von Manderscheid

The lords and counts of Manderscheid were a powerful noble house of the Eifel, with their early seat at the moated castle of Oberkail. A Blankenheim line is documented from 1112; its lands were raised to a county in 1380 and passed to them through an heiress in 1406.

In 1457 Emperor Frederick III made Dietrich III an imperial count. His estates, divided in 1488, went after his death in 1498 to three sons who founded the Blankenheim-Gerolstein, Kail and Schleiden lines. Schleiden ended in 1647 and Kail in 1742; Blankenheim inherited the other branches but ended with Countess Augusta in 1780.

Her husband Count Philip Christian von Sternberg took the name Sternberg-Manderscheid. Compensated with the abbey lands of Schussenried and Weissenau in 1803, the house was mediatized in 1806.