page_title: County of Blankenburg
section_title: County of Blankenburg
hierarchical_section_title: County of Blankenburg / History / County of Blankenburg
context_page_description: The County of Blankenburg was a state of the Holy Roman Empire. Its capital was Blankenburg, it was located in and near the Harz mountains.
context_section_description: About 1123 Lothair of Supplinburg, then Duke of Saxony, had Blankenburg Castle erected in the Eastphalian Harzgau region. His vassal Poppo I of Blankenburg, a relative of Lothair's wife Richenza of Northeim, is documented as count over the Eastern Harzgau since 1128. He later also appeared as a ministerialis of the Welf duke Henry the Lion. After Poppo's death around 1161, his sons divided their heritage: Conrad took his residence at Regenstein Castle, 4 km (2.5 mi) north of Blankenburg, and became the ancestor of the noble House of Regenstein, while his brother Siegfried I retained Blankenburg Castle.
  In 1180 Henry the Lion was deposed by an intervention of his Hohenstaufen cousin Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, allied with many Saxon vassals and former supporters of Duke Henry. However, the then ruling Counts of Blankenburg, Henry and Siegfried II, remained true liensmen of their liege lord, until Prince-Bishop Dietrich of Halberstadt, newly raised to Imperial immediacy by the emperor, besieged Blankenburg Castle and defeated them with his troops in 1182. After swearing allegiance to Dietrich, the brothers could maintain their county, their descendants laid out the Blankenburg settlement beneath the castle about 1200. The estates remained under suzerainty of the Halberstadt prince-bishops, strongly contested by the Welf dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg.
  In 1599 the comital family became extinct, and the fief was reverted to the Prince-Bishopric, which at that time was held by the Welf administrator Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick and Lunenburg. Even though the Bishopric was secularised as the Principality of Halberstadt and given to the "Great Elector" Frederick William of Brandenburg by the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, the Welfs kept the fief of Blankenburg, which became an eastern exclave of their Principality of Wolfenbüttel. In 1690, the county was given to the younger son of Duke Anthony Ulrich of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Prince Louis Rudolph.
caption: Blankenburg Castle
exif: {"Image Make": "Hewlett-Packard", "Image Model": "hp photosmart 612", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "V3.60", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "166", "EXIF ExposureTime": "529/100000", "EXIF FNumber": "187/5", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "39", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2004:02:28 15:33:57", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2004:02:28 15:33:57", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "7/100", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "189/25", "EXIF ApertureValue": "19/5", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "683/100", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "1", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "669/100", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1792", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1200"}