Der königlich sächsische 
Hausorden der Rautenkrone – Genese, Verfasstheit und 
Verleihungspraxis eines Hausordens 
des 19. Jahrhunderts
Creators: name: Mitzscherling, Marc Eric
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022
Subjects: Orden
Verleihungen
Hausorden
Königreich Sachsen
Sachsen
Landesgeschichte
Mikrodaten
Forschungsdaten
Verleihungslisten
Ordensverleihung
19. Jahrhundert
Rang
Stand
Beruf
Anrede
Titulatur
Hochadel
Orders
awards
house order
Kingdom of Saxony
saxony
regional history
microdata
research data
lists of awards
Rue Crown
19th century
ran k
status
occupation
salutation
titulature
high nobility

description: This Bachelor's thesis deals with the traditional award figures and the corresponding award practice of the Royal Saxon House Order of the Diamond Crown. Even though the House Order is repeatedly mentioned in phaleristic introductory works as one of the great house orders that existed during the 19th century - together with the Prussian Order of the Black Eagle or the Austrian Order of the Golden Fleece, among others - detailed and extensive phaleristic as well as regional historical studies on the Order itself have so far been limited.The work is divided into two main areas. On the one hand, the work fulfils the long overdue task of a transcribed and edited version of the statutes of the Order. The statutes, along with the order's register, are the central documents of an order and in the case of Saxony have so far only been transcribed incorrectly or inadequately for scientific purposes. Within the framework of this work, a scientific and revised transcription of the Order's statutes was made in the version that was most likely valid during the Order's existence.

In a further step, the regulatory content of the statutes was placed in a larger context - including the foundation of the Order.Secondly, the Order's matricula, which has also been handed down, was the focus of the investigation. The aim was to clarify the question of how the bestowals of the order were realised during the time of the order's existence. Which persons were bestowed? Is it possible that the respective Saxon kings who acted as Grand Master of the Order during their reign had a profile of the bestowals? What functions can be derived for the Order as a house order of the Saxon royal house?As a house order, the bestowal practice can be located in the aristocratic social milieu from the very beginning. However, in order to be able to make more precise statements, the information in the Order's register on the Order's holders was enriched with further standard data. In addition to the office and the name, a social rank was derived from the form of address, which was also given in some cases, and the age of the person at the time of the bestowal as well as the main geographical affiliation of the person were added. Office and name and person were standardised.With this coherent data, quantitative and qualitative analyses could then be carried out in order to clarify the research questions of the thesis.

The analysis confirmed the high nobility, European and Christian focus of the knights of the order. Around 90 percent of all knights of the order came from the titled nobility. In the course of the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century up to 1918, a slight social opening of the Order could be observed along with the general social changes. Especially among political dignitaries, membership of the nobility became less essential.In the end, however, the bestowals of the Order remained anchored in the traditional social elite. The aristocracy was honoured first and deserving officials second. The difference between the two groups is most evident in the age at the time of the bestowal: while princes from the higher nobility were sometimes bestowed as (small) children, politicians often received the award only at the end or at the peak of their careers in old age.A characteristic award profile of the individual Grand Masters could not be confirmed. Thus, although the Order was an instrument of the Saxon royal house to express favour or closeness, the individual kings held back on individual interests when conferring the Order and acted in the interest of the entire royal house. This close relationship between the royal house and the order, which is typical for house orders, was also shown in comparison to other orders of the Saxon kingdom by the simultaneous course of the number of bestowals and the event history of the royal house.In addition to the new findings on the bestowal practice of the Saxon house order, the work also produced a linkage of norm data and existing matrix entries, which is a first for phaleristics and can be the basis for further research.