Welf III (13 November 1055), the last male member of the
Swabian line of the
Elder House of Welf, was
Duke of Carinthia and
Margrave of Verona from 1047 until his death.
Life
Welf III was the only son of the Swabian count
Welf II of
Altdorf (died 1030) and
Imiza, a daughter of Count
Frederick of Luxembourg and niece of the later empress
Cunigunde of Luxembourg. His sister
Kunigunde of Altdorf (1054) married Margrave
Albert Azzo II, of Milan, a member of the Italian
House of Este, and became the ancestor of the House of Welf-Este of (Younger)
House of Welf.
Upon the death of his father, Welf III succeeded him in the family's extended estates in Swabia and
Bavaria
Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...
. Through the intervention of his aunt,
Richlind of Altdorf, he also inherited the property of her late husband Count Adalbero II of
Ebersberg in 1045. Probably through his mother, Imiza's, intervention Emperor
Henry III enfeoffed Welf in 1047 with the Duchy of Carinthia and the adjacent March of Verona, which after the death of Duke
Conrad the Younger in 1039 both had been held personally by the
Salian emperor.
Together with Duke
Bretislaus I of Bohemia, Welf accompanied Emperor Henry III on his 1051 campaign against King
Andrew I of Hungary. Later however, he turned against the emperor and got involved in a conspiracy around the deposed Duke
Conrad I of Bavaria, who with Hungarian support raided the Carinthian
March of Styria. A plot to assassinate Henry failed, when Duke Welf became confined to his sickbed and revealed the plans.
Welf III never married and had no children when he died at his castle in
Bodman on
Lake Constance
Lake Constance (, ) refers to three bodies of water on the Rhine at the northern foot of the Alps: Upper Lake Constance (''Obersee''), Lower Lake Constance (''Untersee''), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, called the Seerhein (). These ...
on 13 November 1055. He bequeathed his property to
Weingarten Abbey in Altdorf, where his mother was abbess. She in turn gave the property to Duke
Welf I of Bavaria, the son of Welf III's sister Kunigunde and Margrave Albert Azzo II of Milan.
[Störmer, 'Die Welfen in der Reichspolitik,' p. 261.]
Welf III was the last male heir of the Elder Welfs, his patrimonial lands went to the senior branch of the House of Este and the Younger House of Welf. In 1057 Emperor Henry's widow
Agnes of Poitou ceded the Carinthian duchy to the
Ezzonid scion
Conrad III. Welf was buried at Weingarten Abbey.
Notes
References
*E. Steindorff, ''Jahrbücher des Deutschen Reichs unter Heinrich III.'', 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1874–1881), accessible online at
archive.org*B. Schneidmüller, ''Die Welfen. Herrschaft und Erinnerung (819–1252).'' (Stuttgart, 2000)
*H. Dopsch, 'Welf III und Kärnten' in D. Bauer, et al., eds., ''Welf IV. - Schlüsselfigur einer Wendezeit: Regionale und europäische Perspektiven'' (Munich, 2004), pp. 84–128.
*K. Jordan, ''Heinrich der Löwe'' (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 1993).
*H. Renn, ''Das erste Luxemburger Grafenhaus (963-1136)'' (Bonn, 1941).
*K-E. Klaar, ''Die Herrschaft der Eppensteiner in Kärnten''
*W. Störmer, 'Die Welfen in der Reichspolitik des 11. Jahrhunderts,' ''Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung'' 104 (1996), 252–265.
External links
(in German)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Welf, Duke of Carinthia
11th-century births
1055 deaths
Dukes of Carinthia
Elder House of Welf
Year of birth unknown
Burials at Weingarten Abbey