Dalberg

Dalberg is the name of an ancient and distinguished German noble family, derived from the hamlet and castle (now in ruins) of Dalberg or Dalburg near Kreuznach in Rhineland-Palatinate. In the 14th century the original house of Dalberg became extinct in the male line, the fiefs passing to Johann Gerhard, chamberlain of the see of Worms, who married the heiress of his cousin, Anton of Dalberg, about 1330. His own family was of great antiquity, his ancestors having been hereditary ministerials of the bishop of Worms since the time of Ekbert the chamberlain, who founded in 1119 the Augustinian monastery of Frankenthal and died in 1132. By the mid 15th century the Dalberg family had grown to be of such importance that, in 1494, the German King Maximilian I granted them the honor of being the first to receive knighthood at the coronation; this part of the ceremonies being opened by the herald asking in a loud voice Ist kein Dalberg da? ("Is no Dalberg present?"). This picturesque privilege the family enjoyed till the end of the Holy Roman Empire. The elder line of the family of Dalberg-Dalberg became extinct in 1848, the younger, that of Dalberg-Herrnsheim, in 1833. The male line of the Dalbergs is now represented only by the family of Hessloch, descended from Gerhard of Dalberg (c. 1239), which in 1809 succeeded to the title and estates in Moravia and Bohemia of the extinct counts of Ostein.

The following are the most noteworthy secular members of the family:

The duc de Dalberg had inherited the family property of Herrnsheim from his uncle the arch-chancellor Karl von Dalberg, and this estate passed, through his daughter and heiress, Marie Louise Pelline de Dalberg, by her marriage with Sir Ferdinand Dalberg-Acton, 7th Baronet (who assumed the additional name of Dalberg), to her son the historian, John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton.

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