Герцог Генрих Лев: Саксония мен Баварияның билеушісі

Duke of Saxony (r. 1142–80) and Bavaria (r. 1156–80)

Henry the Lion (Heinrich der Löwe; 1129/1131 – 6 August 1195), also known as Henry III, Duke of Saxony (ruled 1142 1180) and Henry XII, Duke of Bavaria (ruled 1156 1180), was a member of the Welf dynasty. Henry was one of the most powerful German princes of his time, until the rival Hohenstaufen dynasty succeeded in isolating him and eventually deprived him of his duchies of Bavaria and Saxony during the reign of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and of Frederick's son and successor Henry VI. At the height of his reign, Henry ruled over a vast territory stretching from the coast of the North and Baltic seas to the Alps, and from Westphalia to Pomerania. Henry achieved this great power in part by his political and military acumen and in part through the legacies of his four grandparents.

Born in Ravensburg, in 1129 or 1131, he was the son of Henry the Proud, duke of Bavaria and Saxony, who was the heir of the Billungs, former dukes of Saxony. Henry's mother was Gertrude, only daughter of Emperor Lothair II and Empress Richenza, 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 of his duchies in 1138 and 1139, handing Saxony to Albert the Bear and Bavaria to Leopold of Austria. This was because Henry the Proud had been his rival for the Crown in 1138.

The Henry the Lion Bible is preserved in near mint condition from the year 1170; it is located in the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, a town in Lower Saxony. Henry the Lion remains a popular figure to this day. During World War I, a nail man depicting Henry the Lion, called Eiserner Heinrich, was used in Brunswick to raise funds for the German war effort. Nazi propaganda later declared Henry an antecessor of the Nazi's Lebensraum policy and turned Brunswick Cathedral and Henry's tomb into a "National Place of Consecration".

Shortly after his death, Henry the Lion became the subject of a folktale, the so called Heinrichssage. The tale was later also turned into the opera Enrico Leone by Italian composer Agostino Steffani. The Heinrichssage details a fictional account of Henry's pilgrimage to the Holy Land. A popular part of the tale deals with the Brunswick Lion. According to legend, Henry witnessed a fight between a lion and a dragon while on pilgrimage. He joins the lion in its fight and they slay the dragon. The faithful lion then accompanies Henry on his return home. After its master's death, the lion refuses all food and dies of grief on Henry's grave. The people of Brunswick then erect a statue in the lion's honour. The legend of Henry the Lion also inspired the Czech tale of the knight Bruncvík, which is depicted on a column on Charles Bridge in Prague. The book The Pope's Rhinoceros (1996) by Lawrence Norfolk opens with an allegory of a planned ransack by Henry's army of the monastery at Usedom where purportedly a treasure was kept. However, the night before the attack the poorly maintained monastery and its treasures crumble into the sea as the result of a storm, and henceforth constituting a loss to the military expedition.