Henckel von Donnersmarck


The Henckel von Donnersmarck family is an Austro-German noble family that originated in the former region of Spiš in Upper Hungary, now in Slovakia. The founder of the family was Henckel de Quintoforo in the 14/15th century. The original seat of the family was in Donnersmarck.

History

In 1417, during the time of the Council of Constance, the Holy Roman Emperor and Hungarian King, Sigismund of Luxembourg, granted the three brothers Peter, Jakob and Nicholas a coat of arms.
During the 15th and 16th centuries, John II, an eminent scholar, corresponded with Martin Luther, Erasmus of Rotterdam and Philipp Melanchthon. He began his career as a pastor in Levoča and Košice. Later, he stayed at the court of Louis II of Hungary and his wife, Maria of Austria. In 1531, he came to Silesia and became a canon in Breslau, Silesia. He died there eight years later and was buried in the local cathedral.
Lazarus Henckel was a banker and mine owner, and the financier of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II's war with the Turks. In return for his service, he was given a number of privileges. In 1607, he and his sons were ennobled with the surname von Henckel von Donnersmarck. The family seat became the castle at Neudeck.
Lazarus II, called the Lazy, was made Baron of Gfell and Vesendorff by the Habsburg emperor, Ferdinand II, at Regensburg in 1636. In 1651, Archduke Ferdinand Karl of the Tyrol raised his title to that of Count in the Habsburg Hereditary Lands. He received the same title in the Kingdom of Bohemia from Emperor Leopold I in 1661, that title being hereditary for all legitimate descendants, male and female, in the male line.
In 1697, the Henckels' inheritance of the Freien Standesherrschaft of Beuthen, under the Bohemian crown, obtained Imperial confirmation as a hereditary Fideicommis, a family trust heritable by masculine primogeniture, on which estate would later be based the family's admission to Prussia's House of Lords until 1918. In the following centuries, the descendants of Lazarus II split into several lines and branches.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the family was the second richest in Prussia after the Krupps. Hugo Henckel von Donnersmarck, a steelworks founder and owner, and Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck were both wealthy industrialists. In 1854 and 1887, the family was given seats in the Prussian Hereditary House of Lords. On 18 January 1901, Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck received the Prussian title of Prince from German Emperor Wilhelm II, heritable by masculine primogeniture.
Following the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945, the Henckel von Donnersmarck family lost its fortune due to expulsion from Silesia by Ukrainian troops of the Soviet Army.
In 2007, film director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck received the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for his spy drama, The Lives of Others.

Family members