Anton III. from Montfort

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Anton III of Montfort (* 26.) November 1670 in Tettnang im Argengau; † December 12, 1733 in Salzburg was from 1686 (until 1692 still under the tutelage of his uncle Anton II) reigning Count of Tettnang and Langenargen from the house of Montfort. Due to the high debt burden of the county, in 1727 he prematurely transferred the government business to his son Count Ernst.

Life and work

Anton III. Von Montfort was the son and successor of John X, who died in a fall from the horse. Because of his excessive love of art and his propensity for splendor and waste, Johann Nepomuk Vanotti, the biographer of Montfort, called him the “true enemy and spoiler of his family”, although the descent of the Counts’ House had begun much earlier.

He married in 1693 or 1694 in Dillingen Anna Maria (1664–1733), a daughter of Don Maximilian von Thun-Hohenstein, Fideikomherrn zu Tetschen an der Elbe. Anton had two sons and a daughter with her. Together with his wife, he donated a monastery in Langenargen to the Capuchin Order. In 1699 he received a job at the Salzburg Archbishop's Court by Anna Maria's uncle Johann Ernst Graf von Thun and Hohenstein. The counts' family moved to Salzburg, acquired the Montfort court there and leased the income of their highly indebted county to the chief minister Johann Baptist Fritz for an annual payment of 9,000 guilders and the condition to reduce the debt burden.

After the archbishop’s death, the family returned to their county. In view of the modest conditions compared to the luxury of the Salzburg court, Count Anton started a comprehensive construction project. Hereby he wanted to upgrade his county according to his standards. Together with Christoph Gessinger, he ordered the master builder of the New Meersburg Castle of the Prince-Bishop of Constance to build the New Castle in Tettnang in his residence city of Tettnang between 1712 and 1720.

After he had already taken a first step with the monastery settlement of his secondary residence Langenargen, he had a new city center built in the axis between Burg Argen and Kloster. For this purpose, parallel to the construction work of the castle 1716-1718, the new building of the Hospital to the Holy Spirit in Langenargen was realized. Immediately afterwards from 1718 to 1722, after the demolition of the old parish and cemetery church of St. Martin, he had the new parish church of St. Martin von Langenargen built. For their originally planned two towers, however, the money was missing for the time being, so that only his successor Count Ernst could realize only one of the two towers, as well as the representative rectory. In 1719, Count Anton tried in vain to have the mortal remains of the supposed ancestor John of Cyprus transferred to the parish church in Langenargen via the emperor. With this overall project, Count Anton strove for an increase in status in the