Wolfgang I. of Castell

Wolfgang I. Count and Lord zu Castell (* March 14, 1482 - † July 5, 1546 ) was ruler of the county of Castell from 1498 to 1546 . He shared the rule with his brothers Georg , Johann and Friedrich.

The county before Wolfgang I.

The fifteenth century was marked by large sales of the count's rights and possessions for the county of Castell. While Count Wilhelm I was still able to obtain the right to mint coins in the city of Volkach from King Wenzel in 1398, his successors lost more and more goods. The main beneficiary was the Duchy of Würzburg , which received most of the goods sold.

On October 24, 1457, the diocese even received the entire county from Wilhelm II in exchange for an annuity of 500 guilders . He also pledged the preserved district of the city of Volkach to the Counts of Limpurg , Henneberg and Weinsberg, so that other parts of Castells were in the hands of foreign rulers. Acquiring new property was also hardly possible at this point, as the great rulers of the area had divided the region among themselves.

Life

Wolfgang was born on March 14, 1482 to Count Friedrich IV and Elisabeth von Reitzenstein. The education of the young count is also in the dark. After the death of his father, the young count took over the government together with his brothers. First, they finally sold the pledged district of Volkach and thus waived the important bottleneck on the Main , which was the last, at least partially, castellian settlement on the river.

The decisive event in Count Wolfgang I's tenure was the German Peasants' War in 1525. Marauding hordes of farmers devastated the ancestral castle of the Counts in Castell and the monastery on Vogelsberg , which had served as the family's burial place. In the period that followed, Wolfgang pushed for the reconstruction of the destroyed castles and began to buy up new rights in the area on a modest scale.

In 1533 the fiefdom of Gnodstadt fell back and the counts were again able to manage their rule more independently. The religious division of Germany also fell during Count Wolfgang's term of office. The old count remained connected to the Catholic faith, but allowed his sons to turn to Lutheranism in the mid-forties of the 16th century . Count Wolfgang I died in 1546.

Marriage and offspring

Wolfgang I married Martha von Wertheim in autumn 1518 , with whom he was to have several children. However, only the heirs to the throne Konrad, Heinrich and Georg are extensively handed down in the sources.

• Konrad (* 1519; † 1577)
• Margarethe (born October 31, 1520; † 1534)
• Friedrich (born July 29, 1522 in Castell; † September 16, 1552 in Thionville )
• Magdalena (born September 20, 1523; † 1523)
• Heinrich IV. (Born February 13, 1525 at Stolberg Castle; † September 20, 1595 in Remlingen)
• Barbara (7 September 1526; † 1530)
• Georg (born November 16, 1527; † November 12, 1597 in Rüdenhausen)

literature

• Wilhelm Engel: House u. Reign of Castell in Franconian history . In: Society for Franconian History (ed.): Castell. Contributions to the culture and history of home and dominion. New Year's Sheets XXIV . Würzburg 1952. pp. 1-19.
• Otto Meyer: The Castell house. State and class rule over the centuries . In: Otto Meyer, Hellmut Kunstmann (ed.): Castell. State rule - castles - status lordship . Castell 1979. pp. 9-53.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Meyer, Otto: The Castell House . P. 22.
2. ↑ Meyer, Otto: The Castell House . P. 23.
3. ↑ Engel, Wilhelm: Haus u. Reign of Castell . P. 9.

predecessor	Office	successor
Friedrich IV.	Count of Castell 1498–1546	Conrad Heinrich IV. George II.