Herrschaft Tomburg

Tomburg castle was built in the early 10th century and came into the possession of Electorate of Cologne in 1052. The surrounding Herrschaft was administered by various parties over the years until the castle was destroyed by the Duke of Jülich in 1473. Thereafter, the Herrschaft was governed, for the most part, as a condominium between the Electorate of Cologne and the Duchy of Jülich (hence, the simplified country name of “Bonn\Jülich“)

 

Herrschaft Tomburg had six functional subdivisions—four of which were characterized as “Gerichte” and two of which were characterized as “Herrschaften”. To avoid using “Herrschaften” for two different level of jurisdiction, I have reserved the term for the higher-level subdivision and recharacterized the two lower-level subdivisions as “Quasi-Gerichte”. (Sources identify two other subdivisions, one of which overlapped with one of the Quasi-Gerichte, and the other of which was virtually uninhabited. I treat the former as having been entirely subsumed by the overlapping Quasi-Gericht and I ignore the latter altogether.)

 

Although Tomburg was a condominium, the division of rights was not uniform among the subdivisions. The following lists the subdivisions grouped by how the rights were split:

 

• 50% Electorate, 50% Jülich:
  • Gericht Flamersheim
  • Gericht Hilberath
• 67% Electorate, 33% Jülich:
  • Gericht Odendorf
  • Gericht Ollheim
  • Quasi-Gericht Winterburg
• 38% Electorate, 19% Jülich, 43% three other entities (simplified country name: “Bonn\Jülich & others”
  • Quasi-Gericht Oberdrees