Henry II Jasomirgott
Henry II Jasomirgott was the Babenberg who gave up Bavaria for the Privilegium Minus, became the first Duke of Austria in 1156, and moved his residence to Vienna, which had been a market town on the Danube and from then on was a capital; the nickname is supposed to be his oath, 'yes, so help me God', and was attached to him by a chronicler long after his death. He was the son of the margrave Leopold the Saint, and of the emperor Henry IV's daughter Agnes, which made him a half-brother of the king Conrad III, and the Babenbergs were the Hohenstaufen party's family in the south-east. Conrad made him count palatine of the Rhine in 1140 and, when Henry the Proud of the Welfs was stripped of Bavaria, gave the duchy first to Henry's brother and then, in 1143, to Henry himself, with the Welf's widow Gertrude as a wife to make the transfer look like a settlement. It did not settle it. Gertrude died within the year and her son Henry the Lion spent the next decade demanding Bavaria back. Henry Jasomirgott went on the Second Crusade with Conrad in 1147, was beaten with him in Anatolia, and came home through Constantinople with a Byzantine wife, Theodora, the emperor's niece. Frederick Barbarossa, elected in 1152, needed the Lion and could not simply rob the Babenberg. The bargain took four years and was sealed at Regensburg in September 1156: Henry gave up Bavaria, the March of Austria was cut out of it and made a duchy, and the Privilegium Minus gave the new duchy inheritance in the female line, the right to name an heir if the line failed, military service only on the borders and attendance only at diets in Bavaria. He moved his court to Vienna the same year and founded the Schottenstift there in 1155 for Irish monks, and the city's growth as a residence dates from him. He fought the Hungarians and Bohemians on his borders and took Barbarossa's side in the schism against Alexander III. He died in January 1177 of a fall from his horse on a bridge in Vienna, and his son Leopold V, who would hold Richard the Lionheart to ransom, succeeded him.
- Lived: 1107 CE – 1177 CE
- Nationality: Austrian
- Roles: duke, ruler
