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NÜRNBERG
A city in central Germany, the site of an important Burggraviate during
the Middle Ages. Associated with the old Swabian House of Hohenzollern
from the end of the 12th century, when that House gained the Electorate
of Brandenburg the region was constituted an allodial Margraviate within
the dynasty, and thereafter merges with the fortunes of the Franconian
Brandenburgs.
OLDENBURG
A
compact territory astride the lower Weser and its coastal estuary, between
Frisia and Hamburg. Emerging as a county after the breakup of Saxony in
the 12th century, it became a duchy in 1775, and was granted grand ducal
status in 1815. Its importance arises from the fact that its ruling family
inherited the Kingdom of Denmark in the 15th century, and through that
connection branches have gone on to rule in Norway, Sweden, Schleswig and
Holstein, Russia, and Greece. The territory was fragmented much less severely
than normal German practice. A younger branch emerged, became extinct,
and re-emerged four different times between 1272 and 1647 each time being
given the territory of Delmenhorst. A junior branch of the family was situated
in Wildeshausen and Bruchhausen between 1143 and 1388.
PFALZGRAFEN
(Counts
Palatine of Aachen and the Rhine) The Count Palatine
of the Rhine is an ancient German office whose antecedents are lost in
the Dark Ages. The territories of the office involved a region adjacent
to the Rhine, north and northwest of Strasbourg.
