Windisch-Graetz

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Family coat of arms of those of Windisch-Graetz

Windisch-Graetz (also Windisch-Grätz) is the name of a noble Austrian noble family , which was first mentioned in documents around 1220. His ancestral castle was in Windischgrätz, today's Slovenj Gradec in Slovenia . The once German-speaking town of Windischgrätz (or Windischgraz ) was surrounded by Slovenian villages in Lower Styria, part of the Duchy of Styria .

In 1551 he was raised to the rank of barons , in 1682 to the rank of count and 1804 to the rank of prince . In 1822 the title of prince for Austria was confirmed, with two brothers each establishing their own line. Since 1574 the family had the Inkolat in Bohemia , where they acquired various properties. In 1781 the family finally bought their future headquarters, the West Bohemian dominion Tachov (Tachau). In order to establish a principality of Windisch-Graetz directly under the empire, the family acquired the imperial estates of Siggen and Eglofs in the Allgäu in 1804 . However, this principality was mediatized to the Kingdom of Württemberg as early as 1806 according to the Rhine Federation Act .

The possessions in Bohemia and Slovenia were partly lost in 1918 and finally completely lost in 1945. Today, however, important property of the princely family is still in Austria, Italy, Germany and Hungary.

history

origin

Windischgraz (around 1681)

The family is probably of a tribe with the von Diengen from the Bavarian county of Wolfratshausen , who came to the Styrian possession of Windischgraz as ministerials of the Counts of Andechs . It appears there for the first time in a document in the years 1218 to 1222 with the knight (miles) Wernhardus de Graeze. The uninterrupted lineage of the family begins with Conrad von Windischgracz, who appears in documents from 1299 and died before September 25, 1339. In 1323 Conrad was Provincial Administrator of Styria .

In 1251, Windischgraz cum omnibus ministerialibus was donated to the Patriarchate of Aquileja , to which the family now belonged to the ministry. Ottokar II of Bohemia , Duke of Styria, took possession of Windischgraz as early as 1270 . The Lords of Windisch-Graetz were since then servants of the Dukes of Styria , their seat was Rothenturm Castle in Windischgraz. When the area came back to Aquileja in 1341, the patriarch enfeoffed the Counts of Pfannberg with it.

From 1315 to 1605 Oberthal Castle in Styria was owned by the family, until 1569 also the neighboring Unterthal Castle , from 1468 to 1630 Waldstein and from 1589 to 1629 the Rabenstein Castle (Styria) . From 1619 to 1821 the Windisch-Graetz also owned Seltenheim Castle in Carinthia, which was hardly used and gradually fell into disrepair. In 1576 the heirloom master of Styria, Pankraz von Windischgraetz, bought the estate of Trautmannsdorf an der Leitha in Lower Austria.

The Windisch-Graetz in Bohemia

In 1574 the family received the incolate in Bohemia . Associated with this was the ability to acquire land-related goods, the right to participate in the state parliaments and to apply for offices reserved for members of the state estates. Like most of the leading families of the Austrian hereditary lands , the Lords of Windischgrätz converted to Protestantism in the denominational age and thus belonged to the class opposition to the Habsburg rulers , which is why Friedrich Freiherr von Windisch-Graetz, for example, had to leave Styria in 1629, which has been in the family's possession since 1468 Castle Waldstein , the Burg Rabenstein and the 1564 built in Graz Palais sold and moved to Trautmannsdorf.

In 1693 the family acquired Rothlhotta Castle in South Bohemia , which they held until 1755, and in 1699 in Moravia the Přerov Castle with Čekyně and Zábeštní Lhota .

The diplomat Gottlieb Amadeus (1630–1695) reconverted to Catholicism in 1682 and was raised to the rank of imperial count in the same year. In 1654 he inherited Trautmannsdorf from his cousin Friedrich, in 1679 he acquired the rule of Götzendorf and in 1682 the castle of St. Peter in the Au in Lower Austria, and in 1695 Prerau in Moravia. However, he did not succeed in actually acquiring direct imperial rule, which is why his imperial estate was doubted, although he was principal commissioner at the Reichstag in Regensburg; around 1693 he became Vice Chancellor . His son Ernst Friedrich (1670–1727) became President of the Imperial Court Council in 1714 and from 1724 Minister of State and Conference. Through marriage he acquired the dominions of Roth-Lhotta in southern Bohemia and Leopoldsdorf near Vienna (the latter he sold in 1713). His brother, the diplomat Leopold Johann Victorin (1686–1746), inherited Trautmannsdorf. The Palais Windisch-Graetz had been the residence in the imperial capital Vienna since 1755 .

Tachau Castle , West Bohemia
Prince Alfred I. zu Windisch-Graetz (1787–1862), field marshal

Leopold Johann Victorin's grandson, Count Joseph-Niklas zu Windisch-Graetz (1744–1802), had to sell Roth-Lhotta in 1755 and Trautmannsdorf in 1756 due to his grandfather's over-indebtedness. In 1781, however, he acquired - presumably from the dowry of his second wife, a princess von Arenberg , whom he had married in the same year - the west Bohemian dominion of Tachau with numerous villages, where he founded the Lučina ironworks and the Obora wildlife park , Ctěnice Castle near Prague and in southern Bohemia the Steken castle and manor including the Mladiegowitz (Mladejovice) estate. From 1787 the Tachau Castle was redesigned in a classical style.

Older line

Joseph-Niklas' eldest son Alfred I. zu Windisch-Graetz , heir of Tachau and Steken, was raised to the rank of imperial prince in 1804 and took part in the campaign against Napoleon (third, fifth and sixth coalition wars ) from 1805 . In 1804 he acquired the imperial estates of Siggen and Eglof in the Allgäu in order to be able to take a seat in the Imperial Council of Dukes as an imperial prince , which, however, dissolved two years later with the end of the Old Empire. The Austrian field marshal later became known for his role during the suppression of the revolution of 1848/49 in the Austrian Empire , which made him a notorious figure among liberals and democrats. As city commander of Prague, he commanded the suppression of the Whitsun Uprising in Prague in 1848 , in which his wife was killed and his son Prince Alfred was wounded. During the Vienna October Uprising , he was given high command by the Austrian Emperor. On October 31, 1848, the military invaded Vienna under his leadership and helped the counter-revolution to victory. He was also involved in the attempt to suppress the Hungarian independence uprising in March 1849.

Prince Alfred planned a large castle to replace the local monastery church in today's Světce (German: saints) district near Tachau, but its completion - except for a preserved riding hall - was abandoned after his death. The monastery Kladruby near the village of Kladruby in Bohemia , including land ownership had Prince Alfred in 1825 for 275,500 gold pieces from religious fund bought, with much of the purchase price will not be paid for his services to the Austrian monarchy had.

Prince Alfred III. zu Windisch-Grätz (1851–1927), Prime Minister

He was followed by his son, Prince Alfred II zu Windisch-Grätz (1819–1876), who set up a brewery in Kladrau. His son, Prince Alfred III. zu Windisch-Grätz (1851-1927) was a politician loyal to the Habsburgs, a member of parliament in the Kingdom of Bohemia, who received criticism from progressive Bohemian circles. From 1893 to 1895 he was Prime Minister of Austria in a coalition government. In 1897 he was elected president of the manor house and held this position until the end of the Empire in 1918. His son, Hereditary Prince Vincenz (1882–1913), tragically died in Rome. As a result of the First World War and the subsequent land reform in the first Czechoslovak Republic, Prince Alfred III lost. In 1919 a considerable part of his Bohemian and Moravian property, but not his castle in Tachau. In 1922 he sold the Štěkeň chateau . He refused to accept Czechoslovak citizenship and remained an Austrian.

After the death of Alfred III. In 1927 in Tachau a large part of the remaining property (16,504 hectares in Czechoslovakia, 2,695 hectares in Yugoslavia and 342 hectares in Siggen and Eglofs, Allgäu) went by way of male succession to his nephew Ludwig Aladar (1908–1990), the grandson of a brother of Alfred II, whose branch of the family had resided at Rákóczi Castle in Sárospatak, Hungary, since 1875 , the rest of the property was divided between his four daughters. Since in Tachau still the widow of Alfred III. lived, Ludwig Aladar moved to the former Kladrau (Kladruby) monastery and set up an extensive library and family archive here. After the princess widow's death in 1933, her heirs sold the Viennese palace, which had previously been used as a residence. In 1945 all goods were confiscated by the state, for example in Tachau, Kladrau and Sárospatak in Hungary. Ludwig Aladar only kept the small property in the Allgäu; The Siggen Castle there had collapsed in 1830, but a residential building was built on the castle hill in the 20th century, which is now owned by the current head of the family, Ludwig Aladar's son Anton Windisch-Graetz (* 1942) , together with the land and forest property there .

Younger line

The younger brother of Prince Alfred I, Weriand (1790-1867), founded the younger line of the house, as the head of which he had also held the hereditary Austrian prince title since 1822. From the funds of his mother's estate, he acquired numerous castles in what is now Slovenia, some of which he soon sold again. The main seat was Haasberg Castle in Carniola (now Planina , Slovenia) and Gonobitz Castle (now Slovenske Konjice , Slovenia) acquired in 1826 , to which the Carthusian monastery Seiz belonged. For a short time he owned Žamberk Castle with Helvíkovice , in 1846 he acquired the Predjama Castle and in 1853 Wagensberg Castle (now Bogenšperk in Litija , Slovenia) also came into the possession of this line. Weriand's son, Prince Hugo (1823–1904), married the Mecklenburg Grand Duke Luise in 1849 .

Grave plaque of the Windisch-Graetz family on the Campo Santo Teutonico

Their great-grandson, Prince Maximilian (1914–1976), was expelled from Yugoslavia in 1945 and expropriated; In 1946 he married the Italian Maria Luisa Serre de Gerace and transplanted this branch of the family to Italy. The current line manager is Mariano Hugo Windisch-Graetz (* 1955), married to Sophie (* 1959), née Habsburg-Lothringen and granddaughter of Maximilian Eugen von Austria . Mariano's sister, Maximiliane (* 1952), is married to Heinrich Fürst zu Fürstenberg .

coat of arms

Family coat of arms

The family coat of arms shows the head and neck of a gold-tongued silver wolf in red . The shield image on the helmet with red and silver covers .

Count's coat of arms

The imperial coat of arms, awarded in 1557, is square and covered with a square center shield (part of the coat of arms of the Gradner family) including a red heart shield , inside a golden herringbone diagonally to the right (still the coat of arms of the Gradner family today), a and d in red a triple silver one Church flag with three silver rings (Pfannstetten), b and c in silver a black oblique left bar (Schallegg). 1 and 4 the family coat of arms, 2 in black three (2, 1) gold rings (Waldstein), 3 under the silver field head in black a silver rafter (Wolfsthal). The coat of arms has three helmets, on the right the trunk helmet, on the middle one with red and silver covers three red ostrich feathers, covered with the here transverse herringbone (Gardner helmet), on the left with black and gold covers a round black umbrella board , covered with a circle six (1, 2, 2, 1) golden rings (Waldstein).

Princely coat of arms

The princely coats of arms from 1804 and 1822 show the imperial counts coats of arms from 1557 with a prince's hat and prince's coat. Two opposing silver wolves serve as a shield holder .

  • Family coat of arms of Otto Hupp in the Munich calendar of 1901

  • Coat of arms of the princes Windisch-Graetz from 1804

Personalities

Otto zu Windisch-Graetz and his wife Archduchess Elisabeth Marie of Austria

literature

Web links

Commons : Windisch-Graetz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : Wappen der Windisch-Graetz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d e Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels , Adelslexikon Volume XVI, Volume 137 of the complete series, pages 246–249
  2. ↑ Styrian Document Book 2, page 291, No. 201
  3. ↑ On the history of Windischgraz
  4. ↑ Details on succession, real estate and land reform in the CSSR
  5. ↑ Otto Hupp : Munich Calendar 1901 . Page 30.