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 0876 - 0936 (~ 59 years)
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| Name |
Henry |
| Suffix |
I, the Fowler |
| Born |
0876 |
Memleben, Saxony-Anhalt  |
| Gender |
Male |
| Died |
2 Jul 0936 |
| Person ID |
I11739 |
Young Kent Ancestors |
| Last Modified |
1 Oct 2011 |
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| Notes |
- Henry I the Fowler (German: Heinrich der Finkler or Heinrich der Vogler; Latin: Henricius Auceps) (876 – 2 July 936) was the Duke of Saxony from 912 and German king from 919 until his death. First of the Ottonian Dynasty of German kings and emperors, he is generally considered to be the founder and first king of the medieval German state, known until then as East Francia. An avid hunter, he obtained the epithet "the Fowler"[1] because he was allegedly fixing his birding nets when messengers arrived to inform him that he was to be king.
Born in Memleben, in what is now Saxony-Anhalt, Henry was the son of Otto the Illustrious, Duke of Saxony, and his wife Hedwiga, daughter of Henry of Franconia and Ingeltrude and a great-great-granddaughter of Charlemagne. In 906 he married Hatheburg, daughter of the Saxon count Erwin, but divorced her in 909, after she had given birth to his son Thankmar. Later that year he married St Matilda of Ringelheim, daughter of Dietrich, Count of Westphalia. Matilda bore him three sons, one called Otto, and two daughters, Hedwig and Gerberga and founded many religious institutions, including the abbey of Quedlinburg where Henry is buried, and was later canonized.
Henry became Duke of Saxony upon his father's death in 912. An able ruler, he continued to strengthen the position of his duchy within the developing Kingdom of Germany, frequently in conflict with his neighbors to the South, the dukes of Franconia.
Legend of the German crown offered to Henry, Hermann Vogel (1854-1921). On 23 December 918 Conrad I, King of East Francia and Franconian duke, died. Although they had been at odds with each other from 912–15 over the title to lands in Thuringia, before he died Conrad recommended Henry as his successor. Conrad's choice was conveyed by Duke Eberhard of Franconia, Conrad's brother and heir, at the Reichstag of Fritzlar in 919. The assembled Franconian and Saxon nobles duly elected Henry to be king. Archbishop Heriger of Mainz offered to anoint Henry according to the usual ceremony, but he refused to be anointed by a high church official — the only King of his time not to undergo that rite — allegedly because he wished to be king not by the church's but by the people's acclaim. Duke Burchard II of Swabia soon swore fealty to the new King, but Duke Arnulf of Bavaria did not submit until Henry defeated him in two campaigns in 921. Last, Henry besieged his residence at Ratisbon (Regensburg) and forced Arnulf into submission.
In 920, the West Frankish king Charles the Simple invaded Germany and marched as far as Pfeddersheim near Worms, but retired on hearing that Henry was arming against him.[2]
On 7 November 921 Henry and Charles met each other and concluded a treaty of friendship between them. However, with the beginning of civil war in France upon the coronation of King Robert I, Henry sought to wrest the Duchy of Lorraine from the Western Kingdom. In the year of 923 Henry crossed the Rhine twice. Later in the year he entered Lorraine with an army, capturing a large part of the country. Until October of 924 the eastern part of Lorraine was left in Henry's possession.[citation needed]
Henry regarded the German kingdom as a confederation of stem duchies rather than as a feudal monarchy and saw himself as primus inter pares. Instead of seeking to administer the empire through counts, as Charlemagne had done and as his successors had attempted, Henry allowed the dukes of Franconia, Swabia and Bavaria to maintain complete internal control of their holdings. In 925, Duke Gilbert of Lorraine again rebelled. Henry invaded the duchy and besieged Gilbert at Zülpich (Tolbiac), captured the town, and became master of a large portion of his lands. Thus he brought that realm, which had been lost in 910, back into the German kingdom as the fifth stem duchy. Allowing Gilbert to remain in power as duke, Henry arranged the marriage of his daughter Gerberga to his new vassal in 928.
Henry was an able military leader. In 921 Hungarians (Magyars) invaded Germany and Italy. Although a sizable force was routed near Bleiburg in the Bavarian March of Carinthia by Eberhard and the Count of Meran[3] and another group was routed by Liutfried, count of Elsace, the Magyars repeatedly raided Germany. Nevertheless Henry, having captured a Hungarian prince, managed to arrange a ten-year-truce in 926, though he was forced to pay tributes. By doing so he and the German dukes gained time to fortify towns and train a new elite cavalry force.[citation needed]
During the truce with the Magyars, Henry subdued the Polabian Slavs, settling on the eastern border of his realm. In the winter of 928, he marched against the Slavic Hevelli tribes and seized their capital, Brandenburg. He then invaded the Glomacze lands on the middle Elbe river, conquered Gana (Jahna), the capital after a siege, and had a fortress (the later Albrechtsburg) built at Meissen. In 929, with the help of Arnulf of Bavaria, Henry entered Bohemia. Duke Wenceslaus I surrendered his lands, but received them back as a fief of the German crown, agreeing to pay a yearly tribute to the king. Meanwhile, the Slavic Redarii had driven away their chief, captured the town of Walsleben and massacred the inhabitants. Counts Bernard and Thietmar marched against the fortress of Lenzen beyond the Elbe, and, after fierce fighting, completely routed the enemy on 4 September 929. The Lusatians and the Ukrani on the lower Oder were subdued and made tributary in 932 and 934, respectively.[4] However, Henry left no consistent march administration, which was implemented by his successor Otto I.
In 932 Henry finally refused to pay the regular tribute to the Magyars. When they began raiding again, he led a unified army of all German tribes to victory at the Battle of Riade in 933 near the river Unstrut, thus stopping the Magyar advance into Germany. He also pacified territories to the north, where the Danes had been harrying the Frisians by sea. The monk and chronicler Widukind of Corvey in his Res gestae Saxonicae reports that the Danes were subjects of Henry the Fowler. Henry incorporated into his kingdom territories held by the Wends, who together with the Danes had attacked Germany, and also conquered Schleswig in 934.[citation needed]
Henry died of a cerebral stroke on 2 July 936 in his palatium in Memleben, one of his favourite places. By then all German tribes were united in a single kingdom. He was buried at Quedlinburg Abbey, established by his wife Matilda in his honor.
His son Otto succeeded him as Emperor. His second son, Henry, became Duke of Bavaria. A third son, Brun (or Bruno), became archbishop of Cologne. His son from his first marriage, Thankmar, rebelled against his half-brother Otto and was killed in battle in 936. After the death of her husband Duke Giselbert of Lotharingia, Henry's daughter Gerberga of Saxony married King Louis IV of France. His youngest daughter, Hedwige of Saxony, married Duke Hugh the Great of France and was the mother of Hugh Capet, the first Capetian king of France.[citation needed]
Henry returned to public attention as a character in Richard Wagner's opera, Lohengrin (1850), trying to gain the support of the Brabantian nobles against the Magyars. After the attempts to achieve German national unity failed with the Revolutions of 1848, Wagner strongly relied on the picture of Henry as a the actual ruler of all German tribes as advocated by pan-Germanist activists like Friedrich Ludwig Jahn.
Himmler at Henry's grave, 1938There are indications that Heinrich Himmler saw himself as the reincarnation of the first king of Germany.[5] The Nazism ideology referred to Henry as a founding father of the German nation, fighting both the Latin Western Franks and the Slavic tribes of the East, thereby a precursor of the German Drang nach Osten.
Subsequently to his life, Henry the Fowler became attached to the fairy tale motif of an incestous father, as in Allerleirauh or The King Who Wished to Marry His Daughter: after the death of her mother, he wished to marry his own daughter for her beauty, but she succeeds in escaping by performing an impossible task, and he died of chagrin.[6]
He was related to every other king of Germany.
Notes:
1. A fowler is one who hunts wildfowl.
2. Gwatkin ,The Cambridge Medieval History: Volume III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926.p 180
3. Menzel, W. Germany from the Earliest Period
4. Gwatkin ,The Cambridge Medieval History: Volume III.
5. Frischauer, Willi. Himmler, the Evil Genius of the Third Reich. London: Odhams, 1953, pages 85-88; Kersten, Felix. The Kersten Memoirs: 1940-1945. New York: Macmillan, 1957, page 238.
6. Margaret Schlauch, Chaucer's Constance and Accused Queens, New York: Gordian Press 1969 p 64
References:
1.Gwatkin, H. M., Whitney, J. P. (ed) et al. The Cambridge Medieval History: Volume III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926.
2.Menzel, W. Germany from the Earliest Period . Vol I
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