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The Emichones (German : Emichonen) were an early medieval family in the southwestern German region. Its members were counts (Gaugrafen) in the Nahegau, perhaps as undercounts of the Salian dynasty. The conventional name Emichones is due to the prevailing first name "Emich". Several later families may trace their origins to the Emichones.
The Nahegau was next to the Wormsgau and Speyergau, a possession of the Salian dynasty. In 940 Emich, a vassal of Count Conrad der Rote, received goods from Hadamar of Fulda in the Wormsgau. This Emich is probably related to the Counts of Leiningen, although it is dubious, whether he belongs to the Emichones family because of a lack of primary source documents.
Secure evidence for the Emichones appears in 961. A count and knight Emich received through a sentence according to Frankish law the possessions which until then had belonged to the Lords Lantbert, Megingoz and Reginzo, including Kirn and Bergen. These lords were supposedly sons of Nortbold, one of the first proprietors of a castle mentioned in 926, possibly the Schmidtburg.
Counts with the name Emich are documented without interval between 960 and 1065. Even so, a precise genealogy has hitherto not been organized.
The Count of Nahegau Emich IV supposedly married before 1072 Kunigunde, the sister of the Count of Trechirgau Berthold, the latter the founder of the Abbey of Ravengiersburg. The family of the Bertholds (or a branch of this family) died out with him. Emich V left around 1091 the title of Gaugraf behind and named himself Count of Flonheim in 1098 and Count of Schmidtburg in 1107, therefore ending the history of the Emichones, with the family dividing itself into the Wildgraves, Raugraves and Counts of Veldenz. A Berthold of Stromberg was apparently the brother of Emich V, a member of a collateral branch of the Emichones residing at the castle Stromburg and Vogt of Ravengiersburg.
According to various theories the Counts of Sponheim also descended from the Emichones on the male side.
The Hunsrück is a long, triangular, pronounced upland in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is bounded by the valleys of the Moselle-Saar (north-to-west), the Nahe (south), and the Rhine (east). It is continued by the Taunus mountains, past the Rhine and by the Eifel past the Moselle. To the south of the Nahe is a lower, hilly country forming the near bulk of the Palatinate region and all of the, smaller, Saarland. Below its north-east corner is Koblenz.
The House of Leiningen is the name of an old German noble family whose lands lay principally in Alsace, Lorraine and the Palatinate. Various branches of this family developed over the centuries and ruled counties with Imperial immediacy.
Otto I of Nassau, German: Otto I. von Nassau was Count of Nassau and is the ancestor of the Ottonian branch of the House of Nassau.
The County of Veldenz was a principality in the contemporary Land Rhineland-Palatinate. The county was located partially between Kaiserslautern, Sponheim and Zweibrücken, partially on the Mosel in the Archbishopric of Trier. A municipality of the same name, Veldenz, and a castle, Schloss Veldenz, are located in the district of Bernkastel-Wittlich.
The noble family of the Waldgraves or Wildgraves descended of a division of the House of the Counts of Nahegau in the year 1113.
Prince Karl Emich of Leiningen, also known by his Orthodox Russian name Nikolai Kirillovich Romanov, and recognized with the regnal name Emperor Nicholas III by Monarchist Party supporters of the Imperial Throne, is the eldest son of Emich, 7th Prince of Leiningen and his wife, Duchess Eilika of Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, and is an elder brother of Andreas, 8th Prince of Leiningen.
Sponheim or Spanheim was a medieval German noble family, which originated in Rhenish Franconia. They were immediate Counts of Sponheim until 1437 and Dukes of Carinthia from 1122 until 1269. A cadet branch ruled in the Imperial County of Ortenburg-Neuortenburg until 1806.
Bruchweiler is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Birkenfeld district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Herrstein-Rhaunen, whose seat is in Herrstein.
Kempfeld is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Birkenfeld district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde Herrstein-Rhaunen, whose seat is in Herrstein.
Schloss Veldenz in the Hunsrück upland, on a steep vale draining into the Mosel is a castle ruin about 1.5 kilometres (0.9 mi) southeast of the village of Veldenz in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
The County of Sponheim was an independent territory in the Holy Roman Empire that lasted from the 11th century until the early 19th century. The name comes from the municipality of Sponheim, where the counts had their original residence.
Speyergau was a medieval county in the East Frankish (German) stem duchy of Franconia. It was centred around the administrative centre of Speyer and roughly covered the former Roman administrative area of Civitas Nemetum, which is today the south-eastern portion of the Palatinate region between the Rhine river, the Palatinate Forest range, and some smaller parts of northern Alsace. The Speyergau, together with the neighbouring Wormsgau and Nahegau, was part of the major possessions held by the Salian dynasty of German kings and Holy Roman Emperors.
Stephen I, Count of Sponheim is the patriarch of the Rhenish branch of the House of Sponheim, which ruled over the County of Sponheim. He was closely related to Siegfried I, Count of Sponheim, patriarch of the Carinthian Sponheimish branch, but the exact relationship between the two dynasts is disputed. Johannes Trithemius credits a Count Eberhard of Sponheim as founder of the Abbey of Sponheim and dates the founding to 1044, a position questioned by Johannes Mötsch. The Genealogia Sponhemica presents Count Eberhardus as son of Countess Hedwig and father of a single Count Stephenus I/II of Sponheim. Donald C. Jackman considers Stephen I a son of Siegfried I. Both Jackman and Josef Heinzelmann consider Stephen as being identical to Stephen, Vogt of Worms documented with his brother Markward in 1068. Heinzelmann however casts doubt on a male lineage relationship of Stephen and Siegfried and sees Stephen I of Sponheim as being Lord of Sponheim but not a Count, notices that Stephen I of Sponheim is documented in 1075 as "S(igna) Stepheni de Spanheim" with his seal in a document of Udo, Archbishop of Trier, and proposes Stephen to have married into the House of Sponheim. In another work Heinzelmann considers the Stephen mentioned in 1075 to be Stephen II, or maybe a single Stephen, mentions a Mainzer ministerialis Stephen, the son of Embricho (Emich) and nephew of Archbishop Ruthard, who lived later, as a possible relation, and puts forward that the documented Stephen and Markward belong to the House of the Counts of Metz/Lunéville, which later provided the Vogts of Worms:
"Identisch kann er sein mit einem Wormser Vogt Stephen (1068) [239 UB Stadt Worms I, Nr. 55], der mit seinem Bruder Markwart zu den Grafen von Lunéville/Metz zu gehören scheint, die mit den de Meti später die Wormser Vögte stellen."
The Nahegau was in the Middle Ages a county, which covered the environs of the Nahe and large parts of present-day Rhenish Hesse, after a successful expansion of the narrow territory, which did not reach the Rhine, to the disadvantage of the Wormsgau. Among other expansions were Ingelheim in 937, Spiesheim in 960, Saulheim in 973 and Flonheim in 996, until after the end of the expansion the Selz set the southern limit and the limit to the Wormsgau.
The Wormsgau was a medieval county in the East Frankish (German) stem duchy of Franconia, comprising the surroundings of the city of Worms and further territories on the left bank of the Upper Rhine river. Together with the neighbouring Nahegau and Speyergau, it belonged to the central Rhenish Franconian possessions of the Imperial Salian dynasty.
The Raugraves were a German noble family, which had its center of influence in the former Nahegau. They descended from the Emichones.
The Berthold-Bezelins were a German noble family from the 10th century, whose sphere of influence and property laid about the Trechirgau and Maifeldgau. They were the Counts of Stromberg before that county became a part of the Electorate of the Palatinate. The family is named after the prevailing first name Berthold, and its variation Bezelin. The Berthold-Bezelins supposedly descended from the Ernestiner and through them from the Luitpoldinger Dukes of Bavaria as a junior lineage.
Rheingrafenstein Castle is a castle on a 136-metre-high (446 ft) porphyry rock formation, the Rheingrafenstein, known as Huhinstein a thousand years, on the river Nahe, opposite Bad Münster am Stein-Ebernburg in the district Bad Kreuznach.
Simon II of Sponheim was a German nobleman. He was a member of the House of Sponheim and a ruling Count of the County of Sponheim.
The Barony of Westerburg, a small principality around the present day town of Westerburg in the Westerwald mountains of Germany, is first recorded in 1209. The eponymous castle, which had probably been built earlier than when it was mentioned for the first time in 1192, was the family seat of the lords of Westerburg, a branch of the lords of Runkel.