Wurmbrand-Stuppach

The Count of Stuppach had disappeared seven years earlier fighting in the Holy Land, and the knights were getting impatient on waiting for his wife and successor to remarry.

A lindworm (a mythological two-legged wyvern-like creature) had entered the county and began to terrorise the land.

But the people would not have another four weeks delay due to the lindworm, so she instead announced that she would marry whoever slayed the beast.

At the end of the 12th century they received the fief of Stuppach castle near Gloggnitz which remained in their possession until 1659.

Count Johann Josef Wilhelm (1670–1750), president of the Aulic Council, was honored by the Emperor by being made a personal (not yet hereditary) member of the Franconian count's bench, a part of the college of Imperial Princes (Reichsfürstenrat or Fürstenbank) in the Imperial Diet in 1726.

Upon his admission he had to promise to purchase some immediate territory on the first occasion, since all of the family's possessions had no such status as they were located within the Archduchy of Austria.

Finally a splinter share of the immediate County of Limpurg was inherited by Johann Josef Wilhelm's wife Countess Juliane Dorothea von Limpurg-Gaildorf (1677-1734), a territory around its residence Gaildorf, Swabia, that had been divided between a large number of heirs when its former rulers, the Counts Schenk von Limpurg extinguished in 1713, leaving ten daughters.

With this splinter share, the acquisition of a territory with Imperial Immediacy was fulfilled and the head of the family became a hereditary member of the Swabian count's bench.

The elder branch extinguished with count Degenhard in 1965, and his only daughter, Countess Leonora Huberta Maria (b.