Henckel von Donnersmarck

History

In 1417, during the time of the Council of Constance, the Holy Roman Emperor and Hungarian King, Sigismund of Luxembourg, granted the three brothers Peter, Jakob and Nicholas a coat of arms.

During the 15th and 16th centuries John II (1481–1539), an eminent scholar, corresponded with Martin Luther, Erasmus of Rotterdam and Philipp Melanchthon. He began his career as a pastor in Levoča and Košice. Later, he stayed at the court of the Louis II of Hungary and his wife Maria of Austria. In 1531, he came to Silesia and became a canon in Breslau (Wroclaw), Silesia. He died there eight years later and was buried in the local cathedral.

Lazarus Henckel (or Lazarus the Elder) (1551–1624) was a banker and mine owner, and financier of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II's war with the Turks. In return for his service he was given a number of privileges; in 1607 he and his sons were ennobled with the surname von Henckel von Donnersmarck. The family seat became the castle at Neudeck (Świerklaniec).

Lazarus II (or Lazarus the Younger) (1573–1664), called the Lazy was made Baron of Gfell and Vesendorff by the Habsburg emperor, Ferdinand II, at Regensburg in 1636. In 1651 Archduke Ferdinand Karl of the Tyrol raised his title to that of Count in the Habsburg Hereditary Lands, and he received the same title in the Kingdom of Bohemia from Emperor Leopold I in 1661, the title being hereditary for all legitimate descendants, male and female, in the male line. In 1697 the Henckels' inheritance of the Freien Standesherrschaft of Beuthen (Free Lordship of Beuthen), under the Bohemian crown, obtained Imperial confirmation as a hereditary Fideicommis, a family trust heritable by masculine primogeniture, on which estate would later be based the family's admission to Prussia's House of Lords until 1918.

In the following centuries the descendents of Lazarus II split into several lines and branches.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the family was the second richest in Prussia after the Krupps. Hugo I Henckel von Donnersmarck (1811–1890) (a steelworks founder and owner), and Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck (1830–1916) were both wealthy industrialists. In 1854 and 1887 the family was given seats in the Prussian Hereditary House of Lords and on 18 January 1901 Guido received the Prussian title of Prince from German Emperor Wilhelm II, heritable by masculine primogeniture.

Following the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945, the Henckel von Donnersmarcks lost their fortune due to expulsion from Silesia by Ukrainian troops of Soviet Army.

In 2007 director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck received the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for his spy drama The Lives of Others.

Family members