held the city of Nidda as an Imperial Estate, making the Counts of Nidda Imperial princes (the county of Nidda remained a fief of the Abbey of Fulda). Separation of Nidda and Ziegenhain (1250-1333) Louis II When Gottfried IV died in 1250, he was succeeded in the County of Nidda by his son Louis II (died between 1290 and 1294). He and his cousin, , came into conflict soon after the latter came to power in Ziegenhain in 1258 and in the same year there was a formal partition of the two counties and an exchange of territories, mediated by Archbishop , Bishop , and Abbot (who was also Abbot of Hersfeld, in which role he was the overlord of Ziegenhain and parts of Nidda). Louis II received the County of Nidda and the Amt of Neustadt, gave up the Vogtei of Burg-Gemünden in exchange for the fiefs of and Widdersheim, and had to renounce his claims to , Rauschenberg, Treysa, the castle in Burg-Gemünden, Schlitz and Lissberg. Gottfried had the option to buy the Vogtei of Fulda from Louis for 175 silver marks. Gottfried could build in Nidda and Louis in Ziegenhain, but neither could damage the territory of the other. In 1259 Louis purchased the shares of Nidda castle owned by the Werner II and Siegfried I of Stein. In 1263, he surrendered his right to Hornberg Castle in Neckarzimmern to the Bishop of Speyer. He established the family tradition of making donations at the Abbey of Haina. He also sold substantial territories in the city of Nidda and the wider county to the Knights of St John between 1264 and 1286, probably because he was short of money, and in 1279, he mortgaged the Fuldan Vogtei to Abbot for 400 marks. Louis II and Gottfried V both got caught up in the War of the Thuringian Succession. Louis II sought to maintain his independence against the claims of Sophie of Thuringia and her son Henry I, Landgrave of Hesse to overlordship. Therefore, he joined the side of the Archbishop of Mainz. At Neustadt, Louis built a castle around 1270, to counter the Hessian Marburg, but it was captured by troops of Henry of Hesse in 1273 - the same year in which Gottfried V's castles in Staufenberg and Burg-Gemünden were captured and destroyed. In 1288, Louis leant 350 marks to Archbishop Engelbert I After Louis II's death