Mansfeld

The House of Mansfeld was a comital dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire, named after Mansfeld and seated at Eisleben. Henry IV made its lords counts after the Saxon revolt of 1069. In 1229 a lord of Querfurt married the heiress Sophia and took the title; in 1337 the family still held the county.

The family split into the Vorderort, Mittelort and Hinterort branches. The Reformation divided them: Vorderort stayed Catholic while the others backed Luther. Albert VII signed the Augsburg Confession in 1530 and was banned after Mühlberg in 1547. Debt cost the counts their estates and imperial immediacy in 1579.

Ernst von Mansfeld led Protestant armies early in the Thirty Years' War. Mittelort and Hinterort died out in 1602 and 1666, and the last Vorderort male died in 1780; his heiress married a Colloredo, whose house became Colloredo-Mansfeld.