With the death of the childless Landgrave Henry Raspe in 1247, the Ludowingian line of Thuringian landgraves becomes extinct in the male line.

His property includes only large parts of Thuringia; also, the Countship of Hesse had come into Ludowingian possession through the female line.

In 1122, before his acquisition of the title of Landgrave, Count Louis I of Thuringia had married Hedwig of Gudensberg, the female heir of the Hessian countly family of the Gisonen.

The Gisonen, whose lands were initially mainly in the upper Lahn area, had previously come into the significant inheritance of Count Werner in Lower Hesse.

Then, through the marriage of Giso IV with Kunigunde of Bilstein, they had also acquired widespread property and vogtship rights from the Counts of Bilstein.

Claims on the Ludowingians' inheritance are made by Henry Raspe's niece and his nephew.

Sophie of Thuringia, married to Henry II, Duke of Brabant and Lothier, is the daughter of Henry Raspe's brother Louis IV and she claims the territories on behalf of her son Henry.

(Sophie's sister Gertrude is abbess of the imperial convent of Altenberg in Wetzlar and thus excluded from the succession.)

Henry III, Margrave of Meissen, is the son of Henry Raspe's sister Jutta.

Another competitor is the Archbishop of Mainz, who can claim Hesse is a fiefdom of the Archbishopric and now, after the extinction of the Ludowingians, demands its return.

The war will last seventeen years.

Thuringia, named after the Thuringian people who occupied it around 300, had come under Frankish domination in the sixth century, forming a part (from 1130 a landgravate) of the subsequent Holy Roman Empire.

The death of Landgrave Ludwig IV and consequent extinction of the reigning Ludowingian line of counts in 1247 had sparked the seventeen-year War of the Thuringian Succession, in which Ludwig’s daughter Sophia (1224-84), who had married Henry II, Duke of Brabant, wins the western half of the langravate for her son Henry I, called the Child.

At war’s end in 1264, this portion will become independent under the name of Hesse, never to become a part of Thuringia again.

Most of the remaining Thuringian lands will come under the rule of the Wettin dynasty of the nearby Margravate of Meißen, the nucleus of the later duchy and kingdom of Saxony.

The oldest record of Weimar, located on the Ilm River in Thuringia, dates from the year 899.

Ruled by the counts of Weimar-Orlamünde from 1247, it is declared a town in 1254.

(The future capital of the Duchy—after 1815 the Grand Duchy—of Saxe-Weimar, the city will also give its name to the Weimar Republic, the German state between the World Wars of the twentieth century).

Duchess Sophia of Brabant, after the War of the Thuringian Succession that had followed the death of her uncle Landgrave Henry Raspe in 1247,  had secured the Hessian possessions for her minor son Henry the Child, who had become the first Landgrave of Hesse and founder of the House of Hesse in 1246.

The remaining Thuringian landgraviate had fallen to the Wettin margrave Henry III of Meissen.

As a result of the war, Hesse gains its independence in 1264 and becomes a Landgraviate within the Holy Roman Empire.