Welf II, Count of Swabia

He was a younger son of Count Rudolf II and Ita, a daughter of Duke Conrad I of Swabia of the Conradine dynasty.[1] He constructed a castle at Ravensburg.[1]

In the 1020s, Welf feuded with the Augsburg and Freising bishops.[2] He pillaged the treasury of Bishop Bruno of Augsburg, brother of Emperor Henry II, and sacked the city of Augsburg.[3]

Welf opposed the election of the Salian count Conrad II as King of the Romans in 1024 because it did not suit his interests, but he had to eventually relent.[4] The next year he joined a rebellion launched by the Babenberg duke Ernest II of Swabia, but finally submitted in 1027.[5] He died, probably in captivity, in 1030.[6] He was buried at Weingarten Abbey.[7]

Welf II was married to Imiza, daughter of Count Frederick of Luxembourg.[1] With Imiza, Welf had at least two children:

• Welf, Duke of Carinthia (Welf III; d. 1055)[8]
• Kunigunde of Altdorf (also called Chuniza; c. 1020 – 31 August 1054)[8]

• Freed, John B. (2016). Frederick Barbarossa: The Prince and the Myth. Yale University Press.
• Dick, Madelyn Bergen (2001). "Welfs". In Jeep, John M. (ed.). Routledge Revivals: Medieval Germany (2001): An Encyclopedia. Routledge.
• F-R. Erkens, Konrad II. Herrschaft und Reich des ersten Salierkaisers (Regensburg 1998).
• Reuter, Timothy. Germany in the Early Middle Ages 800–1056. New York: Longman, 1991.
• B. Schneidmüller: Die Welfen. Herrschaft und Erinnerung (819–1252). (Stuttgart, 2000), pp. 119–123.
• A. Thiele, Erzählende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europäischen Geschichte Band I, Teilband 1 (Frankfurt/Main 1993).
• T. Zotz, 'Welf II.,' in: Lexikon des Mittelalters (LexMA), Volume 8 (Munich, 1997), cols. 2143–2144.

• Welf II, Graf von Altdorf (in German)