Ballestrem
Ballestrem is the name of a German noble family, originally from Piedmont, Italy. They are still extant, despite losing much of their land in 1945. History. Originally named Ballestrero di Castellengo, they are first attested to as patrician merchants in the sixteenth century. At the end of the seventeenth century, Marco Francesco Antonio Ballestrero was enfeoffed with the County of Montalenghe, near Turin. His son, Count Giovanni Angelo Battista Ballestrero, moved to Germany, taking the name Johann Baptist von Ballestrem and eventually joining the Prussian officer corps. Johann married into the wealthy Stechow family, leading the German Ballestrems to  eventually inherit the lucrative Plawniowitz estate in Silesia, then part of Prussia and now part of Poland. Count Franz von Bellestrem was the tenth President of the Reichstag of the German Empire. Countess Lagi von Ballestrem was a prominent anti-Nazi who was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944.