Cent Mörlenbach
The Zent Mörlenbach (or Mörlenbacher Zent ) is a historical administrative district in the Odenwald Weschnitz Valley , which emerged in the early Middle Ages and, with changes in function, existed until the end of the Electorate of Mainz in 1803. The area corresponds roughly to the district area of the large community of Mörlenbach, which was created in 1970/71.
The Zent in the Lorsch imperial monastery district
Settlement spread across the Odenwald Weschnitz Valley has only been documented since the Franconian period . The mountain road on the other hand has been a center of early since the 5th century invading Franks and Heppenheim certified, 755, then the center was one of Mark, Charlemagne the in 773 Empire Lorsch Abbey handed. The administrative district comprised the entire area between Lorsch , Zwingenberg , Neunkircher Höhe , Weschnitz east of Fürth , Beerfelden , Gorxheimer Tal , Weinheim and Hüttenfeld . A large part of the presumably hardly populated Odenwald ( forest marks ) also belonged to the donation . One of the tasks of the monastery was to organize the establishment of large family farms to strengthen the economic power and tax revenue of the Franconian Empire. In this context, the Weschnitztal communities Hammelbach , Fürth (Furte), Rimbach (Rintbach), Mörlenbach (Morlenbach), Birkenau (Birkenowa) were documented for the first time in the Lorsch document book of 795. The later mentions of Liebersbach , Zotzenbach (877), Mumbach (1130) ), Bonsweiher (1320), Klein-Breitenbach , Weiher , Vöckelsbach (1369 each) indicate an expansion of the settlement area into the side valleys.
The Heppenheim Franconian Mark was an administrative district subdivided into the Zenten , which was headed by a count . He collected taxes, received and improved the infrastructure (roads, bridges), carried out police and military services and decided on legal proceedings. With the transfer of the functions and rights to the imperial monastery, these structures were taken over, with monastery bailiffs from the center of Heppenheim now presiding over the cents. In the 11th century Konrad von Staufen received the hereditary high bailiff rights (equivalent to the powers of a count) for the monastery properties, and he used them, in disputes with the Archdiocese of Mainz , to build up a position of power in the Electoral Palatinate in the Rhine-Neckar area with Heidelberg as the residential city .
Mörlenbach was probably the center of such a center as early as 900. This is indicated by its mention in the Codex together with the large communities of Heppenheim, Bensheim and Michelstadt . An important task was the lower magistrate justice . There were two stages: The village court settled, for example, controversies about forest and pasture use, irrigation, maintenance of the paths and settled neighborly disputes. The centering court (in the case of Bach Moerlen a half centering because only occupied by six aldermen), which twice a year in Mörlenbach on Zent mayor was convened dealt with the lower crime. The high throat, blood court of the Cent Mörlenbach, however, was subordinate to the Centgrave and met on the Landberg near Heppenheim, on whose place of execution a gallows stood. Here adultery with collar and chastisement, arson, theft, robbery, rape, heresy and murder were punished with death.
However, the delimitation of this sub-district and its tasks have changed over time in connection with disputes between the regional powers: In the survey of the troops to be provided by the Zent for the Landshut War of Succession from 1504
- Weiher (first known as Wilre in 1369),
- Gross-Breitenbach ,
- Ober-Liebersbach (877: Lieberesbach),
- Mumbach (probably called Nieder-Mumbach ).
A central description from 1654 also lists:
- Klein-Breitenbach (mentioned as early as 1369 together with Mörlenbach and Weiher),
- Mackenheim ,
- Schnorrenbach and
- the Kurmainzer part of Nieder-Liebersbach.
In connection with documented legal conflicts or individual regulations, conclusions can also be drawn about the temporary affiliation of trips or the partial assignment of Zotzenbach . It can no longer be determined whether today's districts of Ober-Mumbach, Vöckelsbach and Bonsweiher initially belonged to Mörlenbacher Zent. In any case, the first two were administered around 1600 by the Palatinate Zent Wald-Michelbach .
- In a document from 1130 (as Munnenbach), Mumbach is an exchange object for a plot of land near Weinheim: In order to be able to rebuild Windeck Castle after a legal dispute with the Michelstadt (Steinbach) monastery , the land had to be acquired by the opponent, who was responsible for it the village of Mumbach (probably Ober-Mumbach) received from the Lorsch abbot. In 1541, the Elector of the Palatinate transferred these rights to two monasteries on his left bank of the Rhine.
- Rohrbach is mentioned in the documents as Kurmainzisch or Wamboltisch and was connected to the Birkenauer Zent, whereby the Wambolte von Umstadt took over a Mainz fief of their predecessors, the Weinheim noble family Schwendt.
- Vöckelsbachs, written in 1369 in the Electoral Palatinate Interest Book of the Upper Office Heidelberg Fokkelspach, assignment, however, is Electoral Palatinate according to the documents received. Like Ober-Mumbach, the hamlet was part of the Wald-Michelbacher Zent.
- Bonsweiher (1320 Bantzwilre) came to the Electoral Palatinate as early as the Lorsch period. The Hubendorf gave this to the Lindenfels family Kreiß as a fief. Thus Bonsweiher belonged to the center Schlierbach , the later Palatinate office of Lindenfels.
Social and economic structure
As in the other Weschnitztal communities, the Mörlenbach homesteads were often administered by different landlords, sometimes with different responsibilities with regard to lower jurisdiction, taxes, services and the assignment to parishes. In Mörlenbach in the Electorate of Mainz, the Electoral Palatinate also had goods and was involved in taxes (on the tithe) and in Rimbach, which belonged to Erbach, there were Mainzer Höfe.
This fragmentation of ownership, both in the region and within the individual communities, with complicated legal regulations regarding taxes and other obligations, was a consequence of the Franconian feudal system : The Lorsch monastery, or later the Kurmainzer and Kurpfälzer landlords , gave individual estates with lands or entire ones Hubendörfer passed on to mostly aristocratic feudal men like the Landschat von Steinach or the Schenken von Erbach, who in turn acted as feudal lords towards the farmers. The responsibilities also changed frequently, e.g. B. in pledging, and the farm owners were often proportionally obliged to different masters in their deliveries of the harvest yields or their work assignments (e.g. driving services). In Mörlenbach, according to documents from the 14th to 17th centuries, taxes had to be paid to several gentlemen. B. to the Archbishop of Mainz, the Count Palatinate, the Count of Erbach, the Barons von Wambolt in Birkenau, the Lorsch Monastery, and Lindenfels Castle.
The population had different legal relationships with the landlords. The early documents only name the noble feudal men committed to the landlord of Lorsch Abbey and do not provide any information about further delegation to free or unfree peasants. A hub index for Mörlenbach and the surrounding hub from around the year 900 lists 6 free hub and 28 servant hub. It is consequently the typical Frankish areas rural social and economic structure of Villikation : The noble vassal farmed themselves or by an administrator with the help of non-free ( serfs ) male and female slaves ( servants ) the manor ( Fronhof with Salland ). The rest of the land, divided into Hufen, he gave to farmers who cultivated it independently with their extended families. As a slave they were not allowed to purchase the farm and, like their children, were bound to the borrowed land ( plaice obligation ). They paid their dues, u. a. with the tenth part of the agricultural products (harvest share of field and garden crops, cattle,) and services for the Fronhof (e.g. help on the goods, building paths, churches, fortifications), which in the high Middle Ages with the dissolution of many manors were increasingly replaced by additional leases. It was not until the beginning of the 19th century. With the liberation of the peasants, the legal situation changed fundamentally.
In the area of tension between Kurpfalz and Kurmainz: The fortifications
In 1232 the archbishops of Mainz received the district of the Lorsch monastery, and in 1265 the Starkenburg office is mentioned for the first time as an administrative unit, which at the end of the Mainz period in 1803 was called the Starkenburg Oberamt . With the change of ownership began the more than 200 year-old disputes and armed conflicts with the Palatinate County near Rhine, which invoked the bailiwick hereditary rights conferred by the Lorsch Monastery. The following conflicts also shape the local history of Mörlenbach. Arbitral awards and comparisons negotiated in terms of power politics (1239, 1247, 1329) resulted in the division into different, territorially unrelated districts with different direct and indirect assignments, both with regard to Mainz and Electoral Palatinate: Most of the Weschnitztal communities (Fürth, Mörlenbach, Birkenau) and their current ones Until the regional reorganization of Germany in 1803 or 1806, districts were on Kurmainzer territory, but often with interruptions: Mainz pledged z. B. under political pressure the Oberamt Starkenburg with Heppenheim and Mörlenbach temporarily (1461 to 1623) to the Palatinate and used the weakening of the Electoral Palatinate in the Thirty Years War to take over the areas again.
In connection with the struggle for supremacy in the Bergstrasse / Odenwald region, Mörlenbach was of great strategic importance for Mainz: the fortifications with a ring-shaped village ditch can still be seen on the current street layout in the town center (Grabengasse, Hallgartenweg). The preserved wall remnants on Kirchgasse behind the castle courtyard school and along the church to the town hall square and in Bonsweiherer Strasse (No. 6, 10, 16). The old gate stood in front of the confluence of Kirchgasse and Bonsweiherer Strasse. These relics date from the 15th century, when Mörlenbach was caught in the tension between the Kurmainzer and Kurpfälzer disputes and because of its location on the road between the Electoral Palatinate areas Weinheim and Lindenfels, fortified with a wall and ditch, it was expanded to become an Electoral Mainz outpost. A document dated March 23, 1443 obliges the Mörlenbach bailiff Walther von Reifenberg to protect the population with his armed riders and the gate and tower guards in constant readiness. For this he received payment, e.g. Sometimes as food, an apartment in the manor house called the castle and a garden area. In a similar way the predecessors (Hartmut Ulner von Dieburg 1426, Hans von Habern 1433), and successors (Keller Mertin von Obrigheim 1447, Diether von Mörlenbach 1455, Balthasar Nuwenhuße 1459, Hartmann Beyer von Boppard 1460) with military, but no financial and economic administration (as they corresponded to the office of a cellar ) tasks. In a document dated July 22, 1459, Archbishop Diether II von Isenburg exempted the peasants from compulsory labor and some taxes in order to release them for the continuation of the fortification work and the roofing of the houses with bricks instead of the easily combustible straw. The tense situation finally emerged in 1460 in a battle between the rival parties near Hemsbach , in which the Kurmainzer burgrave was killed.
However, the strategic role of Mörlenbach changed just a year later. The archbishop had been replaced by Adolf II of Nassau because of differences of opinion with the Vatican. He now allied himself with his opponent Friedrich von der Pfalz and paid for his support by pledging the Starkenburg office, for which they had fought shortly before. Like the neighboring communities, Mörlenbach was now part of the Electoral Palatinate (see map of Hesse around 1550) and the fortress lost its importance. After the Palatinate's position of power had weakened in the Thirty Years' War , the pledge was redeemed again in 1623 and Mörlenbach returned to the possession of Mainz with the Starkenburg office.
When there was a restructuring of the offices in the district of the Kurmainzer Amtskellerei Heppenheim in 1782, the Mörlenbach district was subordinated to the newly created Amtsvogtei Fürth and had to largely surrender its powers. Although the central order with the central school remained formally in place, it could only carry out the orders of the higher authorities (Oberamt Starkenburg, Unteramt Fürth).
The population development up to the beginning of the 19th century.
According to a count, there were farms in Mörlenbach 36, Weiher 15, Ober-Liebersbach 4, Groß-Breitenbach 5, Klein-Breitenbach 5, Mackenheim 5 farms and in Nieder-Mumbach a farm at the end of the 16th century. And this situation changed little in the centuries that followed. Until the 19th century, the agricultural orientation, v. a. of the Mörlenbacher districts, the economy and way of life, the landscape and the population, as the following table demonstrates:
| 1480 | 1503 | 1566 | 1590 | 1623 | 1626 | 1654 | 1666 | 1682 | 1698 | 1725 | 1803 | 1806 | 1820 |
| 350 | 305 | 350 | 355 | 390 | 395 | (120) | 243 | 250 | 282 | 427 | 592 | 812 | 1093 |
|---|
The end of the Mörlenbacher Zent is related to that of the old German Empire. Restructuring and system changes, triggered by the Napoleonic Wars , followed. The high burdens (basic interest, taxes of various kinds, services) had not motivated the farmers to operate more effectively. Contrary to the three-field system, almost half of the area was mostly fallow and was only used as pasture. Only through the change in the legal position of the rural population in the first half of the 19th century. ( Farmer liberation ) the now independent farmers or self-sufficient tenants were interested in an increase in yield and modernization: the fallow land was removed and replaced by the cultivation of forage crops, the cattle were now fed in the stables. The increase in the rural population from 1806 onwards can be explained in this context.
literature
- Irsigler, Franz: Freedom and bondage in the Middle Ages. Forms and ways of social mobility (1976). In: Henn, Volker ; Holbach, Rudolf; Pauly, Michel; Schmid, Wolfgang (Ed.): Miscellanea Franz Irsigler. Celebration for the 65th birthday . Trier 2006, pp. 133–152.
- Koob, Ferdinand: The Mörlenbach Castle . In: Die Starkenburg 34. No. 2, 1957.
- Kunz, Rudolf: The population development in the cent Mörlenbach . In: History sheets of the district Bergstrasse 12, 1979.
- Nitz, Hans-Jürgen: The rural settlement forms of the Odenwald . Heidelberg Geographical Works, H. 7. Heidelberg / Munich 1962.
- Schulze, Winfried (Hrsg.): Corporate society and social mobility . (Writings of the Historisches Kolleg Kolloquien 12) Oldenbourg, Munich 1988.
- Wagner, Otto a. a .: Heimatbuch Mörlenbach . Self-published by the municipality of Mörlenbach, Mörlenbach 1983.
- Literature about Zent Mörlenbach in the Hessian Bibliography
References and comments
- ↑ Glöckner, Karl (ed.): Codex Laureshamensis. 6a (written down from 795) Darmstadt 1929-36.
- ↑ In 1995 Mörlenbach celebrated its 1200 year old documentary mention
- ↑ Lorscher document book in the Bavarian Main State Archive, Hochstift Mainz, literary 19, fol. 3v.
- ↑ Nitz, Hans-Jürgen: The rural settlement forms of the Odenwald . Heidelberg Geographical Works, volume 7, Heidelberg / Munich 1962.
- ↑ Wagner, Otto u. a .: Heimatbuch Mörlenbach . Self-published by the municipality of Mörlenbach. 1983, p. 14 ff.
- ↑ Codex Laureshamensis , No. 3663.
- ↑ according to Kunz, s. Wagner, p. 17.
- ↑ 1504 first described in the drawing book: v. Weech: The drawing book Anno 1504 , magazine for the history of the Upper Rhine, vol. 26 (1874), quoted. According to Kunz, Rudolf: The population development in the cent Mörlenbach . In: Geschichtsblätter des Kreises Bergstrasse 12, 1979, p. 273 ff.
- ↑ around 1500 and 1668: s. Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt, Manuscript 2 and Weistümer 105.
- ↑ Salbuch 1654 . s. Koob, Ferdinand: Source publications on the local history of the Bergstrasse district . 1953 ff., Row 13.
- ^ Dahl, Konrad: Historical-topographical-statistical description of the principality of Lorsch . Darmstadt 1812, Lorsch Urk.Bd. P. 48, No. 7.
- ^ Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt, manuscript 2. s. Kunz.
- ^ Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt, Salbuch Starkenburg 67
- ↑ Nitz, p. 123 ff.
- ↑ Lorscher Codex No. 143 , 143a.
- ↑ Salbuch 64c .
- ↑ General State Archives Karlsruhe 66/3480.
- ^ Wagner, p. 40.
- ↑ Examples for Bonsweiher from the Palatinate Copialbuch 67/881, f. 185, p. Wagner, p. 49 ff.
- ↑ Example for Ober-Liebersbach, s. Boos, Frieder: Interest books, goods, inclines and rights of the Heppenheim official winery (1803). In. History sheets district Bergstrasse 9, 1976, p. 189.
- ^ Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt Salbuch 64b , Manuscript 7/10, Salbuch 67.
- ↑ Codex Laureshamensis 3663 , s. Gramlich, Willi: Structural change, illustrated using the example of the Odenwald community of Mörlenbach . Darmstadt University of Technology, 1975.
- ↑ A hat is as much land as a family with a team of oxen could cultivate with fruit on 30 mornings (morning = daily work). s. Kieser, Friedrich: The Salian-Franconian settlement system and the Heppenheimer mark description from the year 771 . Supplement to the annual report of the Grand Ducal Gymnasium in Bensheim. 1905.
- ↑ Irsigler, Franz: Freedom and Unfreedom in the Middle Ages. Forms and ways of social mobility (1976). In: Henn, Volker; Holbach, Rudolf; Pauly, Michel; Schmid, Wolfgang (Ed.): Miscellanea Franz Irsigler. Celebration for the 65th birthday. Trier 2006, pp. 133–152.
- ↑ Schulze, Winfried (Ed.): Corporate society and social mobility . (Writings of the Historisches Kolleg Kolloquien 12) Oldenbourg, Munich 1988.
- ↑ Since 1803, the districts of Mörlenbach , which were incorporated by the municipality reform in 1970/71, have belonged to the Landgraviate of Darmstadt (from 1806 Grand Duchy of Hesse, from 1948 Hesse), but only from 1874 onwards were they assigned to the same district (Heppenheim, Bergstrasse) with the dissolution of the Lindenfels district
- ↑ Salbuch 67 (1654).
- ^ Koob, Ferdinand: The Mörlenbach Castle . In: Die Starkenburg 34, No. 2, 1957.
- ↑ "Hesse around 1550". Historical atlas of Hessen. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
- ↑ The Schlosshofgut, consisting of a residential building with a stable, a barn with a stable, a pigsty and an oven, was managed until the 19th century. The castle courtyard school has stood on the former estate since 1954.
- ^ Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe, copy book 882 from 1590.
- ^ Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt, Salbuch 47a.
- ↑ Kunz, 1979.
- ^ Wagner, p. 41.