Re: [LoGH] The German Nobility
Rosalind L. (rosalind24@rocketmail.com)
Wed, 27 Sep 2000 18:46:11 -0700 (PDT)
Thank you so much, I learned a lot from this.
It's quite a useful information, and it cleared out a
few misunderstanding from the book.
Rosalind Lancaster
--- Lee Thompson wrote:
> The German Nobility
> Copyright ) (c) 1992 by Gilbert von Studnitz
>
http://worldroots.clicktron.com/brigitte/royal/germannobility.htm
>
> This is taken from an article written by Gilbert von
> Studnitz in "Der
> Blumenbaum", a publication of the Sacramento German
> Genealogy Society, Vol. 9,
> number 4, April-June 1992. This article, which also
> appears in the FAQ for the
> Usenet newsgroup alt.talk.royalty, is used by
> permission of the author.
>
>
> The German Nobility in Law and Practice
>
> The German system of nobility, as indeed the
> European system in general, is
> quite different from the English system with which
> most Americans are
> familiar. The English have a peerage system and not
> an extensive system of
> nobility, though their squires or landed gentry
> would tend to be the closest
> thing. In England only the eldest son usually
> inherits the title and the rest
> are considered commoners, though they may bear
> "courtesy titles" if their
> father has more than one, or may be called "Lord" or
> "Lady" without actually
> being one.
>
> The German nobility is divided into two major
> divisions, that of the lower
> (niedriger Adel) and the high (hoher Adel). It is
> further divided into the
> ancient nobility (Uradel) and the newer nobility
> (commonly known as Briefadel,
> or literally nobility by letter-cachet, but also
> including other groups.) The
> Uradel may be of either the lower or high nobility,
> but the Briefadel is
> always of the lower.
>
> In Germany, all legitimate children of a nobleman
> become nobles themselves,
> and most titles pass onto all the children with few
> exceptions. All the
> children of sovereigns did not, of course, become
> kings or electors, but did
> become princes or princesses. In the last decades of
> the German Empire, in
> imitation of the English system, a few families were
> ennobled with titles that
> passed on only to the eldest son, the remainder
> retaining either their
> father's former title (which he also still carried)
> or just untitled nobility.
>
> The hereditary and legal privileges of the nobility
> as the first class of the
> realm ended in August of 1919 when the Constitution
> of the so-called Weimar
> Republic came into force. The laws that concerned
> the nobility for some one
> thousand years before 1919 stated that hereditary
> nobility could only be
> passed on through legitimate biological descent from
> a noble father but not
> through adoption and especially not through
> purchase. When non-nobles were
> adopted the family name could be carried by the
> adoptee, but none of the noble
> designations of the family (such as a title or the
> "von".) If such an adoptee
> wished to become noble, he or she had to apply to
> their sovereign for such
> status in the same manner as any other subject. An
> exemption to this was and
> is still made by the "legitimatio per matrimonium
> subsequens",
> which allowed the legitimation of children born out
> of wedlock after the
> marriage of their noble parents. By this the
> children became full hereditary
> nobles, though some social stigma still remained.
>
> Since 1919, according to the German republican
> government, the nobility no
> longer exists as a legal entity. Nevertheless, the
> titles and noble
> designations of the nobility have not been
> abolished, as they have in Austria,
> and may still be carried. Legally they are now
> merely parts of the family name
> and in theory convey no status. Following this rule
> all children of, for
> example, a Count von Beust, whether male or female,
> would have the family name
> Count von Beust. Similarly your could find ladies
> named Elisabeth Duke of
> Saxony or Luise Prince of Prussia. A woman married
> to the Hereditary Grand
> Duke of Baden would, in law, also be named
> Hereditary Grand Duke of Baden, as
> would all their children. To avoid making all this
> seem too ridiculous the
> German government ignores much of its own law and
> allows the wives and
> children of nobles to take the gender-specific
> titles appropriate to their
> sex.
>
> Another example of society ignoring the 1919 law and
> following traditional
> practice is that in all German telephone books a
> person named, for instance,
> Baron von Richthofen would be listed under a "R" for
> Richthofen rather than a
> "v" for "von" or a "B" for "Baron". The U.S.
> telephone books are (unwittingly)
> more compliant with current German legal writ by
> listing all persons with a
> "von" under "v".
>
> The 1919 law also causes difficulties in the case of
> children inheriting
> senior titles of their fathers. For example, in
> certain families only the
> senior member is a count, and the rest are untitled
> nobles. For a child to use
> the inherited title of "count" upon his father's
> death would involve a court
> petition for a name change, which is not always
> granted when the judge or
> magistrate has an anti-noble bias.
>
> Current law allows a person adopted by a noble to
> use the noble family name,
> and since the title is considered part of the name,
> that is also conveyed by
> adoption. It should be noted that the German
> nobility never acknowledges such
> persons to be noble, no matter what they call
> themselves.
>
> Those persons who claim nobility through adoption or
> purchase, such as the
> notorious Claus von B|low, the Nazi foreign minister
> von Ribbentrop, or
> Zsa-Zsa Gabor's husband who uses a Saxon princely
> title, are not recognized as
> part of the historical nobility and are no more
> members of that class than
> anyone else claiming a status to which they are not
> entitled. Most such
> persons are essentially deluding themselves while
> trying to fool others.
>
> German nobles, especially the Uradel, have a
> particular class consciousness
> and consider themselves interrelated and cousins
> even if they don't know
> exactly how. Often in the case of the ancient
> families this is correct due to
> centuries of intermarriage. All members of the
> Uradel are considered by
> themselves to be of the same status, whether they
> are untitled, barons,
> counts, or whatever else they may be. The particular
>
> title of a person is far less important among the
> nobility than the age and
> standing of the family. This is particularly true as
> a number of old families
> have branches of various levels. For instance, the
> Counts, Barons, and
> untitled von Bothmers are all part of the same
> family. The Uradel also tend to
> look down on the Briefadel as parvenus, even when
> the Briefadel may have been
> noble for centuries. I recall visiting a
> cousin on the L|neburger Heath in Lower Saxony who
> had a brass plate on his
> front door stating "Lieferanten und Briefadel zur
> Hintert|r", meaning
> "Deliveries and Briefadel to the rear entrance".
> Though meant as a joke, there
> was still a bit of seriousness behind it.
>
> The Noble Designation
>
> The basic designation of the nobility is the
> predicate "von", which the vast
> majority of German nobles carry. There are a small
> number of noble houses,
> almost exclusively of the Uradel, which have never
> used the "von" or any other
> noble predicate, but are nevertheless of fully equal
> standing with those that
> do.
>
> In northern and eastern Germany there are a
> substantial number of families
> (such as the von Kranichfelds) that use the "von" as
> designations of the towns
> where they come from (as is the case with most older
> noble families) but have
> never been noble and make no pretense to be so.
>
> A few noble houses use "von und zu", meaning they
> are not only from the place
> mentioned but still retain it. Another Uradel house
> is named "aus dem Winckel"
> instead of "von dem Winckel" but having the same
> meaning. Other noble
> predicates sometimes seen are "von dem", "von der",
> or "vom". "Van" is not
> used by German nobles but is Dutch or Flemish and
> does not usually connote
> nobility in those countries.
>
> As a way of differentiating themselves from
> non-nobles, the aristocracy of
> northern Germany in most cases uses the abbreviation
> "v.", instead of writing
> out the "von", while still pronouncing the whole
> word. The southern Germans
> most often write out the "von". It is always spelled
> with a small "v" unless
> it would be grammatically incorrect, such as in the
> beginning of a sentence.
>
> Bibliography
>
> Notwithstanding regional preferences, the "Bible" of
> the nobility, the
> Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels (Genealogical
> Handbook of the Nobility),
> published by C. A. Starke in Limburg/Lahn, uses the
> "v." to designate nobles
> and spells out the "von" for non-noble families or
> individual non-nobles
> within aristocratic families. This handbook,
> colloquially known as the "Gotha"
> for its predecessor the Almanach de Gotha (in
> German, Gothaisches Hofkalendar)
> attempts a comprehensive listing of all German noble
> houses currently or
> recently in existence and comes out in several
> volumes on a yearly basis,
> listing all living members of a family and all those
> deceased since the last
> edition. The handbook is divided into several series
> with the binding in
> different colors: Royal and Princely houses, Counts,
> Barons, Untitled nobles,
> and Family histories. Within these series the
> families are, except since
> recently the Counts and Barons, divided into Uradel
> or Briefadel.
>
> The advantage of having these books is obvious:
> there is a wealth of
> genealogical information, and as it lists addresses,
> many potential contacts
> can be found. It is also a way of being able to
> investigate people's claims to
> noble status, though this kind of checking is not
> considered "gentlemanly".
> The listing are thorough and are checked for
> accuracy, though they depend to a
> large degree on the individual's
> honesty in telling the truth about themselves.
>
> Not every German noble family is included, as most
> often the family concerned
> must contribute financially to its inclusion, or the
> family may be too small,
> poor, or unwilling to warrant repeated updating. For
> instance, my own family,
> with some 70 members, appeared lastly in 1985 and
> will do so again in 1999,
> but that of my grandmother, von Bulmerincq, has not
> appeared since 1936. The
> current series of books has been published since
> 1951, and is available at a
> number of larger libraries.
>
> Divisions of the German Nobility
>
> Uradel
>
> This oldest level of the nobility is made up of
> those houses which by no later
> than 1400 were members of the knightly class, or
> patricians of a free Imperial
> city such as Frankfurt/Main. Most often these houses
> are counted as noble
> since "time immemorial" as at their first appearance
> in written records they
> were already noble. The families that make up this
> segment of the nobility
> usually descend from the knights or most important
> warriors of a sovereign
> that were the basis of his fighting force, or more
> rarely from a senior civil
> official of the time. The Uradel often had legal
> privileges over the newer
> nobility certifying their higher standing, such as
> in the Nobles Law of the
> Kingdom of Saxony of 1902. There are far fewer
> Uradel families still in
> existence than Briefadel due to the fact that
> families die out over the
> centuries and no Uradel has been created in almost
> 600 years.
>
> Briefadel
>
> This level of the nobility is made up of those
> houses which were ennobled
> since the beginning of the 15th Century through the
> end of the German or
> Austrian Empires in 1918. There were widely
> differing prerequisites for this
> level of the nobility, though most often military or
> civil service to the
> sovereign were the qualities most valued. The
> Briefadel includes houses
> ennobled or recognized as noble by the Emperor or
> one of the sovereigns of the
> high nobility. Also included are patricians of the
> free Imperial cities and
> non-German noble houses that immigrated over the
> centuries, such as the Counts
> von Polier from France or the Herren von Zerboni di
> Sposetti from Italy.
>
> High Nobility
>
> The High Nobility is made up of those families that
> had Reichsstandschaft, or
> had a seat in the Parliament of the Holy Roman
> Empire. These seats were
> reserved for sovereign houses. These families were
> also Reichsunmittelbar, or
> in a feudal sense holding their lands directly from
> the Holy Roman Emperor,
> who for four centuries, until the end of the empire
> in 1806, came from the
> house of Habsburg. In essence, these
> families were rulers of their own countries, often
> in times of a weak emperor
> paying only lip service to their subservience to
> him. Their relationship to
> the emperor was then much like that of today's
> Commonwealth rulers to the
> British Queen. Even in times of a strong emperor he
> was to them more like a
> chairman of the board rather than a ruler. Up to the
> early 19th Century, there
> were some baronial and untitled families that held
> lands directly of the
> emperor, so essentially being their own rulers, but
> had no seat in the
> Parliament, thus being members of the lower
> nobility. Many families of the
> high nobility have house laws applicable to their
> members. Often these laws do
> not allow marriage outside their ranks, even to the
> lower nobility which would
> be considered a morganatic alliance. Even today, the
> children of a member of
> the high
> nobility who marries morganatically become members
> of the lower nobility.
>
> Ranks of the High Nobility
>
> Within this division of the nobility the highest
> title is Emperor, or Kaiser,
> deriving from Caesar in Latin. Through most of
> German history, there was only
> one of these, the Holy Roman Emperor of the German
> Nation, lasting from the
> crowning of Charlemagne in the year 800 through the
> renunciation of the last
> emperor, Franz II, in 1806 under the influence of
> Napoleon, who by then had
> proclaimed himself Emperor
> of the French. Kaiser Franz had already declared
> himself Emperor of Austria,
> as Franz I, in 1804. In essence, the emperor just
> changed his title so as to
> more accurately reflect the political realities of
> the time.
>
> A second German empire was established in 1871 after
> the victory of the German
> states over Napoleon III, when King Wilhelm I of
> Prussia was proclaimed German
> Emperor. He was never titled Emperor of Germany, as
> this nation was not a
> unitary state but a federation of monarchies and
> free city-states with
> quasi-republican governments. The title of German
> Emperor was always carried
> in conjunction with that
> of King of Prussia, and he was addressed as
> Kaiserliche und Kvnigliche
> Majestdt (Imperial and Royal Majesty). The Austrian
> Emperor, based to a large
> degree upon his position as King of Hungary, was
> addressed as Apostolic
> Majesty.
>
> Both German and Austrian empires ceased to exist
> after World War I, and the
> imperial titles have not been carried since the last
> emperors died (Wilhelm II
> of Germany in 1941, Karl of Austria in 1922). The
> last empress, Zita of
> Austria, died in 1989.
>
> The children of the German emperor were Prinzen von
> Preu_en (Princes of
> Prussia, not Germany) and royal highnesses, except
> the eldest, who was German
> Kronprinz (Crown Prince) and addressed as Imperial
> and Royal Highness. The
> current heir to the throne is titled the, rather
> than a, Prince of Prussia,
> and is the only one in Germany still addressed as
> Imperial and Royal Highness.
> The children of the Austrian emperor
> were titled Archdukes or Archduchesses of Austria
> rather than princes, and
> called Imperial and Royal Highnesses.
>
> Next we come to Kvnig and Kvnigin, or King and
> Queen, which was carried by the
> rulers of the larger German states (Bavaria,
> Hanover, Prussia, Saxony,
> W|rttemberg, ). They were addressed as Majesty, and
> their children, princes or
> princesses, as Royal Highnesses.
>
> After these came the Gro_herzog, or Grand Duke, who
> were styled royal
> highness, and were rulers of somewhat smaller
> states, such as the two
> Mecklenburgs or Luxemburg (which until 1918 was
> considered a German state).
> The heir to these thrones was known as an
> Erbgro_herzog, or hereditary grand
> duke, and the other children were princes or
> princesses. Additionally in the
> Saxon kingdom, grand duchy, and duchies, all the
> children of the ruler were
> also styled dukes or duchesses.
>
> The next level is that of Herzog, or Duke, who was
> normally styled Highness.
>
> Kurf|rst, or Elector in English, ranked with a Duke.
> The electors were
> originally the greatest lords of the Holy Roman
> Empire, both temporal and
> spiritual, who elected the Emperor before the throne
> became hereditary. They
> later became sovereigns no different from the rest.
> The last ruling Elector,
> Hesse-Cassel, lost his throne to Prussia in 1866.
>
> Landgraf (Landgrave), Markgraf (Margrave), and
> Pfalzgraf (Palsgrave or Count
> Palatine) ranked somewhat with a Duke and are
> usually considered higher than a
> F|rst. All sovereigns of this rank were eventually
> "promoted" to higher
> titles, but the titles were sometimes used instead
> of crown prince for their
> states, and are currently used for the Heads of the
> Houses of Baden, Hesse and
> Saxony. Depending on
> circumstances, they could be styled Royal Highness
> or simply Highness. In the
> Middle Ages, some sovereigns were Burggrafs, or
> Burgraves, but all these took
> higher titles early on and Burggraf became a title
> and sometimes function,
> like Wildgraf, of the lower nobility.
>
> Next follows F|rst (for which there is no good
> translation in English, but
> which is confusingly called Prince). These are
> styled Durchlaucht, translated
> as Serene Highness. Children of dukes, kurf|rsts,
> and f|rsts were all princes
> or princesses. In the third generation their
> descendants sometimes become
> counts, except for the ruling line, which retains
> the princely title.
>
> The last category of the high nobility still in
> existence is that of Graf, or
> Count. The last sovereigns of this rank ceased
> ruling after the Congress of
> Vienna in 1815. They are styled Erlaucht, or
> Illustrious Highness. Their
> children are all counts or countesses. A former
> somewhat higher rank of
> gef|rsteter Graf, or princely count, no longer
> exists.
>
> Among all the higher nobility the idea of
> Ebenb|rtigkeit exists, meaning all
> of them, no matter what the title, are considered of
> equal birth and standing.
>
> Ranks of the Lower Nobility
>
> Very often a certain level of income, wealth, or
> social standing was necessary
> for appointment to these ranks, so as to demonstrate
> the ability of the person
> ennobled to maintain himself at a proper level.
>
> The highest rank of the non-sovereign nobility is
> Herzog or Duke, a title
> almost never given them and then only "ad personam",
> or much like an English
> life peer. An example is Otto von Bismarck as Duke
> of Lauenburg. He was styled
> Serene Highness.
>
> The highest rank that normally was part of the lower
> nobility is F|rst. This
> title, like Duke, was given to them only in the last
> centuries of the
> monarchy. Their children were rarely princes, but
> more usually counts or
> barons, depending on what was the original title of
> the F|rst.
>
> Next in rank is Graf or Count, which in modern times
> could be given
> primogeniture (inherited only by the eldest son),
> but was usually given to all
> the children of the new count. A very few houses
> also carry the title Burggraf
> which is approximately equivalent to Count.
>
> Baron follows, which is almost always called
> Freiherr in Germany, but given as
> Baron to the Germans of the Baltic regions. For many
> years it was in dispute
> whether Baron was equivalent to Freiherr (which was
> deemed "better"), but this
> was settled in the last century in an affirmative
> manner. The wife of a
> Freiherr is a Freifrau, the daughter a Freiherrin.
> This last title is
> sometimes abbreviated Freiin. The wife of a Baron is
> a
> Baronin, the daughter a Baronesse. Another variant
> of this rank is called
> Edler Herr, or Edle Herrin for females, which is
> borne by only a few very old
> families (such as the Gans zu Putlitz).
>
> The last level is that of the untitled nobility,
> which nevertheless includes
> some titled families. Normally an untitled noble is
> addressed as Herr, in this
> context meaning Lord.
>
> In former times untitled nobles, especially those
> from the eastern regions,
> were addressed as Junker, a title still in usage in
> the Netherlands as
> Jonkheer. It is no longer normally used in Germany.
> In Bavaria and especially
> Austria, the hereditary title of Ritter (Knight) was
> given to families, but
> they were still considered part of the untitled
> nobility. Much the same
> applies to the title of Edler, which is mainly
> northern and central German.
> While the wife and daughters of an Edler were titled
> Edle, the wife of a
> Ritter was called a Frau (in this sense Lady) and
> not Ritterin.
>
> Affiliations of the German Nobility
>
> Though the formal power of the German nobility is
> gone, it still remains a
> considerable social force. After the debacle of
> World War II, the aristocracy
> gradually reformed in groups based on religious
> affiliation or province of
> origin. For well over 30 years, these groups have
> been affiliated as the
> "Vereinigung der Deutschen Adelsverbdnde" and
> published the monthly "Deutsches
> Adelsblatt" in the small town of
> Westerbrak (now part of Kirchbrak). The legalistic
> "Deutsches
> Adelsrechtsausschu_" was set up, composed of members
> from various noble and
> chivalric organizations, to determine in
> questionable cases who belongs to the
> nobility or if a person has a right to a noble title
> he claims. Only if there
> is a positive judgment by this organization can
> someone join one of the
> nobles' associations or have their family listed in
> the Gotha.
>
> It has been estimated that there are some 40,000
> nobles of all ranks in
> Germany today
>
> --
> Lee Thompson
> shadow@nwlink.com
> ICQ: 19508091
=====
ù²ïµY¼w L.
Rosalind L.
__________________________________________________
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