County of Leiningen

The first reliable mention of the family dates back to 1128, when Emicho, Count of Leiningen testified to a document from Adalbert I of Saarbrücken, Archbishop of Mainz.

This was outside the county of Leiningen on the territory of Limburg Abbey, of which his uncle was the overlord (Vogt), which caused some trouble.

[citation needed] His eldest son, Simon (c. 1204–1234), married Gertrude, heiress of the County of Dagsburg, bringing that property into the family.

[citation needed] Having increased its possessions, the Leiningen family was divided around 1317 into two branches: The elder of these, whose head was a landgrave, died out in 1467.

Upon this event, its lands fell to a female, the last landgrave's sister Margaret, wife of Reinhard, Lord of Westerburg, and their descendants were known as the family of Leiningen-Westerburg.

[citation needed] After the French Revolution, the Left Bank of the Rhine was conquered during the War of the First Coalition and annexed by France in 1793.

In 1801, this line was deprived of its lands on the left bank of the Rhine by France, but in 1803 it received Amorbach Abbey as an ample compensation for these losses.

A few years later, the Principality of Leiningen at Amorbach was mediatized, and its territory is now included mainly in Baden, but partly in Bavaria and in Hesse.