Everything about Henry I The Fowler totally explained
» Henry the Fowler is also the name of a wandering minstrel from the Tirol, the author of two cycles about Dietrich von Bern.
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
king of the Germans from
919 until his death. First of the
Ottonian Dynasty of German kings and emperors, he's 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" because he was allegedly fixing his birding nets when messengers arrived to inform him that he was to be king.
Family
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'd given birth to his son
Thankmar. Later that year he married
St Matilda of Ringelheim, daughter of Dietrich, count in western Saxony (Westfalia).St Matilda bore him three sons and two daughters and founded many religious institutions, including the abbey of
Quedlinburg where Henry is buried, and was later
canonized.
Succession
Henry became duke of Saxony upon his father's death in
912. An able ruler, he continued to strengthen Saxony, frequently in conflict with his neighbors to the South, the dukes of
Franconia.
In
918 Conrad I, king of the East-Francian Empire and duke of Franconia, died. Although they'd been at odds with each other from
912 to
915 over the title to lands in
Thuringia, before he died Conrad had recommended Henry as his successor and king. 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. Henry refused to be anointed by a high church official - the only king of his time not to undergo that rite – allegedly because he didn't wish to be king 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 didn't submit until Henry invaded Bavaria in
921.
Policy
Henry regarded the kingdom as a confederation of tribal
duchies rather than as a feudal kingdom 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 he defeated
Giselbert, duke of
Lotharingia (
Lorraine), and brought that realm, which had been lost in
910, back into the German kingdom as the fifth tribal duchy (the others being
Saxony,
Franconia,
Swabia, and
Bavaria). Allowing Giselbert to remain in power as duke of Lotharingia, Henry arranged the marriage of his daughter
Gerberga of Saxony to his new vassal in
928.
Henry was an able military leader. In
924 Henry paid a tribute to the
Magyars (Hungarians), who had repeatedly raided Germany, and thereby secured a ten-year truce so that he could fortify towns and train a new elite cavalry force. During the truce with the Magyars, Henry conquered the
Havelli and the
Daleminzi in
928 and put down a rebellion in
Bohemia in
929. When the
Magyars began raiding again, he led an army of all German tribes to victory at the battle of
Riade in
933 near the river Unstrut, stopping their advance into Germany. He also pacified territories to the north, where the
Danes had harried the
Frisians by sea. The monk and historian
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.
Death and aftermath
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. Henry I is therefore considered the first German king and the founder of the eventual
Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (
Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation). He has sometimes been considered as Holy Roman Emperor, Henry I.
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.
Henry returned to public attention as a character in
Richard Wagner's opera,
Lohengrin (1850). There are indications that
Heinrich Himmler imagined himself the reincarnation of the first king of Germany.
Further Information
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