The House of Liechtenstein, an Austrian family with a country of its own

In most monarchies the ruling family is named after somewhere in its own country. Liechtenstein turns that on its head. Here the country carries the family’s name, and the family took it from a castle that isn’t even in Liechtenstein. For me that’s the best way into the principality, because it explains why the place exists, why its princes spent centuries in Vienna and why their great art collection isn’t on show in Vaduz.

A name borrowed from outside Vienna

The name first turns up around 1136. Hugo of Liechtenstein probably called himself after Liechtenstein Castle, near Mödling, just south of Vienna. The Historisches Lexikon explains that the word refers to a pale rock or a castle hill, and that several unrelated noble families in central Europe carried it. The family’s gold-and-red shield survives as the centre of the Liechtenstein coat of arms.

The line that runs unbroken to the present begins with Heinrich I, who was given the lordship of Nikolsburg, today’s Mikulov in Moravia, in 1249. From there the family grew across Austria, Bohemia and Moravia, and in 1608 Karl of Liechtenstein was made a hereditary prince. What it still lacked was land held directly from the emperor, the ticket to a vote in the Imperial Diet. Johann Adam Andreas bought it in two instalments, first Schellenberg and then, thirteen years later, Vaduz, and in 1719 the emperor merged them under the family’s name. The full sequence is in my history of Liechtenstein.

Absentee princes

For well over a century the principality was a distant possession. The Lexikon notes that Alois II, in 1842, was the first reigning prince ever to visit. The one who really played his hand well was Johann I, a field marshal in the wars against Napoleon. The Lexikon reckons his standing with the French emperor is probably why the principality wasn’t swallowed up by a larger neighbour, as so many small territories were, and instead joined the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806 as a sovereign state. Every living member of the house descends from him.

The 20th century was brutal for the family. After 1918 Czechoslovak land reform halved its estates in Bohemia and Moravia, and in 1945 everything left there was confiscated. In 1938, after Germany annexed Austria, Franz Joseph II moved into Vaduz Castle, becoming the first ruler of the house to make his home there. The picture gallery was saved by bringing it to Vaduz in 1944 and 1945.

What the family owns today, and where to see it

The house says it holds one of the largest and most important private art collections in the world. After the war it had to sell major works, and under Hans-Adam II it went back to buying, with more than a thousand acquisitions. The collection has no permanent home in Liechtenstein. You see it in Vienna, at the Garden Palace, with art from the early Renaissance to the Baroque, and at the City Palace, with Neoclassical and Biedermeier works, restored and reopened in 2004 and 2013 and always visited with a guide.

In Vaduz, what you can sample is the family’s wine. The Hofkellerei runs tastings from Monday to Saturday next to the Herawingert vineyard, and I cover it on the prince’s winery page. The castle is their home and stays shut, and the crypt of the princes, beside Vaduz Cathedral, opens on 1 November only. The asset that matters most to the family’s finances is the LGT bank, bought in 1930 and described by the Lexikon as the core of the princely fortune.

Who inherits? The 2026 reform

The house is governed by its own family statute, the Hausgesetz, which it adopts itself, has had in written form for more than 400 years and which the constitution recognises. On 15 August 2026 its voting members approved a reform by a two-thirds majority, with two changes. Women in the family now have the same say as men in matters under that law. And the succession moves from male-preference to absolute primogeniture, so the eldest child takes the throne regardless of sex.

The small print matters. The new rule covers only those born in future to the children of Hereditary Prince Alois and Sophie. Everyone already born stays under the old rule, so today’s order doesn’t change. Alois justified it by saying the throne should go to whoever has been best prepared for it, the ruler’s children who grow up in Vaduz. Who holds the head-of-state role now, and with what powers, is on my page about the Prince of Liechtenstein.

What strikes me

That a family with palaces in Vienna, lost estates in what is now Czechia and one of Europe’s great art collections ended up living in a castle above a town of 6,108 people. And that the house itself credits the prince who moved there in 1938 with keeping the country independent through the Second World War. If you’re coming for the family, my advice is to see it for what it is, a central European dynasty that chose to stay in the Rhine valley.