Widekind I. (Battenberg and Wittgenstein)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Widekind I. von Battenberg and Wittgenstein (also Widukind , * around 1201; † around 1237) was the second of four sons of Count Werner I of Battenberg and Wittgenstein (* around 1150; † 1215) and his wife, a daughter whose name was unknown of Count Volkwin II. von Schwalenberg and his second wife Lutrud.

Assumption of power

After the death of the father, the founder of the family of Counts von Battenberg and Wittgenstein , in 1215 the eldest of the three surviving brothers, Werner II († 1272), took over the business of government, but then entered the government in 1228 or 1230/31 at the latest the Order of St. John . The county of Battenberg-Wittgenstein fell to Widekind I, who included his younger brother Hermann I († before 1234) in the government.

Maneuvering between Mainz and Hesse

The small county lay in the area of ​​tension between two much more powerful and rival territorial powers, the Thuringian-Hessian Landgraviate of the Ludowingers and the Archbishopric of Mainz , and the counts tried, with varying success, to maintain their independence through tactics. Werner I had already been compelled to sign a contract by Archbishop Konrad I of Mainz in 1190 , according to which he promised to give Wittgenstein Castle to the archbishopric in return for a payment and to get it back from Mainz as a fief . However, since the archbishop still owed part of the agreed sum when he died in 1200, the contract did not come into force and Werner was able to free himself from the associated dependency. In a contract concluded on September 2, 1223 with Werner II, Widekind I and Hermann I, the new Archbishop of Mainz, Siegfried II , managed to get Wittgenstein Castle assigned to the Archbishopric and to give it to them as a fief . With this at the latest, a strong feudal relationship between the Battenbergers and the Mainz Archbishopric was established.

Widekind, who had already moved in the first quarter of the 13th century from the old Battenberg Castle on the high edge of the Battenberg valley (in today's vicarage) to the newly built cellar castle west of the city, soon tried to lean on the landgraves to free from the Mainz dependency. However, this also happened under considerable pressure from the Ludowingers. In 1228 he and his brother Hermann I gave the cellar castle (or at least half of it) to Landgrave Heinrich Raspe as a fief and received it back from him as a fief; at the same time they became landgrave castle men in Marburg for appropriate payment , although they were able to meet their obligations there through deputies.

At the same time (1228) the first, albeit unsuccessful, negotiations with Archbishop Siegfried II took place regarding the sale of the cellar castle (or its other half) to the archbishopric. After Siegfried II died in 1230, these negotiations were carried out in 1234 by his nephew and successor Siegfried III. resumed, but a corresponding draft contract dated April 9, 1234, in which Widekind undertook to have half of the castles Battenberg and Kellerburg and the associated city of Battenberg and county "Stiffe" (or "Stift"), jurisdiction over the territory of the former County Wetter der Gisonen , to be sold to Mainz for 600 marks, was probably only the result of preliminary negotiations. The negotiations were complicated, among other things, by the fact that Widekind not only needed the consent of his brother Hermann, but after Hermann's death also the consent of his wife and daughters that half of the cellar castle was a landgrave's fief and that the succession in Battenberg was conditional it was linked that Widekind's sons would become sons of Mainz.

Death and consequences

Widekind died in 1238 without signing a contract. It was not until July 1238, after his sons Siegfried I and Widekind II had divided the paternal inheritance into the two counties of Wittgenstein and Battenberg , that this sale to the archbishopric was carried out, with both selling their share to the archbishop. The sale was also delayed because Messrs. Von Merenberg were also asserting inheritance claims. In addition, half of the cellar castle had been a fiefdom of the landgrave since 1228, and with the planned sale the Battenbergers at least partially violated their agreements with the landgrave in 1228. He had considerable leverage in hand, not least because Konrad von Thuringia , his brother Heinrich Raspes and Ludowinger regent in their Hessian parts of the country, 1233/34 on the Frankenberg , which had been in Ludowinger's possession since 1122, in the middle of the Battenberg county, a castle and a city had been built in order to put a stop to the Mainz striving for further territorial gains in this area.

Marriage and offspring

Widekind was married to Ida von Runkel, daughter of Siegfried III., Herr von Runkel and Westerburg ( Haus Runkel ). The couple had three sons:

Werner III. became Knight of the Teutonic Order in 1252 and was German Master in 1266. The other two shared the paternal inheritance: Siegfried got Wittgenstein and Widekind got Battenberg. With a few known exceptions, the sons of Widekind II always called themselves Counts of Battenberg, while Siegfried's descendants called themselves von Wittgenstein.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The fourth, Heinrich, had obviously already died.
  2. ↑ Cf. August Heldmann: On the history of the court in Viermünden and its families. I. The Bailiffs of Keseberg. With a stem and seal plate. In: Journal of the Association for Hessian History and Regional Studies. New episode, volume fifteenth. Kassel, 1890 (p. 15).
  3. ↑ See Count von Wittgenstein, Count von Battenberg at Foundation for Medieval Genealogy (fmg.ac)

literature

  • Friedrich Wilhelm Winckel: From the life of Casimir, formerly ruling Count of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg. Brönner, Frankfurt / Main 1842, pp. 1–30 ( online here )
  • Helfrich Bernhard Wenck: Hessian national history. Third volume, Varrentrapp and Wenner, Frankfurt and Leipzig 1803, p. 91 ff. ( Online here )

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Widekind I.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Widukind I.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Count of Battenberg and Wittgenstein
DATE OF BIRTH around 1201
DATE OF DEATH around 1237