  Henry the Lion - A
short summary of his life
 Henry the Lion, whose German name
is Heinrich der Löwe, was born in 1129, probably
in Altdorf near Ravensburg in Germany. His father
was Henry the Proud, duke of Saxony and Bavaria,
and his mother was Gertrud of Saxony, the
daughter of German Emperor Lothar III. After Emperor
Lothar III. had died in 1137, a conflict between
the families of the Guelphs (Welfen) with Henry
the Proud as their leader and the Ghibellines (Staufer)
began. Henry the Proud wanted to become the new
King because his father-in-law, Emperor Lothar
III., had constituted him as his heir before he
died. But the German nobles didn't want the
powerful Guelph as their new Emperor because they
were afraid of losing their own power. So in
1138 most of them voted for Konrad, who was a
member of the Ghibellines and he was elected as
King Konrad III.
Because
of the continuing conflict, Konrad III. reclaimed
the right to govern the duchies of Saxony and Bavaria from Henry.
Only one year later, in 1139,
Henry the Proud died and Henry the Lion became
his heir when he was only about ten years old.
 Henry the Lion
immediately claimed the duchies of Saxony and
Bavaria and in 1142, as a boy of about 13 years,
he really got Saxony and Bavaria as estates in
fee. (estate in fee =
no property, but bestowed by the king)
Perhaps King Konrad needed the support of
the powerful Guelphs and wanted to finish the
conflict. In the very same year Henry had to
disclaim the duchy Bavaria because the German
nobles didn't want two duchies in one Hand. But
now he was duke of Saxony, which was not the
today's Saxony, but the today's Lower Saxony with
parts of Westphalia. He made Brunswick the capital
of his large duchy and built his castle there.
In 1148
Henry married Clementia of Zähringen and they
had three children. Two of them died when they
were young and the third one, their daughter
Gertrud, later married King Knut of Denmark.
 Henry the Lion
supported the new German King Friedrich (Frederick) I.
Barbarossa, who was a member of the Ghibellines,
but who was also Henry's cousin. Henry took part
in the King's military campaigns against the
towns in Northern Italy, which wanted to become
independent from the German King. Only Henry's
strong army and Henry's personal courage and
valour saved the King from being defeated. And
in Rome Henry helped his King to be crowned by
the pope as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire
which meant that he became Emperor of Germany and
most of the Italian territory.
In
recognition of Henry's merits the emperor gave
him Bavaria as estate of fee, but before that
Bavaria was divided into two parts. Henry got the
bigger part of Bavaria and Henry's stepfather
Heinrich Jasomirgott of Babenberg got the eastern
part which then was the new duchy Austria. So
Henry's wish came true to become duke of Saxony
and Bavaria, just as his father had been before.
In Bavaria he founded the town of Munich.
Later,
after the successful crusades against his
Slavonian neighbours, he also obtained the reign
of the Slavonian territory of the Obodrites, who
lived in the area of today's Mecklenburg. There
he founded the town of Schwerin in 1160. Now
Henry the Lion was the most powerful noble in
Germany, he even had more land and people than
the Emperor himself. But his often
aggressive political behavour and his trials to
expand his territory and last but not least, his
success, made many of his neighbours and other
German nobles become his enemies.
In 1162
Henry left his wife Clementia of Zähringen. It
is supposed that Emperor Friedrich I. Barbarossa
wanted the dissolution of that marriage because
he had a conflict with Clementia's family and he
was afraid of an alliance of Guelphes and the
family of Zähringen.
 On February 1st
1168 Henry married his second wife Matilda (Mathilde, Maud)
Plantagenet, daughter of King Henry II. of
England. Matilda was sister of the English Kings
John Lackland and Richard I. Lionheart, who are
well known because of the tales of Robin Hood.
Henry and Matilda
had five children, Heinrich, Otto, Richenza,
Lothar and Wilhelm. Later Otto became German
Emperor Otto IV. and Wilhelm was ancestor of that
branch of the Guelphs who ruled the duchy
Brunswick and Luneburg until 1918 and who were
Kings of Hannover and even Kings of England
during the 19th century.
In 1172
Henry began his pilgrimage to Jerusalem while his
young wife stayed in Brunswick to take charge of
his properties. During his journey he met many
important people and some of them joined him so
that the group of pilgrims grew almost every day.
In Byzantium he visited the Byzantine Emperor
Manuel I. and there he was welcomed as if he was
a king. Henry got valuable relics from Manuel and
it is told, that he also got a real live lion as
a very special present and that he took that lion
back to his castle in Brunswick. I am not sure,
if the story about the lion is true, but one can
imagine how that powerful animal might have
impressed the people of Brunswick, who had never
seen such an animal before.
 After his return
to Brunswick in 1173, Henry built the famous
cathedral of Brunswick and endowed the relics
which he had got from the Byzantine emperor.
People say that the scratches next to the
cathedral's door were made by Henry's lion while
the animal was looking for its master. I don't know
if one should believe that story, but I think it's
a nice tale, isn't it?
In 1176
Henry refused to support Friedrich I. Barbarossa
with the emperor's new military campain against
the towns of Northern Italy and Friedrich was
badly defeated. Because of his refusal and several other complaints,
two legal proceedings were instituted against Henry in 1179
and 1180. He was sentenced to leave Germany and
he lost his two duchies Saxony and Bavaria.
Bavaria was given to the Wittelsbacher family,
whose descendants reigned there until 1918.
Saxony was divided and the parts were added to
several other duchies. Only a territory around
the towns of Brunswick and Luneburg could be kept
by the Guelphs and their allies. Henry and his
wife had to leave Germany and went to his father-in-law,
King Henry II. to England. There Henry's wife
Matilda died in 1189. Later he was allowed to
return to Germany again, but he never got back
his duchies and he was not duke any longer.
Henry died 1195 in
Brunswick after he had reconceiled with the new
Emperor Heinrich IV. His sons shared his
heritage and in 1235 his grandson Otto the Child
got a part of the old Saxon duchy as an estate in
fee. Since then Henry the Lion's descendants were dukes
again. The new duchy was called Brunswick-Luneburg
because of the two main towns within that duchy.
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