Leiningen family

Leiningen is the name of an old German noble family whose lands lay principally in Alsace, Lorraine and the Palatinate.

Various branches of this family developed over the centuries and ruled counties with Imperial immediacy. Most of these were annexed by the First French Republic in 1793, when France conquered the Left Bank of the Rhine during the War of the First Coalition. Several family branches subsequently received secularized abbeys as a compensation, but shortly afterwards these new counties were mediatized and the family lost its immediacy. Today the only still existing branch are the Princes of Leiningen.

The first count of Leiningen about whom anything definite is known was a certain Emich II (d. before 1138). He, and perhaps his father Emich I, built Altleiningen Castle (Old Leiningen) around 1100 to 1110 under the name of Leiningen Castle. Nearby Höningen Abbey was then built around 1120 as the family's burial place.

This family became extinct in the male line when Count Frederick I died about 1220. Frederick's sister, Liutgarde, married Simon II, count of Saarbrücken, and Frederick, one of their sons, inheriting the lands of the counts of Leiningen, took their arms and their name as Frederick II (d. 1237). He became known as a Minnesinger and one of his songs was included in the Codex Manesse. Before 1212 he built himself a new castle called Hardenburg about 10 kilometers south of Altleiningen, outside the county of Leiningen on the territory of Limburg Abbey, of which his uncle was the overlord (Vogt), and which caused some trouble.

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