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– GELNHAUSEN –
In the male line the short-lived comital dynasty of Gelnhausen might attach to the burgraves of Speyer, perhaps the only other Frankish family to draw regularly on the name Ekbert. The brothers Dietrich and Ekbert, counts respectively of Gelnhausen and Tecklenburg, must have lost their father at a young age, since their mother, apparently Gisela, remarried and produced children including Simon I of Saarbrücken. A certain Count Thietmar, Gisela’s inferable father, is described as nobili principum oriundus prosapia. His wife Adelheid was presumably a daughter Margrave Hermann of Banz, who may be regarded as first in the Gelnhausen line of succession. Count Ekbert of Gelnhausen documents in 1151, the dynasty recedes into oblivion, and the castle falls to the Staufer along with patronage for the nearby monastery of Selbold. Frederick Barbarossa’s interest in Gelnhausen and Selbold can be accounted for by descent – through his Welf mother and the Billungs – from a sister of the Swabian duke Otto of Schweinfurt († 1057), whose daughter Alberada was the wife of Margrave Hermann of Banz. The Fundatio monasterii Banzensis ascribes to this Alberada the founding of the monastery of Selbold, which became the house monastery of the counts whose castle lay upstream on the Kinzig at Gelnhausen. Otto of Schweinfurt’s mother Gerberge was a sister of Otto of Hammerstein. Their father Heribert is the only individual attested as count for the Kinziggau pagus in which Gelnhausen and Selbold lay.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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