Frederick I (Holy Roman Empire)

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FREDERICK I (PRUSSIA) (16571713; ruled 16881713)

FREDERICK I (PRUSSIA) (16571713; ruled 16881713), as Frederick III elector of Brandenburg and duke of Prussia; from 1701, as Frederick I, king in Prussia. Frederick I was one of the great Hohenzollern rulers who contributed to the rise of the Prussian state. Whereas his father, Frederick William, the Great Elector (ruled 16401688), focused his attention on building administrative and military resources, Frederick I earned his reputation for stressing the cultural and artistic development of Prussia, particularly the enhancement of Berlin. Still, his greatest contribution to the rise of Prussia was his acquisition of the title of king, which placed his house in the elite company of German royals and was a necessary step toward Prussia's becoming the dominant German state of the nineteenth century.

Frederick's goal after his accession to his father's titles of elector of Brandenburg and duke of Prussia was to be a king. His wish became intense in the 1690s as he watched other German princely houses prepare for royal advancement. In 1692 it appeared that the neighboring house of Hanover would be in line for the throne of England, and in 1697 his neighbor to the south, Frederick Augustus, the elector of Saxony, assumed the title of king of Poland. The opportunity to become king came in the wake of the Spanish succession crisis in 1700. In November of that year Charles II of Spain died without an heir, and two sides, Louis XIV of France on one and Austria, Holland, and Britain on the other, put forward competing candidates for the Spanish throne. In 1701 the two sides went to war.

Austria solicited aid from the states of the Holy Roman Empire for its war effort, and Brandenburg was obligated to send its designated number of soldiers. But Frederick offered to send an additional eight thousand men if Emperor Leopold I would agree to his assumption of the title of king. The emperor initially balked at the request, since he assumed that, if he granted Frederick such a title, other German princes would request the same or perhaps more modest upgrades of their own status. After some negotiation, the emperor agreed to recognize Frederick as king as long as he was in his province of East Prussia, which was not part of the Holy Roman Empire. So, Frederick assumed the title of king in (not of) Prussia. On 18 January 1701 in Königsberg Castle Frederick placed a crown upon his head and another upon that of his wife, Sophie Charlotte of Hanover. By crowning himself in a secular setting, he made it clear that no church had the authority to invest him as king. Only afterward did the parties move to a chapel where two Lutheran bishops consecrated the proceedings. The assumption of the royal title was a major step in the enhancement of Prussia's reputation. Despite the restriction of the title "in Prussia," Frederick was commonly referred to as king, and all of the institutions of the monarchy became "royal." The title gave a new cohesion to the dispersed possessions of the House of Hohenzollern.

Those Prussian troops Frederick offered to secure his new title fought well in the War of the Spanish Succession (17011714), but the results did not lead to notable gains. Prussia acquired a few bits of territory that were part of the inheritance of the Dutch House of Orange, but nothing more. While that war went on, Frederick had to keep a wary eye on his eastern possessions, for on their borders the Sweden of Charles XII and the Russia of Peter the Great were fighting the Great Northern War. Although battles seemed to take place all around, Frederick was able to avoid being drawn into that struggle. Wars, however, were not Frederick's forte. Enhancement of culture was. He built a variety of masterful baroque buildings in Berlin, including seven churches, a massive arsenal, and the glorious Charlottenburg Palace for his queen, Sophie Charlotte. Frederick added considerably to the library begun by his father, which in time was to become one of the great libraries of the world. He was greatly assisted in his efforts to improve the arts by Sophie Charlotte, who hosted a court that was lively, sophisticated, and highly intellectual. In 1701 Frederick established the Berlin Academy of Sciences, modeled after the Royal Society in London and the French Academy in Paris, and appointed as its first president Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (16461716), one of the great geniuses of the age and one of the inventors of calculus. In 1694 Frederick dedicated the University of Halle, which, while not the first university in Hohenzollern lands, became famous for its production of enlightened administrators, pastors, jurists, and judges. The jurist Christian Thomasius (16551728) lectured there in German rather than in Latin, which broke a long-standing tradition in German universities.

Frederick died in 1713 and was succeeded by his son Frederick William I (ruled 17131740), who was most unlike his father. Whereas Frederick had pursued the arts and letters, Frederick William cared for the army. His hobby was not discussing philosophy but drilling his troops. Still, he did not completely neglect his father's work, and the qualities of boththe culture and sophistication of the grandfather and the military aptitude and strength of the fatherwould unite in Frederick's grandson and Frederick William's son, Frederick II, called Frederick the Great (ruled 17401786).

See also Berlin ; Brandenburg ; Frederick II (Prussia) ; Frederick William (Brandenburg) ; Frederick William I (Prussia) ; Frederick William II (Prussia) ; Hohenzollern Dynasty ; Prussia ; Spanish Succession, War of the (17011714) .


Dwyer, Philip G., ed. The Rise of Prussia, 17001830. Harlow, U.K., 2000.

Frey, Linda, and Marsha Frey. Frederick I: The Man and His Times. Boulder, Colo., 1984.

Karl A. Roider

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Frederick I

Frederick I (1123-1190), or Frederick Barbarossa, was Holy Roman Emperor from 1152 to 1190. He was one of the greatest monarchs of medieval Germany, and his strong rule set many patterns of future development.

The son of Duke Frederick II of Swabia, Frederick I was the nephew of Emperor Conrad III of the Hohenstaufen family. Frederick's mother, Judith, however, was a Welf, the sister of Henry the Proud, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. Thus in his own person he united these rival families, whose feuding had torn Germany apart for some decades. He was brave, intelligent, and chivalrous and, in his later years, wore a long red beard, hence his name of Barbarossa, or Red Beard.

After Frederick was elected king of Germany in 1152, his first task was to negotiate a settlement with the Welf family in the person of his cousin Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony. By 1156 an agreement between the two had been reached. Frederick gave Henry a free hand in Saxony, where Henry could exercise imperial powers and expand freely into Slavic lands beyond the Elbe River. Henry was given almost the same authority in Bavaria, where he was also made duke.

With the Welfs conciliated, Frederick Barbarossa then proceeded to build up an imperial domain in western Germany along the Rhine near his ancestral Swabian holdings, giving special privileges to the towns, improving the status of the peasantry, and encouraging a well-structured feudalism among the nobility. He also gained control of the resources of Burgundy by marrying its heiress, Beatrice. Meanwhile Henry the Lion was behaving similarly in eastern Germany, where he advanced into Slavic lands, founded towns like Lübeck and Munich, cleared the Baltic of Wendish pirates, and encouraged Flemish and northern German peasants to settle lands beyond the Elbe. Their joint efforts resulted in Germany's making progress like that taking place in France and England during this same period.

Conflict with the Papacy

Frederick's concern with southern Germany and Burgundy, however, involved him in nearby Italy. He has been severely censured by many historians for his actions in this area. But it is hard to see how he could have avoided an interest in this part of the empire, where since the days of the emperor Henry V (reigned 1106-1125) German rulers had played little role and had allowed both the northern towns of Italy and the papacy to develop relatively undisturbed. Now all this changed.

Pope Adrian IV, at odds with his powerful vassal and protector the Norman king of Sicily, William I, asked assistance from Frederick in getting rid of Arnold of Brescia, a religious reformer who had seized control of the city of Rome. In 1154-1155 Frederick answered this request by advancing on Rome and capturing and executing Arnold. In return he was crowned emperor by the Pope. Frederick, however, was obviously reluctant to accept the seeming subordination that this ceremony entailed.

By 1157 Pope and Emperor were definitely at odds, since, when Frederick held a diet in Besançon in Burgundy, he interpreted a papal letter as a slur upon his independence. From this time on he began to refer to his empire as a holy empire on a par with the Church. When he returned to Italy with a huge army in 1158, he was ready to challenge papal authority. He did so at a diet which he held at Roncaglia, where he claimed, as Roman emperor, complete authority over northern Italian cities, including both the right to appoint podestas, or imperial governors, for them and to levy heavy taxes upon them. He based such claims upon rights given emperors by the Roman law, which had newly been rediscovered and was being studied at Bologna and elsewhere in northern Italy. When Milan, the most powerful northern Italian city, resisted his claims and revolted, he captured it after a long siege and razed it. By 1161 he had crushed all resistance in northern Italy and seemed well on his way to organizing this rich area as an imperial domain under his direct rule.

Frederick's success, however, disturbed the papacy, which was now in the hands of a new pope, Alexander III. It also alarmed the Norman kings of Sicily to the south and the inhabitants of northern Italian towns who by 1168, with papal blessing, had organized the Lombard League to oppose Frederick's authority. Faced by this rising opposition, Frederick attempted to counter papal hostility by setting up an antipope and thus forced Alexander for a time to flee to France (1162-1165). He also planned an attack on the kingdom of Sicily. In the long run, however, his enemies proved too many for him to subdue. The Lombard League grew in power, and Milan was rebuilt while Frederick was unavoidably absent in Germany.

Finally, in 1174 Frederick returned again to Italy with a relatively small army, since he could rally only minimal support for his Italian plans among his German nobles. With this force he attempted several unsuccessful sieges of towns and then in 1176 was badly defeated by a Milanese force at the Battle of Legnano. Recognizing that this defeat had doomed his Italian prospects, Frederick made peace with Pope Alexander III and gave up his antipope. Alexander in return deserted his Lombard allies and allowed Frederick full control over the Church in Germany. In 1183 Frederick also came to terms with the Lombard League by signing the Peace of Constance, by which these centers were guaranteed self-government and the right to control their own taxes and judicial administration. Frederick's Lombard adventure had ended in failure.

Later Reign

Even before this final peace with the Lombard League, however, Frederick had decided to deal with the nobility of Germany, whose lack of support he blamed for his failure at Legnano, and especially with his cousin Henry the Lion. Henry was in a vulnerable position because many of the magnates of northern Germany had been alienated by his ruthlessness and high-handedness. In 1179 Frederick returned to Germany and ordered Henry to appear in court to answer charges brought against him by discontented vassals. Henry refused, his fiefs were declared forfeit, and he was driven into exile. His holdings in Saxony and Bavaria were broken up and divided among Frederick's supporters.

Victorious in Germany, in his last years Frederick finally won a great victory in Italy too—by marriage rather than by war. In 1186 he formed an alliance with King William II of Sicily to attack the weakening Byzantine Empire, which both coveted. William was young but childless, so to cement the alliance Frederick had his son Henry (later Henry VI) marry Constance, William's aunt and heiress to his throne. Three years later William died unexpectedly, and Henry found himself the ruler of the kingdom of Sicily, which had so long opposed his father's ambitions. Frederick then not only was supreme in Germany but had gained for his house in Italy the strong kingdom of Sicily.

In his last years Frederick took the cross and went on the Third Crusade. But on the way to Palestine in 1190 he died of a stroke while bathing in a stream in Cilicia. So great was his prestige among his contemporaries that a legend soon grew up in Germany that he had not died but was sleeping in a cave high in the Bavarian Alps. There, it was said, he sat on his throne, with his great red beard filling the cavern and ravens flying in and out. Someday, said the legend, he would awake and lead Germany again to glory.

The legend, however, differed considerably from the facts, for, although Frederick seemed to have won success in his later years, his reign was not what it might have been. His destruction of the territorial consolidation achieved by Henry the Lion benefited only the princes of Germany, while his loss of northern Italy set the stage for the later failure there of his able grandson Frederick II. Both Germany and Italy benefited little from his long reign.

Further Reading

The only good biography of Frederick I in English is Peter Munz, Frederick Barbarossa (1969). See also Austin Lane Poole, Henry, the Lion (1912). Valuable accounts of Frederick's reign can be found in James Westfall Thompson, Feudal Germany (1928); Geoffrey Barraclough, The Origins of Modern Germany (1946; 2d rev. ed. 1947); R. H. C. Davis, A History of Medieval Europe: From Constantine to Saint Louis (1957); and Christopher Brooke, Europe in the Central Middle Ages, 962-1154 (1964). □

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Frederick I or Frederick Barbarossa (bärbərôs´ə) [Ital.,=red beard], c.1125–90, Holy Roman emperor (1155–90) and German king (1152–90), son of Frederick of Hohenstaufen, duke of Swabia, nephew and successor of Holy Roman Emperor Conrad III.

Restoration of Imperial Power





Reconciliation and Revenge

In 1167 the rebellious Italian communes united against Frederick in the Lombard League, and Frederick retreated with difficulty to Germany, where he turned to increasing his territorial power and pacifying the constantly feuding German princes. In 1174 he returned to Italy. He was decisively defeated (1176) at Legnano by the Lombard League, partly because of lack of support from the German princes, notably Henry the Lion.

After his defeat Frederick became reconciled with the pope; he agreed to recognize Alexander III as pope and was restored (1177) to communion. He made peace with the Lombard towns (confirmed by the Peace of Constance in 1183) and arranged a truce with the pope's Sicilian allies. After his return to Germany, Frederick brought about the downfall (1180) of Henry the Lion, whose large duchies were partitioned; Frederick's divisions of the German territories were of lasting consequence. At the Diet of Mainz (1184) the emperor celebrated his own glory in fabulous pomp. He arranged the marriage (1186) of his son and successor, Henry (later Henry VI), to Constance, heiress presumptive of Sicily, thus insuring peace with Sicily.

Death and Legacy

In Mar., 1188, Frederick took the Cross, and he set out (1189) on the Third Crusade (see Crusades). He was drowned in Cilicia. Legend, however, has him asleep in the Kyffhäuser, waiting to restore the empire to its former greatness. Among the positive and lasting achievements of Frederick's reign are the foundations of new towns, the increase of trade, and the colonization and Christianization of Slavic lands in E Germany. In his administrative reforms the emperor was ably assisted by his chancellor, Rainald of Dassel.


See study by P. Munz (1969); Otto of Freising, The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa (tr. 1953).

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Frederick I ( Barbarossa) (1123–90) Holy Roman Emperor (1155–90), King of Germany (1152–90); successor to Conrad III. He was crowned Emperor by Adrian IV. In 1156 Frederick restored Bavaria to Henry III (the Lion). In 1158, he captured Milan and declared himself king of the Lombards. Frederick set up an antipope to Alexander III, who excommunicated him and formed the Lombard League. In 1176, Frederick was defeated at Legnano by the League and was forced to recognize Alexander as pope and make peace (1183). In 1180, he defeated Henry the Lion and partitioned Bavaria. Frederick died on the Third Crusade. His son succeeded as Henry VI.

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Frederick I, 1371–1440, elector of Brandenburg (1415–40), first of the Hohenzollerns (see Hohenzollern, family) to rule Brandenburg. As Frederick VI, burgrave of Nuremburg, he served under King Sigismund of Hungary (later Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund) against the Ottomans in E Europe and took part in the battle of Nikopol (1396), in which the crusaders were defeated. As a reward for aiding Sigismund's election as emperor (1410), Sigismund granted (1411) Frederick a regency over Brandenburg and named him (1415) elector of Brandenburg; in 1417 he was formally invested with the electoral dignity. After subduing the recalcitrant nobles of Brandenburg, Frederick departed (1425) to command the imperial forces against the Hussites, but he later broke with Sigismund. His own ambition to be emperor was never fulfilled, but at his death the Hohenzollerns were well ensconced in Brandenburg.

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