The House of Kirchberg were a Swabian aristocratic family, once wealthy that held the County of Kirchberg, mainly south of Ulm, on the right and left of the Iller . They are difficult to document, but at the end of the early Middle Ages and the beginning of the High Middle Ages they may have had a significance that went beyond regional power. By the end of the 12th century, the family had split into two lines, later into three, becoming impoverished towards the end of the Middle Ages and dying out in 1510 after the sale of their possessions and rights.
The ancestral seat of the Kirchbergers was probably in Unterkirchberg, in what is now the municipality of Illerkirchberg . Towards the end of the 11th century, it was moved up the Iller to Oberkirchberg, where a hilltop castle was built, where the Fugger Castle now stands. The Kirchberg coat of arms, which has not been interpreted satisfactorily, shows a woman (later often a Mohrin) holding a helmet or a lily, later a mitre, in her hands.[2]
- ^ For Konrad see Günther Schweikle (1977), "Kirchberg, Konrad", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 11, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, p. 637; (full text online)
- ^ Note: The main and almost exclusive source for this post is this article by Sarah Hadry. Individual passages in the text are not referred to in this article, as the entry here is essentially just a compressed excerpt from the source mentioned.