Kloster/Herrschaft/Amt Himmelpforten

Samtgericht Hechthausen

During the early 13th century, a convent was founded near Lamstedt, the territorial holdings of which were the subject of a power struggle between the founding order and the Archbishop of Bremen. When the Archbishop won the struggle, the convent was moved east to Eulsete, which eventually adopted the name Himmelpforten.

 

The convent was secularized at the conclusion of the Thirty-Years War, at which time the territory was turned over to a Swedish citizen and given the status of Herrschaft. In 1681, it reverted to the crown and was established as an Amt. In 1712, while under Danish rule, Börde Oldendorf was added to the Amt at the expense of Amt Bremervörde. (The original Amt was never recharacterized as either a Börde or a Vogtei to distinguish it from Oldendorf. I characterize it as a Hausvogtei–a term that seems never to have been applied to it, but was applied to analogous territories in Amt Harsefeld and Amt Bremervörde.)

 

Adjacent to Amt Himmelpforten were three noble Gerichte—Hechthausen, Brogergen, and Blumenthal—which I group together as Samtgericht Hechthausen (the only Gericht consisting of multiple villages). The two single-village Gerichte are identified below with the [*] notation.