Burgrave

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A burgrave is a count of a castle or fortified town. The English form is derived through the French from the German Burggraf and Dutch (including Flemish dialects) burg- or burch-graeve (Mediaeval Latin language burcgravius or burgicomes).

The title is originally equivalent to that of castellan (Latin: castellanus) or châtelain, meaning keeper of a castle and/or fortified town.
In Germany, owing to the peculiar conditions of the Empire, though the office of burgrave had become a sinecure by the end of the 13th century, the title, as borne by feudal nobles having the status of princes of the Empire, obtained a quasi-royal significance.

It was still included among the subsidiary titles of several German sovereign princes; and the king of Prussia, whose ancestors were burgraves of Nuremberg for over 200 years, maintained the additional style of Burggraf von Nürnberg.

In the Low countries, the burggraaf developed into the nobiliary equivalent of a viscount (see that article).
In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569-1795), the office was of senatorial rank (i.e. entitled to a seat in the upper chamber of the sejm or diet); with the exception of their primus, the burgrabia of the former capital Cracow, the castellans were deputies of the (equally senatorial) provincial voivode.