Frederick I

Frederick I (1123-1190), surnamed Barbarossa (Red-beard), of the house of Swabia, was emperor of Germany and also the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. He was elected King of Germany at Frankfurt on 4 March 1152 and crowned in Aachen on 9 March 1152. He was emperor of the Holy Roman Empire from 1152 till 1190. Frederick I was "a magnificent, magnanimous man, the greatest of all the Kaisers". His reign is the most brilliant in the annals of the empire, and he himself among the most honoured of German heroes. His vast empire he ruled with iron rigour, quelling its rival factions and extending his sovereign rights to Poland, Hungary, Denmark, and Burgundy. The great struggle of his reign, however, was with Pope Alexander III and the Lombard cities, whose right to independence he acknowledged by the treaty of Constanz (1183). He "died some unknown sudden death" at 70 in the crusade against Saladin and the Moslem power. His lifelong ambition was to secure the independence of the empire, and to subdue the States of Italy to the imperial sway.

There is a tradition in Germany about Frederick I, that "he is not yet dead; but only sleeping, till the bad world reach its worst, when he will reappear. He sits within a cavern near Saltzburg, at a marble table, leaning on his elbow; winking, only half-asleep, as a peasant once tumbling into the interior saw him; beard had grown through the table, and streamed out on the floor. He looked at the peasant one moment, asked something about the time it was; then drooped his eyelids again: 'Not yet time, but will be soon.'"