House of Hohenstaufen

Arms of the Hohenstaufen Dynasty

The House of Hohenstaufen (or the Staufer(s)) was a dynasty of Germanic Kings (1138-1254), many of whom were also crowned Holy Roman Emperor and Dukes of Swabia. In 1194 the Hohenstaufen also became Kings of Sicily. The proper name, taken from their castle in Swabia, is Staufen. Therefore the dynasty is sometimes also called Swabian dynasty after the family's origin.

The dynasty is named after Hohenstaufen Castle, which is located on a mountain of the same name near Göppingen. The castle was built by the first known member of the dynasty, Frederick I, Duke of Swabia.

Contents

Origins as dukes of Swabia

In 1079, King Henry IV appointed Frederick of Büren as duke of Swabia. At the same time, Frederick was engaged to the king's approximately seven-year old daughter, Agnes. Nothing is known about Frederick's life before this event. He proved to be a close ally of Henry IV in his struggle against other Swabian lords, namely Rudolf of Rheinfelden (the previous duke), and the Zähringen and Welf lords. Frederick's brother Otto became bishop of Strasbourg in 1082.

Frederick I was succeeded by his son Frederick II in 1105. Frederick II remained a close ally of the kings, and he and his brother Conrad were named the king's representatives in Germany when the king was in Italy. Around 1120, Frederick II married Judith of Bavaria from the rival House of Welf.

Ruling in Germany

Family tree of the Hohenstaufen emperors including their relation to succeeding dynasties

When the last male member of the Salian dynasty, Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor, died without an heir in 1125 there was controversy about the succession. Frederick and Conrad, the two current male Staufens, were grandsons of Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor and nephews of Henry V. Frederick ran for king, but lost the election against Lothair II. This led to a civil war between the Staufens and the king, which ended with the submission of the Staufens in 1134. However, after the death of Lothair II in 1137, Conrad became King of the Romans. After Frederick II's death in 1147, he was succeeded as duke by his son Frederick III. When Conrad died without adult heir in 1152, Frederick III succeeded him as King Frederick I.

Frederick I (r. 1152-90), also known as Frederick Barbarossa because of his red beard, struggled throughout his reign to restore the power and prestige of the German monarchy, but he had little success. Because the German dukes had grown stronger both during and after the Investiture Controversy and because royal access to the resources of the church in Germany was much reduced, Frederick was forced to go to Italy to find the finances needed to restore the king's power in Germany. He was soon crowned emperor in Italy, but decades of warfare on the peninsula yielded scant results. The papacy and the prosperous city-states of northern Italy were traditional enemies, but the fear of imperial domination caused them to join ranks to fight Frederick. Under the skilled leadership of Pope Alexander III, the alliance suffered many defeats but ultimately was able to deny the emperor a complete victory in Italy. Frederick returned to Germany old and embittered. He had vanquished one notable opponent and member of the Welf family, Saxony's Henry the Lion, but his hopes of restoring the power and prestige of his family and the monarchy seemed unlikely to be met by the end of his life.

During Frederick's long stays in Italy, the German princes became stronger and began a successful colonization of Slavic lands. Offers of reduced taxes and manorial duties enticed many Germans to settle in the east as the area's original inhabitants were killed or driven away. Because of this colonization, the empire increased in size and came to include Pomerania, Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia. A quickening economic life in Germany increased the number of towns and gave them greater importance. It was also during this period that castles and courts replaced monasteries as centers of culture. Growing out of this courtly culture, German medieval literature reached its peak in lyrical love poetry, the Minnesang, and in narrative epic poems such as Tristan, Parzival, and the Nibelungenlied.

Frederick died in 1190 while on a crusade and was succeeded by his son, Henry VI (r. 1190-97). Elected king even before his father's death, Henry went to Rome to be crowned emperor. A death in his wife's family gave him possession of Sicily, a source of vast wealth. Henry failed to make royal and imperial succession hereditary, but in 1196 he succeeded in gaining a pledge that his infant son Frederick would receive the German crown. Faced with difficulties in Italy and confident that he would realize his wishes in Germany at a later date, Henry returned to the south, where it appeared he might unify the peninsula under the Hohenstaufen name. After a series of military victories, however, he died of natural causes in Sicily in 1197.

Because the election of the three-year-old Frederick to be German king appeared likely to make orderly rule difficult, the boy's uncle, Philip, was chosen to serve in his place. Other factions elected a Welf candidate, Otto IV, as counterking, and a long civil war began. Philip was about to win when he was murdered by a relative in 1208. Otto IV in turn was beaten by the French at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214. Frederick returned to Germany in 1212 from Sicily, where he had grown up, and became king in 1215. As Frederick II (r. 1215-50), he spent little time in Germany because his main concerns lay in Italy. Frederick made significant concessions to the German nobles, such as those put forth in an imperial statute of 1232, which made princes virtually independent rulers within their territories. The clergy also became more powerful. Although Frederick was one of the most energetic, imaginative, and capable rulers of the Middle Ages, he did nothing to draw the disparate forces in Germany together. His legacy was thus that local rulers had more authority after his reign than before it.

Romanticizing postcard from 1905, depicting Mount Hohenstaufen and Hohenstaufen kings.

By the time of Frederick's death in 1250, there was little centralized power in Germany. The Great Interregnum (1256-73), a period of anarchy in which there was no emperor and German princes vied for individual advantage, followed the death of Frederick's son Conrad IV in 1254. In this short period, the German nobility managed to strip many powers away from the already diminished monarchy. Rather than establish sovereign states, however, many nobles tended to look after their families. Their many heirs created more and smaller estates. A largely free class of officials also formed, many of whom eventually acquired hereditary rights to administrative and legal offices. These trends compounded political fragmentation within Germany.

Despite the political chaos of the Hohenstaufen period, the population grew from an estimated 8 million in 1200 to about 14 million in 1300, and the number of towns increased tenfold. The most heavily urbanized areas of Germany were located in the south and the west. Towns often developed a degree of independence, but many were subordinate to local rulers or the emperor. Colonization of the east also continued in the thirteenth century, most notably through the efforts of the Knights of the Teutonic Order, a society of soldier-monks. German merchants also began trading extensively on the Baltic.

Decline

The conflict between the Hohenstaufen and the Welfs irrevocably weakened the German monarchy. It continued until the Hohenstaufen line died out. The Norman kingdom of Sicily became the base for Hohenstaufen rule. Henry VI, who followed his father Frederick Barbarossa, as emperor in 1190, married Constance, heiress of Sicily. But Henry died before realizing his plans for hereditary monarchy over Germany and Italy. His underage son Frederick succeeded him only in Sicily, while in the empire the struggle between the Hohenstaufen and the Welfs erupted once again.

1198: First signs of decline

In 1198, two rival kings were chosen: the Hohenstaufen Philip of Swabia, who was a brother of Henry VI, and the son of Henry the Lion, Welf Otto IV. First, Pope Innocent III supported the Welfs, but when Otto, who was the sole monarch after the death of Philip in 1208, moved to appropriate Sicily, Innocent changed sides and accepted Frederick II and his ally, the French king Philip II Augustus, in 1214 at the Battle of Bouvines, which is located near Lille. When Otto died in 1218, Fredrick became the undisputed king, and in 1220 he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor.

Frederick II

Frederick II lived in Southern Italy, founded the University of Naples in 1224 to train state officials and reigned over Germany primarily through the allocation of royal prerogatives, leaving the sovereign authority and imperial estates to the ecclesiastical and secular princes. This favored the division of the empire.

In 1226, Frederick assigned German soldiers to complete the conquest and conversion of Prussia. A reconciliation with the Welfs took place in 1235. During this time, the grandson of Henry the Lion was named duke of Brunswick and Lunenburg. However, the power struggle with the popes continued and resulted in Fredrick's excommunication in 1227. In 1239, the Pope excommunicated Fredrick again, and in 1245 he was condemned as a heretic by a church council.

Fredrick died in 1250, and his heir Conrad IV reigned only a short time before his own death in 1254. His son Conradin immediately had to defend Sicily against an invasion by Charles of Anjou a brother of the French king. Conradin was defeated in 1268 at the Battle of Tagliacozza and was handed over to Charles after having fled the battlefield. He was later executed in Naples. He was the last of the Hohenstaufen dynasty.

End of the Hohenstaufen

Conrad IV was succeeded as duke of Swabia by his only son, two-year old Conrad. By this time, the office of duke of Swabia had been fully subsumed into the office of the king, and without royal authority had become meaningless. In 1261, attempts to elect the younger Conrad king were unsuccessful. Conrad was executed in 1268 after a failed campaign to retake control of Sicily. With him, both the House of Hohenstaufen and the Duchy of Swabia ceased to exist.

Members of the Hohenstaufen family

Holy Roman Emperors and Kings of Germany

Like the first ruling Hohenstaufen, Conrad III, also the last one, Conrad IV, was never crowned emperor. After a 20 year period (Interregnum 1254-1273) the first Habsburg was elected king.

Arms of the Hohenstaufen Sicily

Kings of Sicily

Note: Some of the following kings are already listed above as German Kings

Dukes of Swabia

Note: Some of the following dukes are already listed above as German Kings

See also

External links

References