An Afterlehen or Afterlehn(plural: Afterlehne, Afterlehen) is a fief that the liege lord has himself been given as a fief and which he has then, in turn, enfeoffed wholly or partially to a lesser vassal or vassals. The term is German. It is variously referred to in English as a mesne-fief [1] [2] or mesne-tenure, [1] an arriere-fief or subfief, [3] under-tenure or mesnalty. [4]
Within the Holy Roman Empire, these mesne fiefs became inheritable over time and could have up to five "stations" between the actual holder of the fief and the overarching liege lord. [5]
An example of an Afterlehen is Rothenberg Castle in Bavaria, Germany.
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was a principality in Southwestern Germany. Its rulers belonged to the senior Swabian branch of the House of Hohenzollern. The Swabian Hohenzollerns were elevated to princes in 1623. The small sovereign state with the capital city of Sigmaringen was annexed to the Kingdom of Prussia in 1850 following the abdication of its sovereign in the wake of the revolutions of 1848, then became part of the newly created Province of Hohenzollern.
An oath of fealty, from the Latin fidelitas (faithfulness), is a pledge of allegiance of one person to another.
A fief was a central element in medieval contracts based on feudal law. It consisted of a form of property holding or other rights granted by an overlord to a vassal, who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a form of feudal allegiance, services, and/or payments. The fees were often lands, land revenue or revenue-producing real property like a watermill, held in feudal land tenure: these are typically known as fiefs or fiefdoms. However, not only land but anything of value could be held in fee, including governmental office, rights of exploitation such as hunting, fishing or felling trees, monopolies in trade, money rents and tax farms. There never did exist one feudal system, nor did there exist one type of fief. Over the ages, depending on the region, there was a broad variety of customs using the same basic legal principles in many variations.
A vassal or liege subject is a person regarded as having a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch, in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. While the subordinate party is called a vassal, the dominant party is called a suzerain. The rights and obligations of a vassal are called vassalage, while the rights and obligations of a suzerain are called suzerainty. The obligations of a vassal often included military support by knights in exchange for certain privileges, usually including land held as a tenant or fief. The term is also applied to similar arrangements in other feudal societies.
Graf is a historical title of the German nobility, usually translated as "count". Considered to be intermediate among noble ranks, the title is often treated as equivalent to the British title of "earl".
Bremen-Verden, formally the Duchies of Bremen and Verden, were two territories and immediate fiefs of the Holy Roman Empire, which emerged and gained imperial immediacy in 1180. By their original constitution they were prince-bishoprics of the Archdiocese of Bremen and Bishopric of Verden.
In English law, subinfeudation is the practice by which tenants, holding land under the king or other superior lord, carved out new and distinct tenures in their turn by sub-letting or alienating a part of their lands.
A mesne lord was a lord in the feudal system who had vassals who held land from him, but who was himself the vassal of a higher lord. Owing to Quia Emptores, the concept of a mesne lordship technically still exists today: the partitioning of the lord of the manor's estate among co-heirs creating the mesne lordships.
The House of Schönborn[ˈʃøːnbɔrn] is the name of an ancient noble and mediatised formerly sovereign family of the former Holy Roman Empire.
The Grand Master of the Teutonic Order is the supreme head of the Teutonic Order. It is equivalent to the grand master of other military orders and the superior general in non-military Roman Catholic religious orders. Hochmeister, literally "high master", is only used in reference to the Teutonic Order, as Großmeister is used in German to refer to the leaders of other orders of knighthood.
The ministeriales were a class of people raised up from serfdom and placed in positions of power and responsibility in the High Middle Ages in the Holy Roman Empire.
In the law of the Middle Ages and early Modern Period and especially within the Holy Roman Empire, an allod, also allodial land or allodium, is an estate in land over which the allodial landowner (allodiary) had full ownership and right of alienation.
The Duchy of Holstein was the northernmost state of the Holy Roman Empire, located in the present German state of Schleswig-Holstein. It originated when King Christian I of Denmark had his County of Holstein-Rendsburg elevated to a duchy by Emperor Frederick III in 1474. Members of the Danish House of Oldenburg ruled Holstein – jointly with the Duchy of Schleswig – for its entire existence.
Kallstadt is a village in the Palatine part of Rhineland-Palatinate, one of Germany's 16 federal states. It is part of the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region whose largest city is Mannheim, Germany's 22nd largest city. During much of the 19th century, it was part of the Kingdom of Bavaria. It has gained international media attention as the ancestral home of the related Heinz and Trump families, two prominent business and political families in the United States.
The House of Oettingen was a high-rank noble Franconian and Swabian family. It ruled various estates that composed the County of Oettingen between the 12th century and the beginning of the 19th century. In 1674 the house was raised to the rank of prince for the first time. Despite the annexation of their lands following the German mediatisation of 1806, the family retained their titles and still have representatives today.
Karl Anselm, 4th Prince of Thurn and Taxis, full German name: Karl Anselm Fürst von Thurn und Taxis was the fourth Prince of Thurn and Taxis, Postmaster General of the Imperial Reichspost, and Head of the Princely House of Thurn and Taxis from 17 March 1773 until his death on 13 November 1805. Karl Anselm served as Prinzipalkommissar at the Perpetual Imperial Diet in Regensburg for Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor and Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor from 1773 to 1797.
Feudalism as practiced in the Kingdoms of England during the medieval period was a state of human society that organized political and military leadership and force around a stratified formal structure based on land tenure. As a military defense and socio-economic paradigm designed to direct the wealth of the land to the king while it levied military troops to his causes, feudal society was ordered around relationships derived from the holding of land. Such landholdings are termed fiefdoms, traders, fiefs, or fees.
Feudalism in the Holy Roman Empire was a politico-economic system of relationships between liege lords and enfeoffed vassals that formed the basis of the social structure within the Holy Roman Empire during the High Middle Ages. In Germany the system is variously referred to Lehnswesen, Feudalwesen or Benefizialwesen.
Isaac de Forcade de Biaix, aka Isaak de Forcade de Biaix, aka Isaac von Forcade de Biaix, aka Isaac von Forcade, aka Peter Isaac von Forcade, aka Isaak von Forcade, was a Royal Prussian colonel, Hofmarschall to the Prince of Prussia and recipient of Prussia's highest military order of merit for heroism, Knight of the Order of Pour le Mérite. He was a descendant of the noble family of Forcade in Béarn, born as a Roman Catholic, but emigrated to Brandenburg-Prussia at a young age, where he joined the Huguenot community in Berlin.