Henckel von Donnersmarck

The Henckel von Donnersmarcks are an Austrian-German noble family from the former region of Spiš in Upper Hungary, now in Slovakia. The founder of the family was Henckel de Quintoforo in the 14/15th century. The family estate is in Donnersmarck (slovak: Spišský Štvrtok).

In 1417, during the time of the Council of Constance, the Holy Roman Emperor and Hungarian King, Sigismund of Luxembourg, granted the three brothers Peter, Jakob and Nicholas a coat of arms.

During the 15th and 16th centuries John II (1481–1539), an eminent scholar, corresponded with Martin Luther, Erasmus of Rotterdam and Philipp Melanchthon. He began his career as a pastor in Levoča and Košice. Later, he stayed at the court of the Louis II of Hungary and his wife Maria of Austria. In 1531, he came to Silesia and became a canon in Breslau (Wroclaw), Silesia. He died there eight years later and was buried in the local cathedral.

Lazarus Henckel (or Lazarus the Elder) (1551–1624) was a banker and mine owner, and financier of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II's war with the Turks. In return for his service he was given a number of privileges; in 1607 he and his sons were ennobled with the surname von Henckel von Donnersmarck. The family seat became the castle at Neudeck (Świerklaniec).

Lazarus II (or Lazarus the Younger) (1573–1664), called the Lazy was made Baron of Gfell and Vesendorff by the Habsburg emperor, Ferdinand II, at Regensburg in 1636. In 1651 Archduke Ferdinand Karl of the Tyrol raised his title to that of Count in the Habsburg Hereditary Lands, and he received the same title in the Kingdom of Bohemia from Emperor Leopold I in 1661, the title being hereditary for all legitimate descendants, male and female, in the male line. In 1697 the Henckels' inheritance of the Freien Standesherrschaft of Beuthen (Free Lordship of Beuthen), under the Bohemian crown, obtained Imperial confirmation as a hereditary Fideicommis, a family trust heritable by masculine primogeniture, on which estate would later be based the family's admission to Prussia's House of Lords until 1918.

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