Imperial County of Ortenburg Reichsgrafschaft Ortenburg (German) | |||||||||
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| 1120–1805 | |||||||||
 Coat of arms | |||||||||
| Status | State of theHoly Roman Empire | ||||||||
| Capital | Ortenburg | ||||||||
| Government | Monarchy | ||||||||
| Historical era | Middle Ages | ||||||||
• First mention of Ortenburg Castle | 1120 | ||||||||
| 1209 | |||||||||
• Reichsfreiheit confirmed | 1473 | ||||||||
• JoinedBavarian Circle | 1500 | ||||||||
| 1563 | |||||||||
• Disestablished | 1805 | ||||||||
| Currency | Ortenburg Thaler | ||||||||
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TheImperial County of Ortenburg was astate of the Holy Roman Empire in present-dayLower Bavaria,Germany. It was located on the lands aroundOrtenburg Castle, about 10 km (6 mi) west ofPassau. Though the Counts of Ortenburg—formerlyOrtenberg—emerged in the 12th century as a cadet branch of the RhenishHouse of Sponheim (Spanheim) who then ruled over theDuchy of Carinthia, an affiliation with the CarinthianOrtenburger comital family is unverifiable.
The first Count Rapoto I of Ortenburg was mentioned about 1134. Born atKraiburg, the fourth son of DukeEngelbert II of Carinthia, he retained severalBavarian territories held by the Spanheimer family, while his elder brothersUlric andEngelbert III succeeded their father in Carinthia andIstria. Rapoto had the Ortenburg Castle erected about 1120 whereafter he began to call himself aGraf von Ortenberg. When his brother Engelbert III died without heirs in 1173 he could unite a significant number of territories under his rule and confirmed his independence when the Bavarian ducal title passed to theHouse of Wittelsbach in 1180. After Otto VIII of Wittelsbach had assassinated the German kingPhilip of Swabia in 1208, Rapoto's son Count Rapoto II even held the office of aCount Palatine of Bavaria.
Rapoto's II descendants, however, soon entered into fierce conflicts with the neighbouringBishops of Passau and also with the mighty Austrian House ofBabenberg. Upon the death of Count Rapoto III in 1248, his territories as well as the office of the Count Palatine again passed to the Wittelsbachs. The Ortenburg territory was further diminished by an ongoing inheritance conflict between Rapoto's III nephew Henry II and his brothers, of which the surviving Count Rapoto IV in 1275 could only retain the lands around Ortenburg Castle.
Upon the death of Count Henry IV of Ortenburg in 1395, the county was partitioned into Ortenburg-Altortenburg, Ortenburg-Neuortenburg and Ortenburg-Dorfbach. The Neuortenburg branch again inherited the Altortenburg county in 1444 following the death of Etzel I and Dorfbach county in 1462 following the death of Count Alram II. Meanwhile, the county had fallen under the influence of the WittelsbachBavaria-Landshut duchy, and also sided with DukeAlbert IV ofBavaria-Munich in the 1503Landshut War of Succession. Since the dynasty of theCounts of Celje had become extinct with the death of CountUlrich II in 1456, the Ortenburg counts hadclaimed the CarinthianGrafschaft Ortenburg, but failed to prove any kinship apart from the name similarity.
Under Count Joachim of Ortenburg-Neuortenburg, the state turned toProtestantism in 1563, fiercely opposed by DukeAlbert V of Bavaria challenging Ortenburg'sImperial immediacy which, however, was confirmed by theImperial Chamber Court in 1573. The county remained a Lutheran enclave within the mainly Catholic Bavarian lands and became a refuge for expellees during theThirty Years' War.
Though deeply in debt after numerous lawsuits against the Wittelsbach dukes, Ortenburg-Neuortenburg retained its independence until in 1805 Count Joseph Charles Leopold finally sold it to ElectorMaximilian I Joseph of Bavaria. The county was incorporated into the newly establishedKingdom of Bavaria in the course of the Empire's dissolution in 1806.
In exchange for his county, the count received the former monastery of Tambach (today part ofWeitramsdorf) in Franconia in 1806, which was elevated to the status ofImperial County of Ortenburg-Tambach, but shortly later became part of theGrand Duchy of Würzburg bymediatisation, and in 1814 fell to the Kingdom of Bavaria. Since then the counts of Ortenburg belong to theMediatized Houses. In 1827 count Joseph Carl bought his family's ancestral seat, Ortenburg Castle, back from the Bavarian Crown. Count Alram (1925–2007), however, who converted to the Roman Catholic Church, sold it in 1971. His son, count Heinrich (b. 1956), the former husband of Princess Désirée ofHohenzollern (b. 1963), owns Tambach Castle (the former monastery), an adjoiningWild Park and its vast estate to this day.[1] The pair had three children:
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Circles est. 1500:Bavarian,Swabian,Upper Rhenish,Lower Rhenish–Westphalian,Franconian,(Lower) Saxon Circles est. 1512:Austrian,Burgundian,Upper Saxon,Electoral Rhenish · Unencircled territories | ||
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