Hohenzollern

The Franconian Hohenzollern descend from a younger son of the Swabian counts of Zollern who acquired the Burgraviate of Nuremberg around 1192 by marriage; the branch's effective founder was Conrad I, born in 1186. After Nuremberg won independence in 1219, the burgraves built on their castle lands, adding Ansbach in 1331 and Kulmbach in 1340; in 1398 their Franconian territory split into Ansbach and Kulmbach. In 1337 the branch still held the Nuremberg burgraviate, a rising imperial comital house.

In 1411 Burgrave Frederick VI became governor of Brandenburg; at Constance in 1415 King Sigismund enfeoffed him as Elector and Margrave Frederick I, and in 1417 he bought the margraviate outright, his line selling the Nuremberg rights to the city ten years later.

The family turned Protestant in the sixteenth century, and in 1525 Albert of the Ansbach line, last Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, secularized its state as the Duchy of Prussia. Brandenburg and Prussia joined in personal union in 1618 and became the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701.