Mansfelds

Mansfeld ( German: Mansfeld ) is one of the oldest counties of Germany , taking its name from the old castle in Mansfeld .

The ancestors of the clan were the counts of Querfurt , known from the middle of the 10th century. According to the pages of Saxon chronicles of the XII-XIII centuries. there are numerous representatives of this kind - burgraphs and archbishops of Magdeburg , counts of Naumburg , bishops of Würzburg , Naumburg, Merseburg , Hildesheim .

The Mansfeld branch of the Querfurt House gained the greatest fame in the 16th century in the service of the Habsburgs . After the death of the last of Mansfelds in 1780, his possessions, two hundred years earlier sequestered for debts, passed in 3/5 to Saxony , in 2/5 to Brandenburg . Since 1815, Prussia owned both parts of the former county.

The sister of the last of Mansfeld held the bohemian possessions of his ancestors. Her husband, Franz von Colloredo , the last vice chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire , belonged to a glorious noble family that gave Austria half a dozen field marshals .

In 1789, in memory of the merits of Mansfelds, the emperor revived their surname, allowing the descendants of Franz von Colloredo and Maria Isabella von Mansfeld to henceforth call themselves princes and counts of Colloredo-Mansfeld .

In the Battle of Leipzig, the Austrian forces were commanded by the son of this couple, General Jerome von Colloredo-Mansfeld . His patrimonial estates under Napoleon were mediated . Representatives of the oldest (princely) branch of the Colloredo-Mansfeld now live in Vienna , the youngest (count) - in Boston ( USA ).