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Updated: May 15, 2025
Seven hundred years ago Frederick's ancestor Conrad, the younger son of a family of some rank, but quite undistinguished, riding down from the little stronghold of Hohenzollern in Swabia, with nothing but a good head and arm, won favour with the Emperor Barbarossa and became at last Burggraf of Nuremberg.
In which prosperities, as indeed he continued to do in the perils and toils, Burggraf Friedrich III. of Nurnberg naturally partook: hence, and not gratis at all, the Hereditary Burggrafdom, and many other favors and accessions he got. For he continued Rudolf's steady helper, friend and first-man in all things, to the very end.
Dog-cheap, it must be owned, for size and capability; but in the most waste condition, full of mutiny, injustice, anarchy and highway robbery; a purchase that might have proved dear enough to another man than Burggraf Friedrich.
In which sad adventure Burggraf Johann escorted him, and as it were tore him out by the hair of the head. These troubles and adventures lasted many years; in the course of which, Sigismund, trying all manner of friends and expedients, found in the Burggraves of Nurnberg, Johann and Friedrich, with their talents, possessions and resources, the main or almost only sure support he got.
The Hohenzollern Burggraf of Nurnberg, who had married a younger Sister of the Duke's two years before this accident, managed to get at least BAIREUTH and some adjacencies; big Orlamunde, who had not much better right, taking the lion's share.
Sigismund, as above said, was to have married a Daughter of Burggraf Friedrich V.; and he was himself, as was the young lady, well inclined to this arrangement. But the old people being dead, and some offer of a King's Daughter turning up for Sigismund, Sigismund broke off; and took the King's Daughter, King of Hungary's, not without regret then and afterwards, as is believed.
The old Five-cornered tower and the surrounding ground was the private property of the Burggraf, and he was appointed by the Emperor as imperial officer of the Kaiserliche Burg. Whether the Emperors claimed any rights of personal property over Nuremberg or merely treated it, at first, as imperial property, it is difficult to determine.
Our Nurnberg Burggraf, Friedrich IV., held with Ludwig, as did the real majority, though in a languid manner, and was busy he as few were; the Austrian Hapsburgs also doing their best, now under, now above. Johann King of Bohemia was on Ludwig's side as yet. In the eighth year came a Fight that proved decisive.
Conrad therefore is already Burggraf of Nurnberg, and a man of mark, in 1170: and his marriage, still more his first sally from the paternal Castle to seek his fortune, must all be dated earlier. More is not known of Conrad: except indeed that he did not perish in Barbarossa's grand final Crusade.
Or again how the Nurnbergers once, in the Burggraf's absence, built a ring-wall round his Castle; entrance and exit now to depend on the Nurnbergers withal! And how the Burggraf did not fly out into battle in consequence, but remedied it by imperturbable countenance and power of driving. With enough of the like sort; which readers can conceive.
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