Budweis after the 30-yrs war

Budweis nowadays

Some Hutsteiner – obviously from Wegscheid court district as documents point to – emigrated to Rudolfstadt / Budweis ( Rudolfov /  České Budějovice), Kingdom of Bohemia, a part of the Austrian Empire, which is neighbouring to Passau and only 60 km far from Wegscheid parish. Vitus Hutsteiner from Rudolfstadt  and later Severin Hutsteiner a son of Vitus from Budweis are mentioned in the catholic Budweis church records around 1650. Some years earlier Budweis and the surrounding region was heavily devastated by the “Passauer Kriegsvolk” – extremely violent mercenaries of the bishop of Passau – during the 1610s and the plague around 1626.

By 1627 all protestants in Southern Bohemia were forced to convert or to leave the country. Unfortunately, the catholic church books from Budweis/České Budějovice have a gap from 1630 to 1644, but the existing records up to 1630 do not show any baptisms of adult “heretics”, and many families found in Rudolfstadt after 1644 have their roots in Budweis or other South Bohemian and Upper Austrian towns. Probably protestant inhabitants of Rudolfstadt were either killed or went into exile and the town was repopulated with Catholics from Budweis and other catholic areas, e.g. our Vitus Hutsteiner, who likely was from Wegscheid parish as a court record mentions his wife Eva , who actually lives in Budweis.

Vitus Hutsteiner likely died in Budweis as a burial record of his sister from 21 November 1679 in which he is mentioned exists. Usually only living people were listed in these records, with the occasional deceased person identified as such.

Wegscheid court record of 166x: Hutsteiner Veith mentioned in Budweis

His son Carl Hutsteiner later moved to Marthinsthal in the Rheingau and his son Johann Adam Hutstein became the founder of the catholic family lines in Westphalia / Hesse-Nassau.

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