Wilhelm von Curti

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Sir William Curtius, 1st Baronet

Johann Wilhelm von Curti , also Johann Wilhelm von Curti called Curtius and from 1652 Sir John William Curtius, 1st Baronet (born May 14, 1598 in Bensheim , baptized August 12, 1599, † January 23, 1678 in Frankfurt am Main ) was born in 1632 Diplomat in English service, ennobled as an English baronet in 1652 , was an electoral Palatinate bailiff and privy councilor .

biography

Johann Wilhelm von Curti was the son of the Bensheim innkeeper and wine merchant Wilhelm Kurtz (Curtius) († 1621), from 1608 a member of the city council of Bensheim, and his wife Anna Schuler . Wilhelm sen. Father Michael Curtius and his wife Ursula Cruzia probably came from the area around Geneva ( ex Allobrogibus ) and probably led their ancestors to the Lombard aristocratic family of Curti di Gravedona . Johann Wilhelm was only baptized on August 12, 1599.

After studying a. a. at the Casimirianum Neustadt and the Calvinist Academia Nassauensis and sporadically in the service of Frederick V of the Electoral Palatinate until around 1632, he was secretary to the English royal state secretary Henry Vane the Elder from May 1631 to around November 1632 and later acted as envoy to the English kings Charles I . and Charles II. From October 1632 to December 1633 he traveled to a diplomatic mission to the troops of the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus , who operated on his campaign in Germany and supported the Protestant and Calvinist side. Still in 1633 several times at the royal courts in London and The Hague , until 1638 he was involved in further diplomatic missions at various royal courts in Germany, mostly maintaining connections between the Electoral Palatinate and England. In 1640 he was found in the Rhein-Main area again, among other things organizing the subsequent burial of his father in Bensheim, he followed the English diplomat Sir Thomas Roe as secret secretary to Vienna from 1641 to 1642 . From 1639 to 1649, i.e. in the last years of the Thirty Years' War and during the exile of the English King that accompanied the English Civil War , he was again in the English diplomatic service at various German royal courts. From 1650 to 1674 he was employed as the Oberamtmann of the Kurpfälzer Oberamt Otzberg and the Electoral Palatinate half in the Umstadt condominium . From 1664 to 1677 he was the English Minister-Resident at the Holy Roman Empire in Frankfurt am Main.

On April 2, 1652 he was given the hereditary title of baronet , named Curtius of Sweden , in the Baronetage of England , and he was named "Sir John William Curtius, 1st Baronet".

On April 14, 1653 was a Hessian-darmstädter Burglehen in Umstadt invested , acquired the local stately homes and left it in the aftermath generously to so-called Curti Castle expand. With the coat of arms that he had attached there, he claimed to be descended from the Lombard, aristocratic family of Curti di Gravedona .

In 1667 he was accepted as a fellow in the Royal Society .

Marriages and offspring

Curti coat of arms from Curti's crypt in the archway of the boundary wall at Palatinate Castle in Groß-Umstadt, underneath dated 1695. Note the oath hand of English baronets on the top right ( red hand of Ulster , the left hand is for the baronets Hand represented)

His first marriage was Johann Wilhelm von Curti on November 8, 1649 in Mülheim near Cologne, Freiin Katharina Fabricius called von Gressenich (1625–1659). She was born in Denklingen in 1625 as the daughter of the Electoral Palatinate-Neuchâtel council, judge and rentmaster Peter Fabricius, called von Gressenich, and of Anna Hoeuft 'from Roermond . Katharina Fabricius died on October 6, 1659, giving birth to her sixth child. In his second marriage, Johann Wilhelm von Curti married Anna Sibylla von Stalburg on April 27, 1676 in Frankfurt am Main (born January 27, 1636 in Frankfurt am Main, † January 12, 1699 at Gut Coblentz in Pomerania ), daughter of Hieronymus von Stalburg, City school in Frankfurt am Main , and Juliana Veronica Kellner, the widow of the wealthy Frankfurt merchant Johann Martin Fay (* May 10, 1632; † May 22, 1674). After his death in 1678, his third wife married Friedrich Wilhelm von Eickstedt in 1681 (* May 15, 1655 - October 15, 1710), district director and knighthood deputy .

His eldest son was Carl-Wilhelm von Curti (1655-1733), who inherited him as a baronet (alias Sir Charles William Curtius, 2nd baronet ). This was Hesse-Darmstadt government councilor and Oberamtmann von Otzberg from 1681 to around 1690/91.

References and comments

  1. ↑ a b c d Sebastian Scholz: The inscriptions of the Bergstrasse district , Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden 1994 ( The German inscriptions vol. 38) ISBN 978-3-88226-746-4 . No. 248 ( online at www.inschriften.net )
  2. ↑ Carola Oman: The Winter Queen: Elizabeth of Bohemia , Hodder and Stoughton Limited, London 1938, pp. 325 and 369
  3. ↑ a b c short biographical notes in: Nadine Akkermann: The Correspondence of Elisabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, Volume I (1601–1631) , Oxford 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-955107-1 . Pp. 1-2 and 916
  4. ↑ Arthur Collins: Peerage of England. FC and J. Rivington, 1812, p. 509
  5. ^ Hermann Kromm: The fortress Otzberg and its surroundings. Documented communications from the past and present . Lauksche Buchdruckerei Groß-Umstadt, Darmstadt 1874, p. 25
  6. ^ Baronetage: Curtius of Sweden at Leigh Rayment's Peerage .
  7. ^ Phyllis S. Salmon: The diplomatic corps under Charles II & James II . Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick 1966, p. 53.
  8. ↑ Phyllis S. Salmon The diplomatic corps under Charles II & James II
  9. ↑ 1573 first record of ancestors in the Bensheim church directory, already Germanized as Kurtz , Latin Curtius. Listed in the German gender register as Freiherren von Kurtz (Curtius). The ancestors probably immigrated via Geneva along the Rhine (ex Allobrogibus ) to what is now Hessian territory. See the inscriptions of the Bergstrasse district , Volume 12, S. Scholz, Vlg. Reichert, 1994, pp. 173–174. A comparison of the coats of arms can also show a strong similarity with the Curti coat of arms ( memento from December 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) of the Lucerne and Rapperswil patrician families.
  10. ↑ Fay, Johann Martin du. Hessian biography (as of May 25, 2012). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on July 1, 2019 .
  11. ^ Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels , Volume 52, p. 254
  12. ^ Johann Goswin Widder: Attempt of a complete geographical-historical description of the electoral Palatinate on the Rheine , part 2, Frankfurt and Leipzig 1786, p. 4

literature

  • Gertrud Großkopf: Wilhelm Curtius (1599–1678). Traces of life of an electoral Palatinate nobleman from Bensheim in the service of the English crown , In: Archive for Hessian history and antiquity ; (= NF 45 (Darmstadt 1987)), pp. 61–116 (not all content correct anymore)

Web links

Commons : William Curtius  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
predecessor Office successor
New title created Baronet (of Sweden)
1652-1678 		Charles William Curtius
personal data
SURNAME Curti, Wilhelm von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Curti, Johann Wilhelm von; Curtius, Sir John William, 1st Baronet
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hessian nobleman and diplomat in English service
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1598
PLACE OF BIRTH Bensheim
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1678
Place of death Frankfurt am Main