Otto IV.
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Otto IV. was the seventh child of Heinrich the Lion (1129/31-1195). Otto's mother was Mathilde of England, the second of the Lion's three wives. In 1181 Heinrich the Lion had to move in exile to England to his father-in-law. There the twenty-four-year-old hereditary prince Richard (1157-1199) was so pleased with his small nephew Otto that he took an interest in him and accorded him a knightly upbringing. Later, as king of England, Richard also took charge of the prince's endowment, in that he transferred to him the earldom of York and later Poitou, on the continent in western France, which carried with it the title of duke of Aquitaine. Thus with the death of Heinrich the Lion in 1195, Otto's brothers Wilhelm and Heinrich inherited the Welf estates around Brunswick and Lüneburg. In 1197 emperor Heinrich VI. (1165-1197) died unexpectedly. The opponents of the Hohenstaufen immediately sought a candidate of their own for the throne. Richard of England was invited to participate in the election of the king in Cologne. Richard nominated his Welf pupil Otto to be German king. In 1198 Otto was elected German king. To be sure he had scarcely passed from minor age, but he had influence in the right place, in Aachen and he was elevated to king by the archbishop authorized for the purpose, Adolf of Cologne. In Mainz the Staufen party and opponents of the Welfs elected Philipp of Swabia to be king, but the Staufen were unable to convene a lawful coronation. This double election of 1198 led to further serious quarrels between the Staufen and the Welfs. It was probably the high finances of Cologne that made an English Welf the king. Moreover, they propped up the archbishop of Cologne financially. With the election of the Welf, the Rheinish businessmen hoped for new, lucrative economic relations in the Anglo-Saxon sphere. After Otto was crowned emperor in Rome in 1209, however, he was unable to succeed completely against the Staufen and the pope. After 1215 his influence still remained confined to his north German inheritance. On 21 June 1218 the only Roman emperor from the house of Welf died childless in Harzburg.
--Adapted from the website, Die Welfen
Sources
- The Encyclopædia Britannica, 13th edition. New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1926.
- Hucker, Bernd Ulrich. In the catalogue for the exhibition, "Heinrich der Löwe und seine Zeit." Brunswick, 1995.
- Judge, Harry, ed. Cambridge Illustrated History. 3 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
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