In 1247, the last Thuringian landgrave from the House of the Ludovingians, Henry Raspe, died without a male heir.
On 1 September 1342, the various counts and lords of Thuringia of sealed a pact in Arnstadt which effectively allied them against Frederick the Serious.
[2] The parties to the alliance included the counts of Schwarzburg, Weimar-Orlamünde and Hohnstein and the advocates of Gera and Plauen.
Each of the allies had to turn their main territories into fiefs of the Wettins and so lost their imperial immediacy and their political independence.
However, after the counts' war they could not further expand their territories, but were restricted to their homelands and therefore no longer in a position to threaten the dominance of the Wettins in Thuringia.