Freiherr Von Blomberg - History

History

The ‘Freiherr von Blomberg’ families were typically based around North-Rhine-Westfalia and Lower Saxony, though Bavarian extensions are frequent. During the centuries the Family line spread throughout Eastern Europe from the Baltic sea through to Rumania.

The first von Blomberg of prominence was Heinrich Ulrich Freiherr von Blomberg (°1745 - + 1813). He was born in Königsberg on the Bavarian – Nordrheinish border. We know he was a student of Kant, for he enrolled in university on the 22nd of April 1761 and left in 1764. There exists a copy of a course of Kant, on which cover von Blomberg wrote “Collegium des Herrn Professor Kant über Meyers Auszug aus der Vernunft-Lehre nachgeschrieben von HU v Blomberg”.

Of the Bavarian branch, one member of the family (and this diametrically opposed to Heinrich Ulrich) was a devout –if not militant- Protestant, Friedrich Freiherr von Blomberg. His traces can be found in Strengberg, a town in the district of Amstetten in Lower Austria. Little more than the following details of him are known: quoted from contemporary archival sources “in a church, in the chapel under the north façade, we can find an altar-painting of the Holy Nicolaus, patron-saint of the boatsmen. Originally, it hung in the chapel of the Schloss Achleiten. This chapel was entirely demolished in 1836, when the Schloss became the property of the protestant Friedrich Freiherr von Blomberg”. But widely more numerous were the ‘pure’ North-Rhine-Westfalian von Blombergs.