Pleissnerland

It was named for the Pleiße River, and was located in what is now the border region between the German states of Thuringia and Saxony south of Leipzig, including the towns of Altenburg, Chemnitz, Zwickau and Leisnig.

Emperor Lothair III (1133-1137) began to reassert his claims by repeatedly choosing the Kaiserpfalz at Altenburg (Castro Plysn) as his temporary residence and by promoting the colonization the surrounding estates up to the Ore Mountains in the course of the Ostsiedlung, including the foundation of the Benedictine abbey of Chemnitz.

The Hohenstaufen managed to retain the overlordship of the Pleissnerland; Frederick's son King Henry VI in 1195 even seized the neighbouring Margraviate of Meissen, which nevertheless fell back to the Saxon House of Wettin upon his death two years later.

In 1211/12 Philip's nephew Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, elected King of the Romans, returned from Italy and began to take possession of the Pleissnerland estates, completed by the establishment of a Teutonic Knights commandry at Altenburg.

Though the estates were only given as a pledge, the Wettins had no intentions to restore them and confirmed their tenure upon the marriage of the couple in 1255, unopposed after the Hohenstaufen dynasty became extinct with the execution of Frederick's grandson Conradin in 1268.