Conrad III
Conrad III was the first Hohenstaufen king of Germany and the only one never crowned emperor. Born in 1093, he was the nephew of Emperor Henry V through his mother, and with his brother Frederick inherited the Salian family lands when Henry died childless in 1125. The princes elected Lothair of Supplinburg instead, and Conrad revolted, had himself elected antiking in 1127, and went to Italy where he was crowned king of Italy at Milan. The rebellion failed and he submitted in 1135. He was elected king in 1138 on Lothair's death, in a hurried ballot by a minority of princes, ahead of Lothair's far more powerful son-in-law Henry the Proud, the Welf duke of both Bavaria and Saxony. Conrad demanded that Henry surrender one duchy, on the principle that no man should hold two, and when he refused, deprived him of both. The war that followed between Welf and Hohenstaufen — Guelph and Ghibelline in their later Italian forms — outlived both men by a century. The siege of Weinsberg in 1140 supplied the battle cries and the legend of the women permitted to carry out what they could and carrying their husbands. He was persuaded by Bernard of Clairvaux to take the cross in 1146. The Second Crusade was a disaster: his army was destroyed by the Seljuks near Dorylaeum, and the attack on Damascus in 1148 collapsed in days. He died in 1152, naming his nephew Frederick Barbarossa rather than his own son. Barbarossa was chosen because he was half Welf by his mother and could end the feud, which he did for a generation.
- Lived: 1093 CE – 1152 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: head_of_state, military_leader, crusader
