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Colloredo-Man(n)sfeld is an Austrian (formerly Bohemian) Princely and Comital dynasty that, according to family tradition, descends from the Swabian Lords of Waldsee. Allegedly, Liebhart (Liobardo) of Waldsee came to Italy attending King Conrad II and about 1031 was enfeoffed by Patriarch Poppo of Aquileia with Mels Castle near Udine in Friuli. His descendants from 1309 onwards erected Colloredo Castle as their residence.
History
The Colloredo family was elevated to the noble rank of Freiherr by the Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II in 1588 and became immediate Reichsgraf in 1724. Rudolph Joseph von Colloredo (1706-1788), Vice-Chancellor of Empress Maria Theresa, was appointed Prince of the Holy Roman Empire in 1763.
The Colloredo-Mansfeld line emerged when his son Franz de Paula Gundakar von Colloredo married Princess Maria Isabella of Mansfeld in 1771 and was able to inherit her family's Bohemian estates upon the extinction of the dynasty's male line in 1780, while the original Mansfeld possessions passed to the Prussian Duchy of Magdeburg.
The union of the houses of Colloredo and Mansfeld was officially approved by decree of Emperor Joseph II in 1789; the decree used the spelling Colloredo-Mannsfeld whilst the spelling Colloredo-Mansfeld was more common. In 1803 Prince Franz Gundakar purchased the County of Rieneck from the House of Nostiz. In 1806 this was mediatised by Archbishop of Regenburg Karl Theodor von Dalberg as part of the Principality of Aschaffenburg.
In 1815 Rieneck was annexed by the Kingdom of Bavaria. The Prince purchased in 1804 a portion of the County of Limpurg known as the Lordship of Limpurg-Gröningen; this was mediatised by the Kingdom of Württemberg in 1806.
After World War II, the family was expelled from Czechoslovakia. Parts of the Colloredo's possessions, among them Dobříš Castle, were restored by the Czech Republic to Jerome Colloredo-Mansfeld. A lawsuit over the arts collection at Opočno Castle is pending.
