The Auersperg family tree and others that the genealogist and historiographer Dominic Franz Kalin von Marienberg produced for the court nobility

Abstract

The contribution discusses the family tree of the Auerspergs from Turjak Castle, commissioned between 1663 and 1665 by Johann Weikhard, Prince of Auersperg (1615–1677). The family tree starts with the legendary progenitor Adolf I and ends with Franz Anton, Count of Auersperg (born in 1659). The genealogical data are complemented with inscriptions and visual depictions narrating the family’s origin, history, and estates. The Auersperg family tree is the earliest large-scale visualization of genealogical data that Dominic Franz Kalin von Marienberg (1624–1683) later developed for the Habsburgs and the court nobility in Vienna. Whereas the genealogical data on the Auersperg family tree are complemented with heraldic motifs, military trophies, and four portraits of emperors and a pope who were especially instrumental to the family’s ascendancy, Kalin developed this concept further in subsequent genealogies with family portraits, depictions of legendary progenitors, personifications of provinces and virtues, and mythological scenes.