Conrad III of Germany

Conrad was born in 1093, most likely at Bamberg in Franconia, into a family whose fortunes were rising fast ^[1]. His father was Frederick I, Duke of Swabia, the first of the Hohenstaufen line to hold ducal rank, and his mother was Agnes of Waiblingen, daughter of Emperor Henry IV of the Salian dynasty. That maternal connection mattered enormously. Through Agnes, Conrad and his elder brother Frederick II of Swabia could claim descent from the imperial house itself, a claim they would press for the rest of their lives ^[2].

The Germany of Conrad's childhood was scarred by the Investiture Controversy, the long struggle between emperors and popes over the appointment of bishops. His grandfather Henry IV had been excommunicated and humiliated, and his uncle Henry V spent much of his reign at war with the papacy and with rebellious princes. The Staufer brothers grew up as loyal supporters of Henry V, who had no sons of his own and treated his sister's children as natural allies and potential heirs ^[1].

Around 1115 or shortly afterward, Henry V granted Conrad the title of Duke of Franconia, giving the young man his own territorial base along the Main valley while his brother governed Swabia ^[2]. When the emperor departed for Italy in 1116, he left the two brothers as his representatives north of the Alps, a striking mark of trust in men still in their twenties.

Henry V died childless in 1125, and the succession that followed set the course of Conrad's career. The Staufer brothers expected the crown to pass within the family, but the German princes, guided by Archbishop Adalbert of Mainz, instead elected Lothair of Supplinburg, the elderly Duke of Saxony, as king ^[3]. The choice was a deliberate rejection of hereditary succession, and it pushed the Hohenstaufen into open opposition. When Lothair demanded that they surrender lands they had inherited from Henry V, arguing these were crown property rather than family possessions, war broke out ^[1].

In December 1127, while his brother was besieged in Swabia, Conrad took a bold step: a gathering of his supporters proclaimed him anti-king. He crossed the Alps and was crowned King of Italy at Monza in 1128 by Anselm, Archbishop of Milan ^[3]. The Italian venture promised much and delivered little. Conrad could not secure the wealth of the Lombard cities or win papal recognition, and he was excommunicated for his trouble. By 1130 he had returned to Germany with his cause fading.

The rebellion collapsed by degrees. Frederick II of Swabia submitted to Lothair in 1134, and Conrad followed in the autumn of 1135, giving up his royal title in exchange for a full restoration of his lands ^[2]. The reconciliation proved genuine enough that Conrad accompanied Lothair on his Italian campaign of 1136 to 1137, serving as standard bearer of the imperial army. When Lothair died in the Alps in December 1137 on his way home, Conrad was suddenly among the most plausible candidates to succeed him ^[3].

Lothair had intended the crown for his son-in-law Henry the Proud, the Welf duke who held both Bavaria and Saxony and controlled the imperial insignia. Many princes feared exactly that concentration of power. In March 1138, at Coblenz, a small assembly steered by Archbishop Adalbero of Trier and the papal legate elected Conrad king instead, and he was crowned at Aachen on March 13, 1138 ^[4]. For anyone asking who was Conrad III of Germany, this election is the defining answer: the first Hohenstaufen monarch, raised to the throne partly because the alternative seemed too strong.

Conrad moved quickly against his rival. He declared that no prince could hold two duchies and stripped Henry the Proud of both, granting Saxony to Albert the Bear and Bavaria to his own half-brother Leopold IV of Austria ^[1]. Henry's sudden death in 1139 did not end the feud. Saxon nobles rallied around Henry's young son, the future Henry the Lion, while in Bavaria the Welf cause was carried on by Henry's brother, Count Welf VI. Chroniclers later attached the famous battle cries of Welf and Waiblingen to the siege of Weinsberg in 1140, the names that would echo in Italy for centuries as Guelf and Ghibelline ^[4].

A settlement of sorts came at Frankfurt in 1142. Henry the Lion received Saxony, while Bavaria remained withheld from the Welfs, passing to Henry Jasomirgott of the Babenberg family ^[2]. The compromise bought time rather than peace, and the Bavarian question stayed open for the rest of the reign. Conrad's royal authority remained real but limited: he governed through assemblies and alliances rather than commanding the princes outright, and unlike every German king since Otto I, he never traveled to Rome for imperial coronation. He used the style King of the Romans throughout his reign ^[3].

The fall of the crusader county of Edessa to Zengi in 1144 shocked Latin Christendom and prompted Pope Eugenius III to call a new crusade. Conrad was initially reluctant, given the fragile balance in Germany, but the preaching of Bernard of Clairvaux proved irresistible. At Christmas 1146 in Speyer Cathedral, Bernard addressed the king directly, and Conrad took the cross ^[5]. To secure the kingdom in his absence, he had his ten-year-old son Henry Berengar elected and crowned co-king in early 1147.

The German army that marched east in May 1147 was among the largest ever assembled for a crusade, and its campaign became a byword for calamity. Relations with the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos were tense as the host passed Constantinople. Rather than wait for the French army of Louis VII, Conrad pushed into Anatolia, where near Dorylaeum in October 1147 Seljuk Turkish forces destroyed much of his army as it ran short of supplies ^[5]. The survivors fell back to Nicaea in bitter disorder.

Conrad himself fell gravely ill at Ephesus and spent the winter in Constantinople, where Manuel, by then his ally through marriage ties, saw to his care personally ^[6]. He reached the Holy Land by sea in 1148 and joined Louis VII and King Baldwin III of Jerusalem at the council of Acre, where the leaders decided to attack Damascus. The siege in July 1148 collapsed within days, and the crusade dissolved in recrimination. Conrad sailed home through Constantinople, sealing an agreement with Manuel against Roger II of Sicily, an alliance he never managed to act upon ^[5].

Conrad married twice. His first wife, Gertrude of Comburg, came from a wealthy Franconian comital family and died around 1130 to 1131, leaving no surviving children ^[2]. In 1136 he married Gertrude of Sulzbach, daughter of a powerful Bavarian count. The match carried diplomatic weight far beyond Germany: Gertrude's sister Bertha of Sulzbach was sent to Constantinople and married the future emperor Manuel I Komnenos, taking the Greek name Irene. That family link between the Staufer court and Byzantium shaped Conrad's foreign policy through the crusade years ^[6].

Gertrude of Sulzbach bore Conrad two sons. The elder, Henry Berengar, was crowned co-king in 1147 and showed promise, defending the kingdom during his father's absence on crusade, but he died in 1150, still in his teens. The younger son, Frederick, born around 1145, was a small child at the time of his father's final illness ^[4]. Gertrude herself had died in 1146, so Conrad's last years were passed as a widower who had buried both a wife and an heir.

Contemporaries who knew the king included his own half-brother, Bishop Otto of Freising, one of the great historians of the Middle Ages. Otto's chronicles are a primary window onto the reign, describing Conrad as brave and energetic yet dogged by misfortune, a ruler whose plans repeatedly outran his resources ^[7].

The final years brought little rest. Welf VI, subsidized by Roger II of Sicily, rose in arms again, and Conrad's forces defeated him at Flochberg in early 1150. Plans for an Italian expedition, both to receive the imperial crown and to strike at Sicily in concert with Byzantium, were drawn up repeatedly and repeatedly postponed as German troubles intervened ^[1]. In late 1151 Conrad fell seriously ill, and he died at Bamberg on February 15, 1152, aged about fifty-eight. He was buried in Bamberg Cathedral, near the tomb of Emperor Henry II ^[3].

His deathbed decision proved the most consequential act of the reign. Passing over his surviving son Frederick, a boy of about six, Conrad reportedly handed the royal insignia to his nephew Frederick of Swabia, the son of his brother and of a Welf mother, judging that only a grown man who bridged both feuding houses could hold the kingdom together ^[7]. The princes agreed, and within weeks Frederick Barbarossa was elected king, beginning one of the most celebrated reigns of the Middle Ages.

Any fair account of Conrad III of Germany achievements must weigh failure against foundation. He lost an army in Anatolia, never wore the imperial crown, and left the Welf quarrel unresolved. Yet he steered the monarchy through a contested succession, kept the Staufer claim alive through two decades of adversity, and secured a transition that gave the dynasty another 116 years on the throne ^[4]. Students of Conrad III of Germany facts often note the quieter marks he left as well: the deepened diplomatic bond with Byzantium, the Bamberg tomb that still survives, and the Welf and Waiblingen rivalry whose names outlived everyone who first shouted them. Modern historians studying any Conrad III of Germany biography tend to present him as a capable ruler dealt a difficult hand, the necessary bridge between the Salian collapse and the Staufer ascendancy ^[5].