Ziegenhain

The counts of Ziegenhain were a noble dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire, descended from the ninth-century count Gozmar and the counts of Reichenbach. In the twelfth century they built a compact lordship in Lower Hesse from Fulda abbey advocacies, allodial lands and fiefs of Mainz, Fulda and Hersfeld, and from 1144 they took their name from the castle of Ziegenhain raised by Gottfried I, on the site of present-day Schwalmstadt. Count Ludwig I inherited the County of Nidda in 1205, and although the lands were split between two lines from 1258, Johann I reunited them in 1330 after marrying the Nidda heiress Lukardis. In 1331 he backed the townsfolk of Fulda against their abbot and later sold the remaining advocacy rights, keeping only the hereditary marshalship of Fulda.

The dynasty ended with Johann II, called the Strong, who had succeeded in 1401 and died childless on 14 February 1450. Landgrave Ludwig I of Hesse occupied the county as an escheated fief, while the Hohenlohe claimed it through marriage; although Emperor Frederick III enfeoffed the Hohenlohe in 1450, the inheritance dispute ended in 1495 with Hesse keeping Ziegenhain and Nidda after paying nine thousand gulden in compensation, and the title count of Ziegenhain passed into the style of the Hessian landgraves.