HOHENZOLLERN, an old German princely house, from which the present dynasty of Prussia is descended, takes its name from the old castle of Zollern, or Hohenzollern, on the mountain of Zollern, about 1 j miles south from Hechingen. There is a vague tradition connecting the house with the Colonna family of Rome, or the Colalto family of Lombardy, and a more definite one which mentions a Swabian count, Thassilo of Burchardinger, as having built the castle of Zollern about the beginning of the 9th century. The first counts of Zollern of whom there is historical mention are Burchard and Wezel, apparently brothers, who in 1061 fell in one of the party feuds during the minority of the emperor Henry IV. Count Frederick III. of Zolre, who died in 1200, one of the trusted councillors of the emperors Frederick I. and Henry VI., became count of Nuremberg in 1191, through having married the heiress of Count Conrad II. of Nuremberg. His sons, Conrad III. and Frederick IV., succeeded to the joint possession of his titles and estates, and founded respectively the Frankish and the Swabian lines. The Frankish house steadily and uninterruptedly increased its possessions and its influence; in 1363 it was raised to princely rank in the person of Frederick V.; in 1415 it obtained through Frederick VI. the electorate of Brandenburg from the emperor Sigismund; and in 1701 its head, the elector Frederick III., became the first king of Prussia. The influence of the Swabian line was greatly weakened by partitions, but in the beginning of the 16th century it rose tosome eminence through Count Eitel Frederick II., privy councillor of the emperor Maximilian I., who received from the emperor the district of Hargerloch in exchange for Rhäzüns, in the Grisons, which had come into his family by ...