Welf I. (d. before 876) Count in Argenau and Linzgau Founder of the Swabian (South German) Welfs

Welf I. was the founder of the Swabian, or south German, line of the Elder House of Welf. The Welfs were originally descended from Frankish nobility, landowners in Alsace and inLorraine.  In the Historia Welforum, in which this famous Welf family tree is also recorded, an absolute boast was made: "They are descended from those Franks who once migrated from Troy."  The Welfs were able to develop a single dynastic house in Swabia between Bodensee and the river Lech, where their main castle of Altorf (Weingarten) was situated, after which they were also named. The social and political ascent of the Welfs in the Empire had already begun a generation before Welf I.   His aunts Judith and Hemma married, respectively, the Frankish Emperor Ludwig I. the Pious (d. 840) and Ludwig the German (d. 876), and with these marriages began the social and political ascent of the Welfs in the Empire.  These royal connections turned the Welfs into the most influential family in southern Germany.

--Adapted from the website, Die Welfen

Sources

• The Encyclopedia Britannica CD 99.
• Schneidmüller, Bernd.  In the catalog for the exhibition: "Heinrich der Löwe," Brunswick 1995.

Web

• Family Tree