Born in
Ravensburg, he was the son of
Henry the Proud, Duke of Bavaria and Saxony, who was the son of Duke
Henry the Black and an heiress of the
Billungs, former dukes of Saxony. Henry's mother was Gertrud, only daughter of Emperor
Lothair II and his wife Richenza of Northeim, heiress of the Saxon territories of
Northeim and the properties of the
Brunones, counts of
Brunswick.
Henry's father died in
1139, aged 32, when Henry was still a child. King
Conrad III had dispossessed Henry the Proud, who had been his rival for the crown in 1138, of his duchies in 1138 and 1139, handing Saxony to
Albert the Bear and Bavaria to
Leopold of Austria. Henry, however, did not relinquish his claims to his inheritance, and Conrad returned Saxony to him in
1142. A participant in the
1147 Wendish Crusade, Henry also reacquired Bavaria by a decision of the new Emperor
Frederick Barbarossa in
1156.
Henry is the founder of
Munich (1157/58;
München) and
Lübeck (1159); he also founded and developed the cities of
Stade, Lüneburg and
Brunswick. In Brunswick, his capital, he had a bronze lion, his heraldic animal, erected in the yard of his castle
Dankwarderode in
1166 — the first bronze statue north of the
Alps. Later, he had
Brunswick Cathedral built close to the statue.
In
1147 Henry married Clementia of
Zähringen, thereby gaining her hereditary territories in
Swabia. He divorced her in
1162, apparently under pressure from Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who did not cherish Welfish possessions in his home area and offered Henry several fortresses in Saxony in exchange. In
1168 Henry married
Matilda (1156 -1189), the daughter of
Henry II of England and
Eleanor of Aquitaine and sister of
Richard Lionheart.
Henry long and faithfully supported his older cousin, Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), in his attempts to solidify his hold on the Imperial Crown and his repeated wars with the cities of
Lombardy and the Popes, several times turning the tide of battle in Frederick's favor with his fierce Saxon knights. But in
1174, Henry refused to aid Frederick in a renewed invasion of Lombardy because he was preoccupied with securing his own borders in the East. He did not consider these Italian adventures worth the effort, even after Frederick offered him the rich Imperial City of
Goslar in southern Saxony as a reward, a prize Henry had long coveted.
Barbarossa's expedition into Lombardy ended in utter failure. He bitterly resented Henry for failing to support him. Taking advantage of the hostility of other German princes to Henry, who had successfully established a powerful and contiguous state comprising Saxony, Bavaria and substantial territories in the north and east of Germany, Frederick had Henry tried
in absentia for insubordination by a court of bishops and princes in
1180. Declaring that Imperial law overruled traditional German law, the court had Henry stripped of his lands and declared him an outlaw. Frederick then invaded Saxony with an Imperial army to bring his cousin to his knees. Henry's allies deserted him, and he finally had to submit in November
1181 at a
Reichstag in
Erfurt. He was exiled from Germany in
1182 for three years, stayed with his father-in-law,
Henry II of England, in
Normandy before being allowed back into Germany in
1185. He was exiled again in
1188. His wife Matilda died in
1189.
When Frederick Barbarossa went on the
Crusade of 1189, Henry returned to Saxony, mobilized an army of his faithful, and conquered and ravaged the rich city of
Bardowick as punishment for her disloyalty. Only the churches were left standing. Barbarossa's son, Emperor
Henry VI, again defeated the Duke, but in
1194, with his end approaching, he made his peace with the Emperor, and returned to his much diminished lands around Brunswick, where he finished his days as duke of Brunswick, peacefully sponsoring arts and architecture. He died on
6 August 1195.
The picture at the top right, taken from his tomb in Brunswick Cathedral constructed between 1230 and 1240, shows an idealized image. When the
Nazis exhumed his corpse, they were disappointed to find a comparatively small man with black hair. This, presumably, was an inheritance from the northern Italian ancestors of the Welfs, the counts of
Este.
