Wittekind II of Schwalenberg

Wittekind II. Of Schwalenberg († 1188 / 89 ) was from 1184 Count of Pyrmont .

Wittekind came from the family of the Counts of Schwalenberg . His parents were Count Widekind I. von Schwalenberg († 1136/37) and Lutrud von Itter. He and his brother Volkwin II von Schwalenberg were extremely feudal . Wittekind took part in several Italian campaigns by Emperor Friedrich I (Barbarossa).

Since the end of the 1140s, Abbot Wibald von Corvey complained repeatedly about the serious attacks that the two brothers were guilty of against the monastery and its properties, without the abbot with the help of their relative, the Paderborn Bishop Bernhard I von Oesede could achieve a change.

In 1152, Hermann II of Winzenburg , owner of the second half of Desenberg Castle near Warburg , was murdered. Heinrich the Lion took over his shares and enfeoffed Wittekind von Schwalenberg with the castle. He became Vogt of Höxter , which he burned down in 1152. From his Desenberg castle he continued his attacks against the Corvey monastery and in 1156 even killed the city count Dietrich von Höxter, a ministerial of the monastery.

In May 1157, Henry the Lion judged Wittekind in Corvey, probably at the instigation of the emperor. He was obliged to pay damages to the abbot and the relatives of the murdered person. In addition, his fiefs, in particular the Desenberg Castle, were withdrawn and then banished to the area to the left of the Rhine. Wittekind stayed at the castle. As early as 1163 he took part again in the court days of Henry the Lion. In 1168, Henry the Lion besieged Desenberg Castle. Only after he had dug a tunnel and blocked the castle's well did the Schwalenbergers give up. But they stayed in the castle. Wittekind did not fall away from Heinrich the Lion until 1181, one year after his fall. In the same year the Archbishop of Cologne besieged the castle.

Around 1184 Wittekind and his nephew Wittekind III shared . von Waldeck and Schwalenberg took over the family property. He became Count of Pyrmont as a fiefdom of the Archbishops of Cologne. He got the Vogtei Höxter-Corvey back, but had to give up the Itter rule . He founded the line of the Counts of Pyrmont, which sank to complete insignificance and did not end until 1494.

After his death in 1192 Emperor Heinrich awarded the Desenberg Castle to Bishop Bernhard II. Since the descendants of the Schwalenbergs stayed at the castle, the emperor and bishop decided in 1203 to destroy the castle. In 1206 the Count of Everstein besieged the castle in vain.

Web links

• Klaus Richter: Wibald von Stablo and the Schwalenberger: Conflict behavior and criminal law in the 12th century