Salm

The House of Salm was a Lotharingian noble family, possibly descended from Count Palatine Wigeric and the House of Ardenne–Luxembourg. Giselbert left Salm to his younger son Hermann, elected German anti-king against Henry IV in 1081. In 1163 Henry II kept Upper Salm in the Vosges, while his sister Elizabeth and her husband Frederick II of Vianden founded Lower Salm in the Ardennes.

Lower Salm died out in 1416 and passed to the Lords of Reifferscheid. The Rhinegraves inherited half of Upper Salm in 1475; the rest of Upper Salm went to Lorraine in 1600. The Rhinegraves took the Salm name and became imperial princes in 1623. Nicholas of Salm commanded the defence of Vienna against the Ottomans in 1529.

In 1803 the princes received former Münster lands around Borken and Anholt. Their principality was annexed by France in 1810 and mediatised to Prussia in 1815.