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Wirwatz Name Study

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Surnames/tags: Wirwatz Wirbatz Wirwahn
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Contents

About the Project

Family coat of arms

The Wirwatz Name Study project serves as a collaborative platform to collect information on the Wirwatz name. The hope is that other researchers like you will join the study to help make it a valuable reference point for other genealogists who are researching or have an interest in the Wirwatz name.

Also see this page's partner project at Space:Church records of the Amt Battenberg (transcriptions of many relevant source documents).

This project was started on 10 November 2022 by Daniel Bamberger.

Who is included?

Anyone who carried the name Wirwatz, or one of its variants, at some point. This includes spouses, if they took on the name Wirwatz from their partner. If a person qualifies, the sticker {{One Name Study|name=Wirwatz}} should be added to their profile.

Also see the related surnames and surname variants.

Origins of the Wirwatz family

Some of the early Wirwatz lines

[This section needs to be expanded]

The history of the Wirwatz family begins with a mercenary called "Wirwacz" or "Wurwatz", who is attested in Marburg, Hesse, Germany between 1460 and 1510 (first in 1460,[1] then as a mercenary in 1477,[2] and as the town's master stonemason between 1486 and 1489[3][4]). His widow is notable for being the first victim of the witch hunt in Hesse. She was burnt at the stake in Marburg in 1517.

Almost all known Wirwatz's are descendants of their great-grandson Michael Wirwatz (abt. 1540-1608) from Röddenau in northern Hesse, who also was the first to carry the family coat of arms. The table below gives the number of his descendants in each generation (as far as they have been added to WikiTree), and an expected number of descendants assuming exponential growth, as of 12 February 2024. It is largely complete up to a birth year of about 1650:

Generation Profiles Year (approx.) Model Done Status
-3 2 1440 8 25% incomplete
-2 (grandparents) 1 1480 4 25% incomplete
-1 (parents) 2 1520 2 100% complete
0 1 1550 1 100% complete
1 (children) 8 1580 6 100% possibly complete
2 (grandchildren) 28 1620 29 95% possibly complete
3 142 1650 145 98% possibly complete
4 296 1680 718 41% incomplete
5 358 1710 3.6k 10% incomplete
6 360 1740 18k 2.0% incomplete
7 479 1780 87k 0.6% too many
8 422 1810 430k 0.1% too many
9 284 1840 2.1m 0% too many
10 256 1860 11m 0% too many
11 98 1890 52m 0% too many
12 47 1920 260m 0% too many
13 21 1950 1.3b 0% almost everyone
14 6 1970 6.3b 0% almost everyone
15 3 2000 31b 0% almost everyone
Total 2814 Including 5 active WikiTree members

Data after 1900, roughly corresponding to anything after generation 11, is largely unavailable due to German data protection laws.

While descendants in general are plentiful, male line descendants (in particular those carrying the name today) appear to be very rare: According to kartezumnamen.eu, the name Wirwatz is now probably extinct in Germany. The variant Wirwahn exists 22 times, Wirbatz 15 times, and Werwatz 14 times. In 2007, about 20 people named Wirwahn lived in the United States.[5]

The family disappeared from Röddenau itself in 1642. In Battenberg, the name Wirbatz is also extinct today; the last man with the name in the town passed away in 1955. Up until the mid-19th century, the name was abundant, and four different lines of the family existed in parallel. However, all but one ended before the turn of the century, either without any descendants, or with just daughters. Branches in southern Hesse, Baden-Wurttemberg and the Ruhr area survive.

Notable family members

Witch trial against the
Wirwatzenn zu Marcpurg

Most Wirwatz's lived a quiet life. The few exceptions listed below are not representative of the family as a whole:

The word "Wirwatz"

Etymology

From Jacob Grimm to Bayerischer Rundfunk, a number of people have tried to explain the word Wirwatz. Some possible origins are discussed below.

A scatterbrain or an untidy person

In the dialect spoken in the Palatinate region, a Wirrboßen [węʳbōsə] is a messy bundle of straw, a compound of wirr ("messy") and boßen ("a bundle of straw").[6]

The Rhenish dialect also knows the word Wirrbussen [węărnbosə], with the same meaning,[7] and Wirrwar [we·r.wār] in the sense of "quarrel", "dispute".[8]

The dictionary of the Southern Hessian dialect lists the variants Wirrwatz, Wirrboßen and Wirrwarr as synonyms of Wirrkopf, meaning "scatterbrain"; also Wirrwarr, Wirrboßen and Wullewatz as synonyms of Wirrstroh, with a figurative interpretation as "untidy person" or "scumbag".[9]

An etymology like Wirrboßen [węʳbōsə, węărnbosə] → Wirrboß [węrbos] → Wirrbotz ['vɪʁbɔt͡s] → Wirwatz ['vɪʁvat͡s] seems plausible. However, a compound involving the word Watz may be more likely, see the following entry.

A wereboar (a shapeshifter who can assume the form of a boar)

In the Southern Hessian dialect, Werwatz is also a word for a hungry boar, figuratively a man who eats as much as a boar.[10] Watz/Wetz is an old word for a male pig, which was only replaced by the now more common word Eber in the early 20th century. The existence of the variant Wetz may explain why the family name is also spelled "Wirwetz" in some of the oldest documents.

In an 1859 article about the werewolf myth, Johann Wilhelm Wolf, following the work of Jacob Grimm, argued that the origin of the name lies in a myth closely related to that of the werewolf. He wrote:

Notable is the occurrence, if rarely, of the family name "Werwatz" in Starkenburg (i.e. Dreieichenhain) and Upper Hesse. This word is formed like "Werwolf" (werewolf), compare Grimm's Teutonic Mythology, page 1048. The name means "a person who turned into a boar". Philipp Dieffenbach has told me that, in the Starkenburg area (probably in the region around Dietzenbach), the word "Werwatz" is used as an insult meaning "someone who is as hungry as a boar". In the Wetterau region such a person is called a "Werwolf".[11]

In his 1835 work Deutsche Mythologie, Jacob Grimm himself mentions it only briefly. He writes (framing it as a question, indicating that he was much less sure about it than Johann Wilhelm Wolf later suggested):

Werwatz (watz = brood-hog) is a family name at Dreieichenhain; is it formed like werwolf?[12]

The family name Werwatz was indeed present in the Starkenburg region at the time, but it had only arrived recently, with the brothers Johann Daniel and Johann Henrich Wirwatz, who had moved there from Battenberg in Upper Hesse in 1698 and 1711, respectively. Many of their descendants changed the spelling of the name from Wirwatz to Werwatz.

Even though the family had arrived only recently, the word itself may have existed there long before that. Its existence in the local dialect may even help explain the change in spelling.

Someone who makes a fuss

The word has been interpreted as Lower Bavarian Wirrwe ("fuss"), with the comparative ending -ötz, meaning "someone who makes quite a fuss".[13]

The word does not appear in dictionaries of the local dialects, but the interpretation may be supported by an entry in the church records of Frankfurt am Main, in Southern Hesse, from 1726. Regarding the moral conduct of Johann Peter Wirwatz (1695 - 1741), the writer of the church records, after a lengthy description that covers two entire pages, noted quite poetically:[14]

Das laßt mir einen Wirwatz sein
des That stimmt mit dem Nahmen ein!

In English: "He may be called a Wirwatz whose deeds agree with the name!" – This seems to make more sense if Wirwatz is translated as "someone who makes quite a fuss", than if translated as a "wereboar" or a "scatterbrain".

Too bad that Frankfurt am Main is not in Bavaria. The very existence of this word in the Lower Bavarian dialect remains doubtful.

A fortune teller

The word has been interpreted as a compound of Latin viscera ("bowels") + vates ("seeress"), meaning "fortune teller".[15]

There are problems with this interpretation. The phrase viscera vates scrutabatur did mean "a seer searched the bowels" in medieval Latin,[16] but viscera vates is not attested to mean "fortune teller" (which would be viscerum vates). Even if it did, it remains unexplained how viscera vates would evolve into Wirwatz. And last but not least, the whole idea was broad forward in an attempt to refute the explanation for the Lower Bavarian word "Wirwatz" discussed previously, not accounting for the fact that this word probably does not even exist in the Lower Bavarian dialect.

The interpretation as "fortune teller" is appealing in the context of NN Wirwatz (abt. 1445 - 1517), who was burnt as a witch, but the family name is already attested for her husband by the 1460s, making this an apparent coincidence.

The reading of "Wirwatz" as "fortune teller" is probably spurious.

Related surnames and surname variants

There are a number of variants of the name "Wirwatz", including:

Resources and prior research

Common mistakes

One can find numerous family trees online that link to the Wirwatz family. Unfortunately, many of them contain errors, often propagated from one tree to the next. This is also true for family trees published in the literature, like in the proceedings of the Hessische familiengeschichtliche Vereinigung (HFK). Below are the most common/serious errors:

The marriage of Michael Wirwatz's son-in-law Hans Crafft

One of Michael Wirwatz's daughters got married in Frankenberg (Eder) in 1589. Hammann assumes this to be the wife of Hans Crafft from Marburg. The connection is based on documents from 1593 and 1597, which mention Hans Crafft as Michael Wirwatz's son-in-law. However, there are several children of Michael Wirwatz who were unknown to Hammann, and this included the daughter Margarethe, who married Christian Emmerich, the treasurer (Rentmeister) of Frankenberg. The marriage in 1589 was theirs.

The spurious connection to the Biedenfeld family

The literature often mentions the marriage of Johann Christoph Wirwatz (abt.1575-1642/1643) and the noblewoman Margaretha von Biedenfeld, and their connection to Goethe-ancestor Philipp Orth (Margaretha's grandfather).[17][18][19] This is claimed to connect their children to the Biedenfeld and Orth families. Unfortunately, that connection is spurious: Margaretha, attested as Christoph's wife from two sources dating to 1625 and 1628, was his second wife, and not the mother of his children. Christoph's first wife Güda and their heirs are attested from a 1622 contract.[20] The relevant source (the Gesamtarchiv von Romberg) appears to be completely unknown to the authors of those publications; see the profile of Johann Christoph Wirwatz (abt.1575-1642/1643) for details.

Those who descend from Johann Christophs son Johann Daniel Wirwatz are still related to Philipp Orth and the Biedenfeld family, via his wife Elisabeth Ebel.

The other Johann Christoph Wirwatz from Röddenau

That some family trees mix up the Johann Christoph Wirwatz born about 1575, and the person of the same name born in 1602 who became mayor of Biebesheim, has been known for some time now. Hammann has shown this in his 1993 article, confirming a conjecture by Knetsch. However, one of Johann Christoph's children is linked incorrectly by Hammann, which was pointed out by Schnell in 2000.[21][22] That source, unfortunately, has gone widely ignored, and many family trees still use the genealogy given by Hammann. The parents of Anna Margaretha Wirwatz (ca.1631-aft.1671) are connected incorrectly in those trees.

Or, to say it in a more positive way: Unlike the erroenous Biedenfeld connection mentioned previously, there may actually be a connection to nobility (and to Goethe) through Anna Margaretha, via the Kornmann family.

The parents of Agnes Nagel

In their 1955 article about the Wirwatz family, Itzerott and Lampert wrongly linked Agnes Nagel (abt.1610-bef.1653) as a daughter of Michael Wirwatz (abt.1540-1608). They were obviously unaware of the documents from the Gesamtarchiv von Romberg, regarding the heirs of Johann Christoph Wirwatz (abt.1575-1642/1643) (see his page for details), as were Ernst Hammann and Helmut Wirwahn.

Resources

Below is a list of resources that are frequently used in this study.

  • Itzerott, Georg; Lampert, Ulrich: Wirwatz - Wirbatz, Zusammenhänge zwischen Nord- und Südhessen, in: Hessische Familienkunde, volume 3, issue 5 (March 1955), columns 231-238; volume 3, issue 6 (June 1955), columns 299-312
  • Hammann, Ernst: Und Knetsch hatte doch recht - Zur Familie Wirwatz/Wirbatz, Hessische Familienkunde, volume 21, 1993
  • Wirwahn, Helmut: Chronik der Familie Wirwatz/Wirwahn, 1544 bis 1990, Frankenberg-Wangershausen, 1991

To-do list

The following branches of the family have not been researched yet. If you want to help with extending them, you're welcome! If you find a branch of the family that isn't on WikiTree yet, please add it to this list:

Open questions beyond genealogy

There may be questions that are related to the Wirwatz Name Study, but which do not directly touch on genealogy. Examples may include the appearance of characters called Wirwatz in fiction, and whether something (or someone) can be found that inspired the author of that fiction to use it in their work. The name Wirwatz is so unusual and rare that any such appearance in literature – or any other medium of fiction – would seem to imply a conscious effort by its author (rather than, for example, the usage of a common name like Smith or Miller). Questions of this nature can be placed below:

Membership

How to join the Wirwatz Name Study

... ... ... is a member of the Wirwatz Name Study Project.
{{Member|ONS|name=Wirwatz}}

To join the Wirwatz Name Study, please add your name to the Membership list below, post an introduction comment on the specific team page, and then dive right in!

If you need assistance, please contact the Name Study Coordinator: Daniel Bamberger.

Once you are ready to go, you can also show your project affiliation with the ONS Member Sticker.

Current members

The members of this One Name Study are:

Acknowledgements

This is not the first research project about the Wirwatz family. Several others have studied the family and its history, and have published their results.

The first was Carl Knetsch (1874 - 1938) in the 1930s, followed by Georg Itzerott and Ulrich Lampert (1865 - 1947), whose work published in 1955 in the proceedings of the Hessische familiengeschichtliche Vereinigung (HFK) was the first comprehensive list of descendants of Michael Wirwatz (abt.1540-1608). Ernst Hammann (1923 - 2016) followed up on Knetsch's work in 1993, with an overview of the family, published in HFK. Apart from a correction to Hammann's work by Schnell in 2000, this is the last publication on the family in HFK.

Independently, and apparently unaware of those works, Helmut Wirwahn (1939 - 2016) shared the results of his research on the family in 1991, in the form of a self-published book. He found several important documents about the early members of the family that were unknown to the others.

We have incorporated the results of all of those studies, and corrected and amended them by our own research where necessary. We list some of the most important corrections further up.

Apart from the members and researchers listed above, this one name study has also benefited from the work and kind help of:

Footnotes and sources

  1. ↑ From the Städtische Hauptrechnungen, 7. Juli 1460:
    Wirwacze von eynundczwenzig schoczekogeln (zu 16 h.) zu machen, 1 1/2 p. 4 d.
    Küch, Friedrich: Quellen zur Rechtsgeschichte der Stadt Marburg, Band 2, Marburg, 1931, Seite 130. https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kuech1931bd2/0150/image,info
  2. ↑ Städtische Hauptrechnungen, 19. Januar 1477:
    Als unser gnediger her aber umbe 10 soldener zu fusse gein Medebach zu schigken begeret hait, sin ußgefertiget uff sontag nach Anthonii Legkerconczchen, Wirwacz, Molnerhen, Jost Begker, Endres Schumecher, Hans sin geselle, Adam Jheiger, junge Plettener, Jost Rode und Gerlach Marpecher, sin kommen biß zu Medebach und waren bescheiden, daselbs uffgenommen solten werden, des doch nicht geschach, han sie uff solichen bescheidt 2 1/2 dage zu Medebach gelegin und darnehst widder hir heym gangen sin, iglichem vor solt und kost zu dag und nach gegebin 3 tor., [...] sin, tud 9 p. 3 s. 4 d. Vor zwey gruone fasse zu solichem bier gegebin 12 s. Als der rath umbe solichs endelichs czogis willen zusamen verbott gewest und etliche ire frunde, nemlich Hennen Martdurff, Gabrieln, Ludewig von Sassen und Petrn von sent Nabor von stunt nach solichem ußczoge zu unserm gnedigen hern uff die burg geschicht han, umbe fure zu werben, profande den von Marpurg nachzusenden, dieselben auch, so die fure kommen ist, uffzuladen bestalt han, sin dieselben in des burgemeisters huße bleben, daselbs die knecht, nemlich koche, underkeuffere und ander me knechte, der man zu dem uffladen behubt hait, gessen, [...] 1 p. 1 s.
    Küch, Friedrich: Quellen zur Rechtsgeschichte der Stadt Marburg, Band 2, Marburg, 1931, Seite 296. https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kuech1931bd2/0316/image,info
  3. ↑ Fouquet, Gerhard: Bauen für die Stadt: Finanzen, Organisation und Arbeit in kommunalen Baubetrieben des Spätmittelalters : eine vergleichende Studie vornehmlich zwischen den Städten Basel und Marburg, 1999, Seiten 259, 266, 274.
  4. ↑ Ernestus, Christopher: Tagelöhner, Zunftmeister, Stadtschreiber: Städtisches Leben im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert im Spiegel einer Marburger Bürgerfamilie, 2005, Seite 337.
  5. ↑ Biedenbach, Martina: Auf der Spur der Vorfahren: Amerikaner Eugene Wirwahn besucht Rengershausen und seine dortigen Verwandten, Hessische/NIedersächsische Allgemeine, 27. October 2007, Lokalteil Frankenberg, Seite 10.
  6. ↑ „Wirr-boßen, m.“, Pfälzisches Wörterbuch, digitalisierte Fassung im Wörterbuchnetz des Trier Center for Digital Humanities, Version 01/21, <https://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/PfWB?lemid=W03160>, abgerufen am 20.12.2022.
  7. ↑ „Wirr-bussen“, Rheinisches Wörterbuch, digitalisierte Fassung im Wörterbuchnetz des Trier Center for Digital Humanities, Version 01/21, <https://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/RhWB?lemid=W04681>, abgerufen am 20.12.2022.
  8. ↑ „Wirr-war“, Rheinisches Wörterbuch, digitalisierte Fassung im Wörterbuchnetz des Trier Center for Digital Humanities, Version 01/21, <https://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/RhWB?lemid=W04689>, abgerufen am 20.12.2022.
  9. ↑ Mulch, Roland: Südhessisches Wörterbuch, Band 6, Seite 605f., Marburg, 2010. https://www.lagis-hessen.de/de/subjects/rsrec/id/4595/sn/shwb?type=Lemma
  10. ↑ Südhessisches Wörterbuch, Band 6 (2010), Spalten 315–316. https://www.lagis-hessen.de/de/subjects/rsrec/id/4450/sn/shwb?type=Lemma
  11. ↑ Wolf, Johann Wilhelm: Zur Mythologie, in: Zeitschrift für Deutsche Mythologie und Sittenkunde. Band 4, Göttingen 1859. https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_rG8AAAAAMAAJ/page/n17/mode/2up
    Merkwürdig ist der in Starkenburg (z. B. Dreieichenhayn) und Oberhessen, wiewohl spärlich, vorkommende Familienname Werwatz, eine "Werwolf" (Grimms mythol. 1048) gleiche Bildung. Er bedeutet eigentlich einen in einen Eber verwandelten Mann. Wie Phillip Dieffenbach aufgezeichnet und mir mitgeteilt hat, so ist in Starkenburg (wahrscheinlich in der Gegend von Dietzenbach) der Ausdruck der "Werwatz" ein Schimpfwort für einen der so gefräßig ist wie ein Watz. In der Wetterau schimpft man einen solchen Menschen "Werwolf".
  12. ↑ Grimm, Jacob (author); Stallybrass, James Steven (translator): Teutonic Mythology, Cambridge University Press, 2012, page 1629. https://www.google.de/books/edition/Teutonic_Mythology/v3mS9TKr2P0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=teutonic+mythology+jacob+grimm+%22Werwatz%22&pg=PA1629&printsec=frontcover
  13. ↑ Wirwatz?, in: Host mi?, Wir in Bayern, BR Fernsehen, 25. Juni 2013. https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/wir-in-bayern/wirwatz/br-fernsehen/Y3JpZDovL2JyLmRlL3ZpZGVvL2RmYWNiMDdiLTM4NGYtNGQxNi04NjExLTY3YmYyZTMyNTE5OA
  14. ↑ Itzerott, Georg; Lampert, Ulrich: Wirwatz - Wirbatz, Zusammenhänge zwischen Nord- und Südhessen, HK, Band 3, Heft 5 (März 1955), Sp. 231-238; Band 3, Heft 6 (Juni 1955), Sp. 299-312.
  15. ↑ Stadler, Rupert: Wirwatz, in: Keltische und lateinische Sprachrelikte im bayerischen Dialekt, Eine "spracharchäologische" Sammlung. http://www.boari.de/woerterbuch/wirwatz.htm
  16. ↑ Peucer, Kaspar: Commentarius de praecipuis divinationum generibus, 1553. https://books.google.de/books?id=GjOprWFdGOsC&pg=PA240&lpg=PA240&dq="viscera+vates"
  17. ↑ Hammann, Ernst: Ahnenverwandtschaften mit dem Hessischen Ritter-Adel vom Ritter Gerlach von Biedenfeld 1180 bis zum Oberförster Johann Christop Wirwatz 1615, Hessische familiengeschichtliche Vereinigung, Dietzenbach, 1997. https://www.hfv-ev.de/archivbestande/gebundene-ahnenlisten/gebundene-ahnenlisten-h-j/
  18. ↑ Scholze, Barbara: Berühmte Verwandte ausbuddeln, Offenbach Post, op-online, 23. Juli 2012. https://www.op-online.de/region/dietzenbach/ernst-hammann-dietzenbach-erforscht-stammbaeume-ahnentafeln-2427202.html
  19. ↑ Itzerott, Georg; Lampert, Ulrich: Wirwatz - Wirbatz, Zusammenhänge zwischen Nord- und Südhessen, HK, Band 3, Heft 5 (März 1955), Sp. 231-238; Band 3, Heft 6 (Juni 1955), Sp. 299-312.
  20. ↑ Landesarchiv NRW Abteilung Westfalen, U 194u / Gesamtarchiv von Romberg / Urkunden, Nr. 2503, https://www.archive.nrw.de/archivsuche?link=VERZEICHUNGSEINHEIT-Vz_acecd7ee-9d23-49f7-81f4-5a47ad106616
  21. ↑ Schell, Thomas: Wer waren die Eltern von Anna Margaretha Wirwatz? Änderung zu dem Artikel "Und Knetsch hatte doch recht!" aus der HFK Band 21, Heft 7, Spalte 303-308, HFK 25 (2000)
  22. ↑ Hammann, Ernst: Und Knetsch hatte doch recht - Zur Familie Wirwatz/Wirbatz, HFK 21 (1993)




Images: 4
Witch trial against the Wirwatzenn zu Marcpurg
Witch trial against the Wirwatzenn zu Marcpurg
Wappen der Familie Wirwatz
Wappen der Familie Wirwatz
Marriage of Philipp Stamm and Sophia Roth
Marriage of Philipp Stamm and Sophia Roth
Wirwatz family chart
Wirwatz family chart
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