THE LIKELY ETHNIC ORIGINS OF THE WOLFSBERG CLAN
By Wolf Wolfensberger, Syracuse, NY
The Swiss von Wolfsberg ancestors of the Wolfensberger Family Association were most likely descended from a Germanic tribe that together with many other Germanic tribes, and some nonGermanic ones, came for unknown reasons from Asia or what is now Russia into Central and Western Europe over a period of centuries, creating much turmoil. Around the time of Christ, this particular tribe settled in northern Germany between what is now roughly Berlin and the Baltic Sea. They were called the Sueben, and the Baltic Sea was actually called the Mare_Suebicum (Swabian Sea) by the Romans. Around the year 200 AD, also for reasons unknown, the Suebians began to slowly trek southward in a wave of somewhere between 60,000-80,000 people, with thousands of oxen drawn wagons. They probably advanced a number of miles every season and then camped in between. They reached the Main River which divides northern from southern Germany around 213 AD, the middle of the Neckar River further south around 233 AD, and the borders of the Roman Empire north of the Alps around 260 AD, resulting in several hundred years of warfare with the Romans and the peoples then allied with them, such as the Celts. In the late 400s, after having overcome the Roman border, they reached the southern area of the Rhine River and the edge of the Alps, which includes much of today's Switzerland, and they also penetrated across the Rhine River into the Alsace to the west.
Neighboring peoples called these invaders Alemans, though they themselves called themselves Suevi, Suavi, or Swaben, out of which came the contemporary word Schwaben (the “Sch” is pronounced like a “Sh”).
Little is known as to exactly what happened between the years 500-700 AD, and how the Suebians lived except that once they settled in the south, they were very fecund (fertile, productive), and therefore tried to expand once again back toward the north. Once they reached the lower Rhine River in the 490’s, they encountered the Franks--another Germanic tribe--in what is now the lower Rhineland. The Franks at that time occupied part of what is now France and Belgium, and part of what is now Germany. A huge battle took place at Zulpich at that time in which the Alemans/Suebians suffered a devastating defeat, as a result of which they were pushed back south below the Main River. The Suebians might have been completely annihilated or absorbed by the Franks if Theoderic, the king of the Germanic tribe of the Ostrogoths in Italy, had not interceded on their behalf and threatened the Franks if they did not stop their pursuit. The border that then got established between the Franks and the Suebians has remained an ethnic and dialect border to this very day. However, not long after, around 536 AD, the Alemans nonetheless had to accept the overlordship of the Franks, and their ruler was then no longer an independent king but a Swabian duke under a Frankish king. This dukeship covered almost the entire area of what is now southwest Germany, plus much of what is now Switzerland and the (now French) Alsace, bordering on the Germanic Bavarians in the east.
It is believed that the Suebians became Christians around the year 600 AD, implying that the Wolfensbergers have probably been Christian for 1400 years.
Until World War II, the people who lived in what had once been the territory of the old dukedom of Swabia within the German empire were primarily Alemanic, and thus the descendants of the von Wolfsberg are distinguished by their Alemanic origin from the other Germanic tribes in Germany, such as the Franks, the Saxons, the Bavarians, the Frisians, and so on. Since then, there has been so much migration into and out of at least the German portion of old Swabia that many people in it are no longer of Alemanic stock.
Today, the old Swabian territory is very fractionated, with parts in Switzerland, parts in France, parts in the Bavarian province of Germany, and most of it in what is now the  German state of Wurttemberg-Baden.
	The medieval wars of liberation of the Swiss against the Austrians and the dukedom of Swabia were not so much a war against the German empire as they were a war against the nobility and its overlordship.
Until the 13th century, a unitary old Swabian language was spoken in the entirety of the old Swabian dukedom. This language was very similar to the one that one still finds in Switzerland, the Alsace, and the southernmost sliver of southwestern Germany just north of the Lake of Constance. This old Swabian language is what the Swabian emperors of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (i.e., the Hohenstaufen emperors) spoke, as well as many of the medieval Germany troubadours (the Minnesinger).  Then the Swabian language began to divide somewhat into different sub-dialects.
Today, there are roughly five dialects of the old Swabian language, one of which is called south Alemanic that is spoken in German Switzerland, in the Alsace, and in a sliver of the southern Black Forest. This is more or less the language our ancestors spoke, though the Alsatians tongue is rapidly being driven out by French.
However, of every Swabian dialect, there now exist subdialects, some of which exist in only very smal1 1ocales. The most striking examples of these exist in various smal1 areas of Switzerland that at one time were very isolated, such as high-lying mountain valleys. These dialects can be difficult to understand even for people nearby.
While the dialect spoken by the people in the Rhine Palatinate is a south German one, and very different from that spoken in Northern Germany, it is not part of the Swabian/Alemanic dialect, but Frankish in origin.
	In France, it has become politically correct to never refer to the Alsatians as German or Germanic, but only as Alemanic. Similarly, the German-Swiss (keeping in mind that part of Switzerland is also ethnically French, Italian, and Rhaetic) also now like to describe themselves as Alemanic rather than Swabian, because the latter carries to them overtones of political claims that are felt to be a bit threatening to Swiss independence.
	By the way, people of Swabian/Alemanic stock tend to be "roundheads," in contrast to other Germanic tribes (and the Celts) that tend to be "flatheads”.