Haller von Hallerstein is a noble patrician family from the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg which belonged to the wealthy ruling oligarchy during Nuremberg's Golden Age in late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Around 1500 a branch became Hungarian and played an important part in the history of Transylvania during the 16th to 18th centuries. They are not related with the patrician von Haller family from Bern, Switzerland. History Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries the family's economic and political power contributed to the cultural development of the city. As early as the 14th century, the family belonged to the circle of families that had an exclusive access to the Inner Council of Nürnberg, to which the family sent representatives until 1806. According to the dance statute they were one of the twenty old lines eligible to participate in city council. In 1360, Berthold Haller donated the pilgrim hospital of the Holy Cross to the city. The Hallers made their fortune in the long-distance trade with Cologne, Lyon, Bologna and Venice, but also with Austria and Hungary, as well as in mining and banking. They increased it through inheritances enabled by skillful marriage policy. They married into other important patrician families such as the Tucher or Imhoff family. With Ruprecht I († 1489), Martin III († 1617) and Johann Siegmund († 1805) they provided three major officials to the free imperial city. The family received an imperial confirmation of their nobility in 1433. In the second half of the 15th century, a branch split from the Nuremberg family and moved to Hungary and Transylvania, later to become Austrian counts. The Nuremberg branch became Lutheran during the reformation, like all major Nuremberg families. They were raised to the rank of barons in 1790. The family owned numerous estates and manor houses around Nuremberg. Since 1766 to this day the family seat is Großgründlach Castle, in the northern outskirts of Nürnberg. In August 1796, Colonel Johann Georg Haller von Hallerstein succeeded in evacuating the Imperial Regalia, the crown jewels of the Holy Roman Empire, that had been preserved in Nuremberg ever since 1424, from French troops invading Germany during the War of the First Coalition, to Regensburg, and further on to Prague, from where they were brought to Vienna where they remain to this day. Members Ulrich Haller (c. 1255–1324/5), Consul of Nuremberg Bertold Haller (?–1379), Financier of Emperor Charles IV Wilhelm