Hohenlohe


The House of Hohenlohe is a German princely dynasty. It ruled an immediate territory within the Holy Roman Empire which was divided between several branches. The Hohenlohes became imperial counts in 1450. The county was divided numerous times and split into several principalities in the 18th century.
In 1806 the Princes of Hohenlohe lost their independence through mediatisation initialized by Napoleon, and their lands became parts of the kingdoms of Bavaria and of Württemberg by the Act of the Confederation of the Rhine, a confederation of client states of the First French Empire. In 1806 the area of Hohenlohe was 1,760 km² and its estimated population was 108,000.
Having lost their Imperial immediacy, the Princes of Hohenlohe still kept their private possessions. Until the German Revolution of 1918–19, just as other mediatized families, they also retained important political privileges. They were considered equal by birth to the European sovereign houses. In Bavaria, Prussia and Württemberg the Princes of Hohenlohe received hereditary seats in the Houses of Lords. In 1825 the German Confederation recognized the right of all members of the house to be styled Serene Highness , with the title Fürst for the heads of its branches, and princes/princesses for the other members.

History

The first ancestor was mentioned in 1153 as Conrad, Lord of Weikersheim. His son Conrad jun. called himself Lord of Hohenloch, after he moved to Hohlach Castle, near Simmershofen, where the family had the Geleitrecht along the Tauber river on the trading route between Frankfurt and Augsburg. His brothers Heinrich I and Albert also took on the name Hohlach. The dynasty's influence was soon perceptible between the Franconian valleys of the Kocher, the Jagst and the Tauber rivers, an area that was to be called the Hohenlohe Plateau. Their main seats were Weikersheim, Hohlach and Brauneck.
Hohlach later became part of the Principality of Ansbach, a subsequent state of the Hohenzollern Burgraviate of Nuremberg, to which the nearby town of Uffenheim was sold in 1378, and Hohlach some time later. Heinrich von Hohenlohe, a son of Heinrich I, became Grand Master of the Teutonic Order.
In 1230 the grandsons of Heinrich I, Gottfried and Conrad, supporters of Emperor Frederick II, founded the lines of Hohenlohe-Hohenlohe and Hohenlohe-Brauneck, the names taken from their respective castles. The emperor granted them the Italian counties of Molise and Romagna in 1229/30, but they were not able to hold them for long. Gottfried was a tutor and close advisor to the emperor's son king Conrad IV. When the latter survived an assassination attempt plotted by bishop Albert of Regensburg, he granted Gottfried some possessions of the Prince-Bishopric of Regensburg, namely the Vogt position for the Augustine Stift at Öhringen and the towns of Neuenstein and Waldenburg. Gottfried's son Kraft I acquired the town of Ingelfingen with Lichteneck Castle. In 1253 the town and castle of Langenburg were inherited by the lords of Hohenlohe, after the lords of Langenburg had become extinct. By 1300, town and castle Schillingsfürst had also passed into the possession of the Hohenlohe lords.
The branch of Hohenlohe-Brauneck became extinct in 1390, its lands were sold to the Hohenzollern margraves of Ansbach in 1448. Hohenlohe-Hohenlohe was divided into several branches, only two of which need to be mentioned here: Hohenlohe-Weikersheim and Hohenlohe-Uffenheim-Speckfeld. Hohenlohe-Weikersheim, descended from count Kraft I, also underwent several divisions, the most important following the deaths of counts Albert and George in 1551. At this time the two main branches of Hohenlohe-Neuenstein and Hohenlohe-Waldenburg were founded by the sons of George. Meanwhile, in 1412, the family of Hohenlohe-Uffenheim-Speckfeld had become extinct, and its lands passed to other families by marriage. George Hohenlohe was prince-bishop of Passau and archbishop of Esztergom, serving King Sigismund of Hungary.
In 1450, Emperor Frederick III granted Kraft of Hohenlohe and his brother, Albrecht, the sons of Elizabeth of Hanau, heiress to Ziegenhain, the title of Count of Hohenlohe and Ziegenhain and invested them with the County of Ziegenhain. Actually, the Landgraves of Hesse soon took the County of Ziegenhain, and the House of Hohenlohe eventually gave up the reference to Ziegenhain. However, their lordship of Hohenlohe was elevated to the status of an imperial county in 1495. The county remained divided between several family branches, however still being an undivided Imperial Fief under the imperial jurisdiction, and was to be represented by the family's senior vis-à-vis the imperial court.
The Hohenlohe possessions were located in the Franconian Circle, and the family had two voices in its Diet / Assembly. The Hohenlohe family had six voices in the Franconian College of Imperial Counts of the Imperial Diet. The right to vote in the Imperial Diet gave a German noble family the status of imperial state and made them belong to the ruling High Nobility.
By 1455, Albrecht of Hohenlohe had acquired the castle and lordship of Bartenstein. In 1472 the town and castle of Pfedelbach were bought by the Hohenlohe family. In 1586, Weikersheim was inherited by count Wolfgang who reconstructed the medieval Weikersheim Castle into a Renaissance palace. When the last Weikersheim count, Carl Ludwig, died around 1760, his lands were divided between the Langenburg, Neuenstein and Öhringen branches; in 1967, Prince Constantin of Hohenlohe-Langenburg sold Weikersheim Castle, meanwhile a museum, to the state.
The existing branches of the Hohenlohe family are descended from the lines of Hohenlohe-Neuenstein and Hohenlohe-Waldenburg, established in 1551 by Ludwig Kasimir and Eberhard, the sons of Count Georg I. Since Georg had become protestant on his deathbed, the reformation was introduced in the county and confirmed by the Peace of Augsburg in 1556. In 1667 however, a confessional division arose when the two sons of Georg Friedrich II of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, Christian and Ludwig Gustav, converted to the Roman Catholic Church. After the extinction of two other side lines, Waldenburg in 1679 and Waldenburg-Pfedelbach in 1728, the whole property of the main branch Hohenlohe-Waldenburg was inherited by the catholic counts.
Of the Lutheran branch of Hohenlohe-Neuenstein, which underwent several partitions and inherited the county of Gleichen in Thuringia in 1631, the senior line became extinct in 1805, while in 1701 the junior line divided itself into three branches, those of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen and Hohenlohe-Kirchberg. The branch of Kirchberg died out in 1861, with its lands and castle passing to the Öhringen-Neuenstein branch, but the branches of Hohenlohe-Langenburg and Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen still exist, the latter being divided into Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen-Öhringen and Hohenlohe-Oehringen. The two actual heads of the branches of Langenburg and Oehringen are traditionally styled Fürst.
Frederick Louis, Prince of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, had acquired the estates of Slawentzitz, Ujest and Bitschin in Silesia by marriage in 1782, an area of 108 square miles, where his grandson Hugo zu Hohenlohe-Öhringen, Duke of Ujest, established calamine mines and founded one of the largest zinc smelting plants in the world. His son, prince Christian Kraft, sold the plants and went almost bankrupt with a fund in which he had invested in 1913; the mines he had still kept were, however, divided between Germany and Poland, togehter with Upper Silesia, in 1922, and in 1945 were depropriated by communist Poland.
The Roman Catholic branch of Hohenlohe-Waldenburg was soon divided into three side branches, but two of these had died out by 1729. The surviving branch, that of Schillingsfürst, was divided into the lines of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst and Hohenlohe-Bartenstein, with further divisions following. The four catholic lines which still exist today are those of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, Hohenlohe-Jagstberg and Hohenlohe-Bartenstein. A side branch of the House of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst inherited the dukedom of Ratibor in Silesia in 1834, together with the principality of Corvey in Westphalia. While the Silesian property was expropriated in Poland in 1945, Corvey Abbey remains owned by the Duke of Ratibor to this day, together with further inherited properties in Austria.
The Holy Roman Emperors granted the title of Imperial Prince to the Waldenburg line and to the Neuenstein line.
In 1757, the Holy Roman Emperor elevated possessions of the Waldenburg line to the status of Imperial Principality.
In 1772, the Holy Roman Emperor elevated possessions of the Neuenstein and Langenburg lines to the status of Imperial Principality.
On 12 July 1806, the principalities became parts of the kingdoms of Bavaria and of Württemberg by the Act of the Confederation of the Rhine. Therefore, the region of Hohenlohe is presently located for the most part in the north eastern part of the State of Baden-Württemberg, with smaller parts in the Bavarian administrative districts of Middle Franconia and Lower Franconia. The Hohenlohisch dialect is part of the East Franconian German dialect group and the population still values its traditional distinct identity.

Family members

Notable members of the von Hohenlohe family include:
still owned by members of the House of Hohenlohe

Heads of existing branches

Neuenstein line (lutheran)

The Legion de Hohenlohe was a unit of foreign soldiers serving in the French Army until 1831, when its members were folded into the newly-raised French Foreign Legion for service in Algeria.