Hermann I of Thuringia (d. 1217)

Landgrave of Thuringia (1190-1217), count palatine of Saxony (1181-1217), and participant in the Crusade of Emperor Henry VI (1197-1198).

Born about 1155, Hermann was the youngest son of Ludwig II, landgrave of Thuringia (d. 1172), and Jutta, daughter of Frederick II, duke of Swabia; he was thus a nephew of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa. From 1178 to 1180 Hermann and his elder brother, Landgrave Ludwig III (d. 1190), supported the emperor in his struggle against Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony. After Duke Henry was deprived of his fiefs (1180), the emperor enfeoffed Hermann with the palatinate of Saxony in the following year. In 1190 Hermann became landgrave of Thuringia in succession to Ludwig III, who had died without male heirs in October 1190 while returning from the Third Crusade (1189-1192).

Hermann took the cross in October 1195 in response to an appeal for a new crusade from Pope Celestine III. In spring 1196 Emperor Henry VI offered the German princes unlimited heritability of all their imperial fiefs in order to obtain their support for the crusade that he proposed to lead. In return, the emperor wanted them to renounce their right to elect the king of Germany. Hermann was one of the most influential among the German princes who succeeded in forcing the emperor to abandon this demand.

In spring 1197 Hermann set off for Palestine. Nothing is known about his involvement in military action from 1197 to 1198, but in March 1198 he took part in the meeting of numerous bishops and German princes in the camp at Acre (mod. ‘Akko, Israel), which requested that the pope elevate the fraternity of German hospitallers in the Holy Land into a military religious order of knights. Papal confirmation was given in 1199, laying the foundation for the development of the Teutonic Order. The ties between the landgraves of Thuringia and the order grew closer when Hermann’s son and successor, Ludwig IV (d. 1227), granted the order his special protection in 1222. Hermann returned to Thuringia in summer 1198. During the next twenty years, until his death, he played a major role in the struggle for the crown in Germany between the Staufen and Welf dynasties.

-Stefan Tebruck

See also: Crusade of Emperor Henry VI (1197-1198)

Bibliography

Naumann, Claudia, Der Kreuzzug Kaiser Heinrichs VI (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1994).

Neumeister, Peter, “Hermann I. Landgraf von Thuringen (1190-1217),” in Deutsche Fursten des Mittelalters, ed. Eberhard Holtz and Wolfgang Huschner (Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 1995), pp. 276-291.

Tebruck, Stefan, Die Reinhardsbrunner Geschichtsschreibung im Hochmittelalter: Klosterliche Traditionsbildungzwischen Furstenhof, Kirche und Reich (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2001).

Wiegand, Peter, “Der milte lantgrdve als ‘Windfahne’? Zum politischen Standort Hermanns I. von Thuringen (1190-1217) zwischen Erbreichsplan und welfisch-staufischem Thronstreit,” Hessisches Jahrbuch fur Landesgeschichte 48 (1998), 1-53.