Tiesenhausen

thumb|Tiesenhausen's Blazon thumb|Counts von Tiesenhausen's [[coat of arms ]]

The House of Tiesenhausen is an old Baltic-German noble family. The origins of the family are in Lower Saxony. During the Baltic crusades they settled in Livonia in the first half of the 13th century. Bishops Albert of Riga and Herman of Tartu had a sister whose husband Engelbertus de Tisenhuse was the progenitor of the family in the Baltic. After some time in southern Livonia in the early stages of occupation, Engelbertus joined his brother-in-law bishop Herman to obtain the northern Livonian country of Ugaunia around Otepää and Tartu. It was Ugaunia where the family held its main early properties and positions. Engelbertus' son married a daughter of the castellan of Koknese in Latgale and through this marriage, the family claims descent from indigenous princes of the Latgalians. Some branches of Tisenhusen clan settled later to the Latvian Vidzeme holdings of Ērgļi and Bērzaune. From the ancestral place of Ugaunia, sons of the family managed to obtain estates in other parts of Estonia, also so-called Danish Estonia and Osilia-Rotalia, both by services and by marriages. (Raplamaa was apparently a favorite place in northern Estonia for them to obtain estates.)