Topography: Description of the Surroundings of Merano – The Ladurner Family

Appendix.

Topography.

Description of the surroundings of Merano. 4/4

(Conclusion.)

Valuable old and well-preserved family documents are kept here, among others the estate settlements, for the drafting of which the district court authority of Merano itself came there over 300 years. For at least more than 500 years, the same lineage of the Ladurners named after it resided on this farmstead. Among them, Berthold in the 14th century, Peter in the 15th, Jenewein in the same, and again in the 16th century distinguished themselves and earned merit for their fatherland. The unbroken sequence of the same lineage in a descending direct line, demonstrable through diplomatic documents, begins around the middle of the 16th century. Unalienated and undivided, this farmstead was passed down from fathers to sons. All were pious, honorable, upright people whose memory rests in blessing. Such are also their surviving descendants, many of whom reside particularly in the Burggrafenamt and the Vinschgau, serving the state or the altar in various stations, and supporting themselves and their families as industrious citizens and diligent farmers.

A painted round window pane, still preserved in the ancestral farmstead, has preserved for us the knowledge of the old knightly coat of arms of the Ladurners. It is a quartered shield; upper right, lower left in a silver field, one sees a closed crown with five golden ears of grain rising from it; upper left, lower right in a golden field stands a tower with an open gate, above which are two rods crossed in the form of a St. Andrew's cross. On the crowned open helmet, between two swan wings adorned with open crowns, is a tower. The colors of the mantling are gold and blue on the right, gold and silver on the left. The inscription reads: Jhenewein . Ladurner . zum . Thurm . und . Starkenhofe . Haubman.

Later descendants, always faithful to the livelihood of their fathers – agriculture, livestock breeding – may have regarded these privileges and titles as of little value. At least they made no use of them. Hans Ladurner of Ladurn received a new coat of arms from Archduke Leopold on January 23, 1620, for himself and his entire family: a vertically party-per-pale shield, on whose right side a triple-peaked mountain can be seen, and on the left a grapevine with two blue clusters of grapes; on the closed helmet is a small olive tree between two buffalo horns colored red and white. Red and white is also the mantling of the coat of arms.