The Donkey Rider

The Riedesel coat of arms, with donkey heads.

The Riedesels eventually split into four branches, including the one that lived in Ludwigseck, the castle near Gerterode. In 1654, Wilhelm Georg, heir to Ludwigseck, was out hunting with a guide, Hans Walter, when they got into a drunken altercation with three men from Gerterode, the brothers Hans and Adam Paul and Georg Krode. The flat of Walter's sword struck Hans Paul, who fell to the ground. Thinking the man was dead, Wilhelm fled and didn't stop until he was in France where he joined the Foreign Legion.

In the meantime the two other men tried to get their friend to town for treatment, but they were too late; Hans died. The men told their side of the story to the villagers, who at first decided that Wilhelm was guilty of murder, because he fled the scene. Eventually they decided that Wilhelm was at fault for the scuffle and for his flight from the scene, but they cleared him of murder. It took four years to get that settled. By 1658 Wilhelm was finally allowed to return home.

An interesting footnote to this story is that when Henrich Leimbach was confirmed in 1661, the two other Gerterode boys confirmed at the same time were the sons of Adam Paul and Georg Krode.

The death of Hans Paul may have contributed to the Riedesels' downfall. In 1656 householders in villages all over the territory shifted their allegiance from the Riedesels to two sons of the Landgrave of Thuringia. The record of these new pledges of loyalty -- the Huldigungslist -- constitutes an invaluable record of who lived where at the time, and it is from this record that we first learn of the existence of Abraham Leimbach, the only Leimbach head of household living in Gerterode.

Loyalties may have shifted, but still, Henrich declared in his marriage records that he was from "Gerthen-Roth aus dem Ried-Eselischen" -- "Gerthen-Roth in the Riedesels' land."

Back to Chapter 1