Burggraf

Elective sovereigns of Germany, all the German kings, and dukes, and margrafs, and burggrafs were numbered among their retainers.

The castle, built on a precipitous rock overlooking the town, and formerly the residence of the markgrafs, burggrafs, and bishops of M., was rebuilt in 1471; […]

From these men arose the class of crown vassals, grafs, landgrafs, markgrafs, burggrafs, pfalzgrafs, princely highnesses, dukes, serenities, transparencies, gracious lords, &c., &c.—as wearisome to repeat as the musical instruments of King Nebuchadnezzar—holding feofs, and exercising jurisdiction in their several domains.

After the victory of Muhldorf, when the Kaiser Ludwig sat at a meal with his burggrafs and great captains, he determined on a piece of luxury—“one egg to every man, and two to the excellently valiant Schwepperman.”

Gradually piece after piece of the territories about Nürnberg was absorbed until both Ansbach and Bayreuth were included in the possessions of the ambitious burggrafs, and the Hohenzollern had taken their place among the most important princes of the Empire.

[…] it was in opposing the accomplishment of this that the old electors of the race of the burggrafs had won their chief title to merit.

Richelieu’s political genius found its consecration in the Peace of Westphalia, which broke the German Emperor’s power and made a swarm of ecclesiastic and secular prince-electors, archbishops and bishops, dukes, princes, landgrafs, markgrafs, burggrafs, grafs, and free cities the actual masters of a devastated and plundered Germany whose population had been decimated by starvation and set back, culturally, for several generations.