Wilhelm von Tübingen (Count of Gießen)

Wilhelm von Tübingen, Count of Gießen († before September 28, 1256 ) usually called himself Count of Tübingen or Count of Gießen .

family

Wilhelm von Tübingen was the youngest son of Count Palatine Rudolf I of Tübingen and Mechthild von Gießen , heir daughter of Count Wilhelm von Gleiberg . Rudolf's sons, Count Palatine Rudolf († 1247) and Wilhelm, shared the property. Through their sons, the former became the progenitor of the Counts of Horb and Herrenberg, the latter the progenitor of the Böblingen and Asperg lines.

He was married to Willibirg von Württemberg († 1252), daughter of Count Ludwig III. , and had the following children with her:

• Adelheid (around 1236) ∞ Kuno von Munzenberg
• Rudolf I. Count of Böblingen († 1272)
• Ulrich I. Count of Asperg and Gießen († August 5, 1283)
• Heilwig († after 1294) ∞ Ludwig von Isenburg-Büdingen († after 1303)

Live and act

Claims against monasteries

When his father made a donation to the Hemmenrode monastery in 1206 with the approval of his sons , Wilhelm was named last among the brothers listed according to their age. Like his father and brother, he did not care about the rights and freedoms that the Marchthal Monastery had received from the founder, but instead asserted claims to umbrella bailiwick and sovereign rights over its possessions.

It was mainly the goods of the monastery in the immediate vicinity of Tübingen, the Ammerhof and the vineyards located there, then others between the village of Lustnau and the city of Tübingen, which Wilhelm and his sons Rudolf and Ulrich shared with the monastery. The provost of the monastery therefore repeatedly sued the count with the Bishop of Konstanz, before whom Wilhelm finally confessed his injustice in Mörsberg and declared that he had no sovereign rights and no guardianship over the Ammern farm and the vineyards located there, and he did so, if ever such should come to him, put in the hands of the provost and renounce it. In response to this declaration and promise, Wilhelm was relieved of compensation for the damage done to the monastery, but on the condition that he would not continue to stretch his violent hands against the farm and the vineyards there, if not he would have to give full compensation.

With the approval of his sons, Rudolf and Ulrich, Wilhelm had pledged his possible rights, the umbrella bailiff, his claims to the monastery for 200 marks silver to the diocese of Constance, but then sold them in full; this sum was shot by the monastery, which gave him an additional 20 marks and reduced the compensation.

Count Wilhelm was more friendly towards the Bebenhausen monastery . In a solemn negotiation and with the consent of his two sons and daughters, in honor of Mary, for the salvation of his already deceased wife Wilpirgis and all his relatives, he gave the church in Lustnau with everything that belonged to the castvogtei of the same. On March 24, 1244, as mentioned above, with the favor and at the request of his brother, Count Palatine Rudolf, he freed his farms in Geisenang and Zuffenhausen and all other goods that the same monastery already owned and would acquire in the future, and allowed the custodians of the monastery there to set up cattle guards and field guards and to graze their cattle alone or with others. The document was given to Asperg and marked with his and his brother's seal.

Count Wilhelm also showed himself to be charitable towards two other monasteries in Swabia:

• Two knights of Wurmlingen, Eberhard and Reinhard, Tübingen ministers, placed a court there in the hands of Count Wilhelm in 1252, which he immediately handed over to the Kirchberg women's monastery as free property at their request.
• Albert and Volmar, von Waldeck brothers, knights, sold vineyards in Gemmrigheim to the Reichenbach monastery . Count Wilhelm, from whom they had them as a fief, renounced his property rights in favor of the monastery, whereas the aforementioned knights assigned him other vineyards from their property in Bönnigheim as fiefs.

Acting as Count von Gießen

As the owner of the Grafschaft Gießen inherited from his mother, we find him in 1229 in the mediation of a dispute between the Schiffenberg monastery and the community of Steinbach . In a similar thing we find him in 1235:

• His "cara consanguinea", Countess Clementia, had given the Schiffenberg monastery a courtyard on loan yesterday. This donation later gave rise to disagreements between the community of Leihgestern and the monastery, which Count Wilhelm enclosed, confirmed the donation from his relatives and, among other things, stipulated that the monastery should, according to an old law, harvest any day and one day before the community of Leitgestern Field guard was allowed to set up at any time.

Wilhelm himself (he calls himself Count von "Gizzen" in the document) donated an estate in Obbornhofen in 1239 , which, along with other goods, was carried by Gerlach von Budingen, and from this Micheling von Nordecken to fiefdom, with the approval of this and under the advisory board of Macharius von Linden, Sigfrieds von Hattenrode, Alberts von Littenberg, Hugos von Hoheneck, Markwards von Erolsheim to the Schiffenberg monastery. Finally, after a certificate to be mentioned below with his son Ulrich, Count Wilhelm granted a court in Heuchelheim belonging to the Aldenburg monastery the right to lumber in the Wiseck forest.

Royal court camp

Wilhelm and his brothers took part in several royal court camps. In 1214, while his father was still alive, with his brother Hugo with Emperor Friedrich II in the camp near Jülich. Otherwise it always occurs with his son Heinrich (VII.) . On June 2, 1222 in Worms , next to his brother Rudolf in 1224 again in Worms, 1231 in Ulm and Hagenau , 1232 in Wimpfen , and 1233 at an unnamed place. After Heinrich's deposition (1235), he visited the second son of Emperor Friedrich II, the young King Konrad , in Biberach in 1240, with his servant Eberhard von Aichheim and his sons. Count Wilhelm was on the same party as his brother Rudolf at the time of King Heinrich VII. There is no evidence of which side he stepped on at the time of the opposing king Heinrich Raspe .

feud

The feud of Wilhelm a few years earlier is less well known. It is not even narrated with whom. This feud is occasionally mentioned in documents that were issued between Wilhelm and the same in the Marchthal Monastery. In one of these documents, which was issued in Böblingen on August 11, 1240, Wilhelm says that he, attacked by his enemies, bishop Heinrich von Konstanz , who, it seems, liked the camp and the tank better than the cathedral and regalia that he had come to his aid with an important force (300 armed men), which he himself brought to him, and to which the abbot of St. Gallen had joined with a bunch. Besides these were on the side of Count Wilhelm, Count Friedrich von Zollern, Otto von Waldburg and a gentleman von Bernhausen. It seems striking that there is no indication of any participation by his house or his brother. If the Wilhelms are added to the allies' armed forces, which also had to be significant, then this was a considerable force for those times and for a feud. Count Wilhelm emerged completely victorious from the battle. Certain information about the scene of the same is not available, however some expressions in the documents mentioned, the presence of the bishop, the abbot of St. Gallen and the count of Zollern in the camp near Böblingen suggest that it was a defensive fight on Wilhelm's side, that he had to repel attacks on his possessions. But who made these attacks can only be guessed at: no doubt it was a Swabian army, but from which house is unknown. Possibly a Calwer or even a member of his own house. The former seems the most likely. As can be seen from the dates of the cited documents, the feud dragged on for several years, probably with interruptions.

According to a document by Wilhelm (from Mack from 1252) and another by his son from 1256, Wilhelm died between 1252 and 1256. According to records in the Seelbuch of the Lichtenthal Monastery (in Baden), Count Wilhelm bought an anniversary in the same, of which several examples are still available Members of his house in the next century followed.

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Ludwig Schmid: History of the Count Palatine of Tübingen . Tübingen 1853, pages 150–163 ( digitized version ).
2. ^ Obbornhofen, District of Giessen. Historical local lexicon for Hesse (as of July 23, 2012). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS). Hessian State Office for Historical Cultural Studies (HLGL), accessed on March 11, 2013 .