Johann Kaspar von Stadion

Grand Master of the Teutonic Order (1627-1641) · President of the Hofkriegsrat · Imperial Privy Councillor (1622) · Landkomtur of Alsace

A Teutonic Knight who became Grand Master (Hoch- und Deutschmeister) in 1627, Johann Kaspar von Stadion was one of the Imperial strategists of the Thirty Years' War. His link to the history of Fachsenfeld Castle, near Aalen, illustrates the confiscations of that war: in 1634, the year he took part in the recapture of Regensburg and then the Battle of Nördlingen, he seized the estate of Kaspar von Woellwarth, the Protestant lord of the place. The possession was brief, as the Woellwarths regained Fachsenfeld four years later, around 1638. The episode belongs to a wider policy of Imperial rewards, Stadion also receiving in 1637 the county of Weikersheim, confiscated from the Hohenlohes. He died on campaign in 1641 and rests in Mergentheim, seat of his Order.