Thurzó family
Thurzo or Turzo (-German; Hungarian: Thurzó; Slovak: Turzo) was a Hungarian noble family from the 15th century to the first half of the 17th century having mostly Hungarian, Slovak, German, Polish and Moravian members.
The ancestors of the Thurzo family came to the Kingdom of Hungary from Lower Austria. Their original possessions were located around the village of Betlanovce in the Szepes county (today Spiš region). Since the end of the 15th century, they were mostly businessmen and entrepreneurs in Kraków, Levoča, Spiš, Gemer, central Upper Hungary, Transylvania, Bohemia and Germany. In 1494, they established the Thurzo-Fugger company, which is sometimes regarded as the first capitalist company in Europe. Soon, they got a monopoly on the trade of copper and opened new places all over Europe. Around the year 1500 they dominated the production of precious and non-ferrous metals in Hungary.
For the earned money they bought lands in the northern part of the Kingdom of Hungary (today Slovakia), and owned several castles and their surroundings, for example Červený Kameň, Lietava, Tematín, Zvolen, Hlohovec, Orava and so on, as well as land in the other parts of the Kingdom of Hungary and Germany.
In the whole 16th and in the first half of the 17th century, they were one of the most prominent families of Royal Hungary, slowly began to control the key top posts in the kingdom and were hereditary chiefs of the Szepes (Spiš) and Árva (today Orava) counties (in today Slovakia).
The Thurzo family died out in the first half of the 17th century, with the Orava-Bytča leg in 1621 and the Spiš legs in 1635 and 1636.