burgrave

1 a nobleman ruling a German castle and surrounding grounds by hereditary right

2 the military governor of a German town in the 12th and 13th centuries

A burgrave is a count of a castle or fortified town. The English form is derived through the French from the German Burggraf and Dutch (including Flemish dialects) burg- or burch-graeve (Mediaeval Latin language burcgravius or burgicomes).

• The title is originally equivalent to that of castellan (Latin: castellanus) or châtelain, meaning keeper of a castle and/or fortified town (both can be called Burg in German, burg in Dutch).
• In Germany, owing to the peculiar conditions of the Holy Roman Empire, though the office of burgrave had become a sinecure by the end of the 13th century, the title, as borne by feudal nobles having the status of Reichsfürst (Prince of the Empire), obtained a quasi-princely significance.

It was still included among the subsidiary titles of several German (semi-)sovereign princes; and the king of Prussia, whose ancestors were burgraves of Nuremberg for over 200 years, maintained the additional style of Burggraf von Nürnberg.

• In the Low countries, the rank of burggraaf developed into the nobiliary equivalent of a viscount (see that article).
• In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569-1795), the office was of senatorial rank (i.e. entitled to a seat in the upper chamber of the sejm or diet); with the exception of their primus, the burgrabia of the former capital Cracow, the castellans were deputies of the (equally senatorial) provincial voivode.

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