Cent Fuerth
The Zent Fürth was an administrative and judicial district of Kurmainz and at times the Electoral Palatinate and developed from the so-called "Upper Abbey" of the imperial Lorsch monastery . The seat of the court and administration was today's Fürth in the Odenwald . Fürth later also acted as the district bailiff for the Zent area and went to Hessen in 1803, where it was dissolved in 1821 and merged into the Lindenfels district. Jurisdiction, which was now independent of the administration for the first time, was transferred to the Fürth district court at the same time .
history
The function of the Zenten as an administrative unit was diverse and changed over time. The Zent was always connected to a jurisdiction that was exercised by the Central Court. Usually, the Zentgraf acted as chairman at the negotiations , but the verdict was pronounced by lay judges. But other administrative tasks such as the recruitment of military units, the definition and monitoring of units of measurement, the maintenance of execution places, the administration of the dominalia ( cellar ), the catering of officials and other things were imposed on the center and organized and monitored by the centgrave.
The first documentary mention of Fürth goes back to the description of "Mark Heppenheim", which referred to an administrative district of the Franconian Empire . After Charlemagne gave it to the imperial monastery of Lorsch in 773 , disputes arose with the diocese of Worms, in the course of which an arbitration award from 795 established the exact boundaries and named Fürth as a village in this area. When, on May 12, 1012 in Bamberg, King Heinrich II. At the request of Lorsch Abbot Bobbo , granted the Lorsch monastery a ban on forest and wilderness within the Mark Michelstadt and the "Mark Heppenheim" for ever, this was primarily done with the aim of urbanization of the front Odenwald, which at that time still largely consisted of primeval forest. Fürth was then mentioned several times as the administrative center of the so-called "Upper Abbey" of the Lorsch Monastery. The "Upper Abbey" included the places around the upper Weschnitz Valley . The heyday of Lorsch Monastery was followed by its decline in the 11th and 12th centuries and in 1232 it was subordinated to the Archdiocese of Mainz .
Finally, in 1356, with the permission of Emperor Charles IV to fortify the place, erect a stick and gallows, and hold a market every Tuesday , Fürth became the seat of the central court with lower and higher jurisdiction . The right of high jurisdiction was only granted to a few central courts.
With the pledging of the Electoral Mainz areas on Bergstrasse and in the Odenwald to Electoral Palatinate in 1461, the Zent became part of the Palatinate dominion in which the Reformation was introduced in 1556 and the Lorsch Monastery was dissolved in 1564. The Palatinate rule only lasted until the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), during which Spanish troops conquered the region and restored the rule of Kurmainz . As a result, the Protestant faith introduced by the Count Palatine was largely reversed and the population had to return to the Catholic faith. With the Peace of Westphalia , the return of the pledged areas to Kurmainz was finally set.
In 1782 Kurmainz carried out an administrative reform with which an administrative bailiff was established in Fürth , which was subordinate to the Oberamt Starkenburg as a subordinate office. Up to this point in time the main court in Heppenheim was the main court of the center. For the year 1626 is documented that the court seal of a shield with the letter F was.
The Kurmainzer period ended in 1803, when the Holy Roman Empire (German Nation) fell with the Napoleonic Wars and the Oberamt Starkenburg fell to Hesse with the dissolution of Kurmainz. The "Amt Fürth" was continued in the Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt and from 1806 in the newly founded Grand Duchy of Hessen .
In the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt , the judicial system was reorganized in an executive order of December 9, 1803. The “Hofgericht Darmstadt” was set up as a court of second instance for the Principality of Starkenburg . The jurisdiction of the first instance was carried out by the offices or the landlords . The court court was the second instance court for normal civil disputes, and the first instance for civil family law cases and criminal cases. The superior court of appeal in Darmstadt was superordinate . With this, the Zent and the associated courts had definitely lost their function.
With the establishment of the Grand Duchy of Hesse in 1806, this function was retained until 1821. After the Grand Duchy had received a new constitution in 1820, the administrative reform in 1821/22 saw the separation of jurisdiction and administration for the first time. The tasks of the office of Fürth in the district of Lindenfels for administrative tasks and in the district court of Fürth , which exercised jurisdiction in the first instance in the district of Lindenfels, went on.
Circumference of cent
From the years 1613 and 1668 a description with the places of the Zent is known. Accordingly, the centers belonged to:
- Fuerth
- Krumbach
- Brombach
- Weschnitz
- Kröckelbach
- Alt-Lechtern
- Steinbach
- Lozenbach
- Fahrbach
- Kolmbach
- Hiltersblades
Centgraphs
From the time after 1700 the names of the counts have been passed down, who were no longer occupied by the nobility during this time.
- 1700 - Johann Keim
- 1718 - Johann Georg Römer
- 1729 - Johann Georg Will
- 1752 - Matthias Franz Xaver Seitz
- 1759 - Johann Michael Gram
- 1775 - Georg Erst Straub
- 1788 - Peter Schütz ( subpraetor , lawyer)
- 1790 - Leonhard Schütz (Centschultheiß)
literature
- Meinrad Schaab: The Zent in Franconia from the Carolingian era to the 19th century. Online [PDF; 1.6 MB] ( Memento from April 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- Eckhardt, Albrecht: On the history of the cents in the southern Odenwald in: Archive for Hessian history and antiquity, NF 35 (1977), pp. 305-312. Editor: Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt in connection with the Historical Association for Hesse
- Konrad Dahl: Historical-topographical-statistical description of the principality of Lorsch, or church history of the Upper Rhinegau. Darmstadt 1812. ( online at google books )
Web links
Law in the Middle Ages at regionalgeschichte.net