Ortenburger Heritage Conflict

The Ortenburger Heritage Conflict (German: Ortenburger Erbstreit) was a dispute about the property of the Grafschaft Ortenburg in Carinthia from the 15th century.

Sequence

When the Counts of Celje became extinct in the year 1456 the Bavarian Imperial Counts of Ortenburg, a branch of the noble family of the Spanheimer, made a false claim to the County of Ortenburg in Carinthia. The Bavarian Ortenburger assumed their family to be the founders of that lineage, and that indeed the regents of the Carinthian Grafschaft Ortenburg had come from Bavaria and the regents of the Bavarian Imperial County from Carinthia. In fact, neither an agnatic^{[clarification needed]} nor a marital connection between the two houses have been established.

In order to strengthen the claim to his heritage, the Bavarian Ortenburger Count Johann II, son of Sebastian I, followed the call of the King of the Romans Maximilian I against Switzerland. The latter had supposedly promised in exchange to enfeoff^{[clarification needed]} Johannes with the County of Ortenburg in Carinthia and to marry him with the rich heiress of the last Lords of Wallsee. Johannes II fell however by the offensive for the taking of the sieged Castle Dorneck, south of Basel. The property of the Carinthian County was thus kept elsewhere.

In the year 1530 the then in Ortenburg (Bavaria) ruling Count Christoph I took part in the Reichstag in Augsburg, where he to his astonishment encountered a Count of Ortenburg: Count Gabriel of Salamanca-Ortenburg. The latter had come in 1524 as follower of the later Kaiser Karl V to Germany and was enfeoffed with the Carinthian County. The claim of Christoph and his associates by the Kaiser, to be recognized as true heirs of the County in Carinthia, remained unsuccessful. Christoph so named his family from then on "Counts of Ortenburg of the older family" and modified the location's name from "Ortenberg" into "Ortenburg". Originally, the Bavarian county and family were named after the location Ortenberg.

As further signs of the heritage claim the Bavarian Ortenburger took in the middle of the 16th century the coat of arms of the Carinthian county as a part of their heritage arms.

The heritage claims of the Bavarian Ortenburger were kept until the middle of the 18th century, after which they were first dropped. The heritage coat of arms was modified again in the middle of the 19th century to the original Wechselzinnenbalken auf rotem Grund.

Literature

• (German) Hausmann, Friedrich: Die Grafen zu Ortenburg und ihre Vorfahren im Mannesstamm, die Spanheimer in Kärnten, Sachsen und Bayern, sowie deren Nebenlinien. In: Ostbairische Grenzmarken - Passauer Jahrbuch für Geschichte Kunst und Volkskunde. Nr. 36, Passau 1994
• (German) Ortenburg-Tambach, Eberhard Graf zu: Geschichte des reichsständischen, herzoglichen und gräflichen Gesamthauses Ortenburg. Teil 2: Das gräfliche Haus in Bayern. Vilshofen 1932

Sources

This article incorporates information from the German Wikipedia.