Kyburg family

The Kyburg family (; German: [ˈkyːbʊʁk]; also Kiburg) was a noble family of grafen (counts) in the Duchy of Swabia, a cadet line of the counts of Dillingen, who in the late 12th and early 13th centuries ruled the County of Kyburg, corresponding to much of what is now Northeastern Switzerland.

The family was one of the four most powerful noble families in the Swiss plateau (beside the House of Habsburg, the House of Zähringen and the House of Savoy) during the 12th century. With the extinction of the Kyburg family's male line in 1264, Rudolph of Habsburg laid claim to the Kyburg lands and annexed them to the Habsburg holdings, establishing the line of "Neu-Kyburg", which was in turn extinct in 1417.

History

Early history

The first line of counts of Kyburg were influential in local politics during the 1020s, but the male line died out in 1078. Kyburg castle, southeast of Winterthur (in the modern canton of Zürich), passed on to the Swabian counts of Dillingen. Through the marriage of Hartmann von Dillingen (d. 1121) with a certain Adelheid, the House of Dillingen acquired the old Kyburg possessions as well as territorial claims in the Thurgau. The exact origin of Adelheid is unclear. She is either the granddaughter of the Count of Grüningen-Winterthur or from a cadet branch of the Winterthur family, the Counts of Nellenburg. She might also be the daughter of Adalbert II von Winterthur (died 1053), the last knight from Winterthur, who died in 1053 at the Battle of Civitate against the Normans.