness. Thereupon Otto I appealed to his cousin that he should not cause any further difficulties for him, who had taken him in instead of his son, and commissioned Count Iba to supervise Wichmann during his absence. A few days later, Wichmann asked the Count to be allowed to take part in the hunt. Wichmann used his permission to flee because his followers had already been waiting for him in the forest. Marauding, they moved to Engern, raided several castles, and Wichmann allied himself again with his brother Ekbert, with whom he again attacked his uncle's troops. But the latter was able to successfully defend himself against his nephews and drove them north across the Elbe, where they came to the area of ​​the Abodrites .

Slavs building a castle

At that time the Abodrites' dominion was on the Mecklenburg River , where Prince Nakon ruled. He probably had a friendship alliance with Wichmann I, which is why he let the two brothers do their thing in his domain. Wichmann managed to withstand a first attack by Hermann on Suislecrane Castle, only to invade Saxony after Easter 955 at the head of a Slavic army. Hermann Billung was not up to this superiority and had to withdraw. In the ramparts of Cocarescem, the civilian population from the area had sought protection and negotiated with Wichmann that the lives of the free citizens, including their wives and children, would be exchanged for the servants and all household items. But this contract was not kept, the result was the murder of all adult male citizens. The mothers and their children were abducted as prisoners.

The Recknitz

After Otto I. had crushed the Magyars in the battle on the Lechfeld near Augsburg on August 10, 955 , he wanted retaliation for the Cocarescem massacre. Wichmann and Ekbert were accused of high treason and ostracized as enemies of the country, but their supporters were offered the prospect of amnesty if they gave up their resistance to Hermann Billung and the king. The Abodrites also wanted to benefit from this regulation and offered to place themselves under the king's obligation to pay interest, but they wanted to retain sovereignty in their territories. The king refused and moved with his army towards the Baltic Sea. On October 16, 955, the Abodrites were defeated in the Battle of the Raxa . Wichmann and Ekbert managed to break away and to flee to Duke Hugo the Great in France. It is not known whether they still took part in the battle or had fled before. Hugo was Hadwig's husband, Otto I's sister, and thus the cousin of the two fugitives.

Temporary submission

The following year, Wichmann managed to sneak into his homeland and visit his wife.

Duke Hugo died on June 16, 956 and Wichmann had to leave France. King Otto I immediately sent an army to meet him, apparently under the leadership of Margrave Gero, but Wichmann asked him to ask the king for mercy. Gero's son Siegfrid, who was Wichmann's brother-in-law, also stood up for him. After Wichmann had taken an oath that he would never speak against the king again in his life, he was allowed to withdraw to the property of his wife and his ban was lifted.

Wichmann kept his oath for the next few years. Also when Otto I moved to Rome in 961 , where he was on February 2, 962 by Pope John XII. was crowned emperor, Wichmann initially remained calm. But when the emperor's return was delayed, in 963 he tried to win over King Harald Blauzahn of Denmark, who had rebelled against the German Empire as early as 960, for a campaign against Saxony. The Danish king, however, realized that Wichmann only wanted to abuse him for his own purposes and refused. Wichmann, together with his brother Ekbert, undertook various raids on his own in the Billunger Mark, but was again unable to defeat his uncle. Rather, he had to flee after some of his comrades were caught and strangled. When Margrave Gero learned that Wichmann had broken his oath, he sent him back to the Slavs, where he was welcomed by the Redarian tribe.

Fight against the Polans and renewed rebellion against Hermann Billung

At this time, the West Slav Polans under the Piast prince Mieszko I gained strength and expanded both eastward to the Bug and westward from the Oder, where they encountered bitter resistance from the Slavic tribes and the margraves of the German Empire. Wichmann fought together with his hosts against the Polish duke, was able to defeat him twice in battle in 963 and also killed his brother.

Slavic place of worship

In the Billunger marrow, the West Slavic tribe of the Wagrians had already been Christianized, and their prince Zelibor's center of power was in the city of Starigard , today's Oldenburg . Although the Wagrians belonged to the tribal association of the Abodrites, Zelibor refused to recognize a supremacy of Prince Mistivoy , who ruled the Abodrites as Nakon's successor.

The opponents had already tried several times before Hermann Billung, who, as the ruling Prince of the Mark, was also the competent court lord . This was also the case in 967. The verdict was to the disadvantage of Zelibor, which led him to take up arms against Hermann Billung. Wichmann immediately seized this opportunity to fight his uncle, but as before without success. After the duke's troops besieged the Wagrier castle and starved to death in a very short time, Wichmann fled and fled, this time to the Wollin tribe at the mouth of the Oder.

Another fight against the Polans and death

In the same year Mieszko I tried to conquer the area of ​​the Oder estuary and the rich trading town of Wollin . Wichmann fought again with his hosts against Mieszko. Wichmann died a little later from the consequences of the injuries sustained in this fight.

swell

The most abundant contemporary source is the Saxon history ("Res gestae Saxonicae") by Widukind von Corvey . However, his explanations are in places incorrect, which is why the value of the source is controversial.

literature

  • Joachim Herrmann (Ed.): The Slavs in Germany. History and culture of the Slavic tribes west of Oder and Neisse from the 6th to 12th centuries. A manual . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1970 ( publications of the Central Institute for Ancient History and Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR , Vol. 14).
  • Wolfgang Giese: The Saxon tribe and the empire in Ottonian and Salian times . Franz Steiner, Wiesbaden 1979.
  • Hans-Joachim Freytag: The rule of the Billunger in Saxony . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1951.
  • Herbert Ludat: On the Elbe and the Oder around the year 1000. Sketches on the politics of the Ottonian Empire and the Slavic powers in Central Europe . Böhlau, Weimar 1995.
  • Werner Goez : Count Wichmann the Younger († 22.9.967). In: Pictures of life from the Middle Ages. The time of the Ottonians, Salians and Staufers. Primus, Darmstadt 2010, ISBN 978-3-89678-701-9 , pages 41-52.
Lexicons

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Biangibudiburg would come into question as the place of birth , as the probable place of residence of his parents and the administrative center of the property of Wichmann I the Elder
  2. ↑ Engern is the middle part of the old home country of the Saxons and lies in a strip from Hamburg to Nordhausen between Westphalia and Ostfalen
  3. ↑ Today's reader will associate the term “Saxony” with an idea that differs considerably from the reality of the Middle Ages. At the time of Wichmann the ancestral land of the Saxons consisted of Westphalia , Engern and Ostfalen .
  4. ↑ Widukind von Corvey , Sachsengeschichte, Third Book, Chapter 59 and Chapter 60
  5. ↑ On a page of the English Foundation for Medieval Genealogy (FMG) a woman named Hathwig is mentioned as the presumed wife of Wichmann. Both could also be the parents of a son named Amelung
  6. ↑ on a page of the English Foundation for Medieval Genealogy (FMG) Wichmann and Hatwig are named as possible parents of Count Amelung.
  7. ↑ According to Monastic Matrix , Frederuna was abbess in Kemnade until 1025
  8. ↑ When his father died, Wichmann was around 14 years old, and his mother either died in childbed or shortly after his birth
  9. ↑ also referred to as the so-called "Billunger Mark"
  10. ↑ This temporary rebellion against the king could have been a reason why Otto I brought his young nephews Wichmann and Ekbert to the court for further education
  11. ↑ Widukind von Corvey: Sachsengeschichte , Third Book, Chapter 24
  12. ^ Ernst Schubert: Politics, Constitution, Economy from the 9th to the end of the 15th century (= History of Lower Saxony, Vol. II, 1). Hahn, Hannover 1997, ISBN 3-7752-5900-7 , pp. 160 f.
  13. ↑ The exact location of the castle today is no longer known for a legend of the dwarves of Hitzacker but they could from the marshes of the Elbe towards Hitzacker have lain
  14. ↑ Widukind von Corvey, Sachsengeschichte, chapter 52, in the translation by Wilhelm Wattenbach, Verlag Phaidon 1990, describes it as follows: “When the barbarians now stormed into the castle, one of them recognized his maid in the wife of a freedman, and he was her tried to wrest from her husband's hand, he was punched and shouted that the Saxon had broken the treaty. "
  15. ↑ The course of this battle is described in great detail by Widukind von Corvey in the "Sachsengeschichte", Third Book, Chapters 53 to 55.
  16. ↑ Where exactly this homeland was or where his wife's goods were located is not clear from the sources. The place Wichmannsburg, today part of Bienenbüttel in the Lüneburg Heath , district of Uelzen, would be conceivable . But other places that were handed over to Kemnade Monastery as Wichmann's inheritance may also come into question. (see web link to the certificate Heinrich II. from 1004)
  17. ↑ The fact that he was able to carry out this journey undiscovered shows again the numerous allies he had in Saxony
  18. ↑ The districts of Plön and Ostholstein together are still called Wagrien today
  19. ↑ Widukind von Corvey suggests in his history of Saxony (Third Book, Chapter 68) that this entire episode could have been a conspiracy of Zelibor and Hermann Billung against Wichmann, since it is not credible that a man as trained in the war as Zelibor is so bad prepared to go to war
  20. ↑ Zelibor had to hand over his prince's office and his possessions to his son, who as hostage Hermann Billungs had recognized the sovereignty of the Abodrites
  21. ↑ The Saxon history of the Widukind von Corvey. , in: Sources on the history of the Saxon imperial era, translated by Albert Bauer, Reinhold Rau (Freiherr vom Stein-Gedächtnisausgabe 8), Darmstadt 1971, pp. 1–183.
personal data
SURNAME Wichmann II.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wichmann II von Billung; Wichmann II the Younger
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Saxon Count; Rebel of the Ottonian Empire
DATE OF BIRTH at 930
PLACE OF BIRTH unsure: Biangibudiburg
DATE OF DEATH September 22, 967