Counts of Ortenburg

The Counts of Ortenburg (German: Grafen von Ortenburg) were a comital family in the mediaeval Duchy of Carinthia. Though they had roots in Bavarian nobility, an affiliation with the Imperial Counts of Ortenburg, a branch line of the Rhenish Franconian House of Sponheim, is not established.

Little is known about the reasons the Ortenburgs settled in the Carinthian Lurngau. No charters are available on the creation of the Ortenburg Castle on the northern slope of Mt. Goldeck above the village of Baldramsdorf, nor about the manner in which the Ortenburgs obtained their property.

In 1072, one Adalbert of Ortenburg, probably a younger son of Count Hartwig II of Grögling-Hirschberg (d. 1068/69), served as a Vogt stattholder in the Carinthian possessions of the Bishops of Freising. His castle Hortenburc was first mentioned in a 1091 deed, and was situated south of the Drava river within the Archdiocese of Aquileia — across from Hohenburg Castle held by the rivaling Counts of Lurn, liensmen of the Salzburg archbishops.

When the Lurn dynasty became extinct in 1135, the Counts of Ortenburg received large estates stretching from Möllbrücke down the Drava Valley to Rennstein near Villach. They also held possessions in the Gegend Valley around Afritz. In 1191 they founded a hospital (Spittl) at the bridge across the Lieser river—site of the later town of Spittal an der Drau. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Herman and Ulrich of Ortenburg served as Bishops of Gurk. Count Otto II joined the Crusade of 1197 of Emperor Henry VI. About 1330, Count Meinhard of Ortenburg acquired the estates of the extinct Counts of Sternberg between Lake Ossiach and Wörthersee. In the fourteenth century, the dynasty also owned the lands of Gottschee in Lower Carniola, where they founded the town of Gottschee (Kočevje) with German colonists from their Upper Carinthian lands.

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