Frederick Barbarossa

(c. 1123–1190)


Frederick I, who ruled over the Holy Roman Empire from 1152 to 1190 and was believed, in late medieval times, to be asleep in a cave like King Arthur and destined to return.
The Holy Roman Empire was the surviving part of the enormous domain of Charlemagne, who had claimed in the year 800 to be reviving the ancient empire of Rome in western Europe. By the twelfth century, the remaining portion was chiefly made up of extensive territories in Germany and Italy. Frederick, called Barbarossa or “Redbeard,” added the epithet “Holy” to stress a papal sponsorship that had begun with Charlemagne himself.
The legend of the immortal emperor did not apply first to Barbarossa but to his grandson Frederick II, who ruled from 1220 to 1250. A brilliant and controversial figure, he was regarded by some as a sort of Messiah, by others almost as an Antichrist. Partly because of the doctrines of Joachim of Fiore, he was widely expected to bring radical changes in society. After his death, many whose hopes had been raised were reluctant to accept that he had gone. They asserted that he was living overseas or had retired from the world as a hermit; or (more fantastically) that he had descended with his knights into an underworld beneath the crater of Etna, as Arthur himself was reputed to have done in one version of his survival. Several pretenders claimed to be Frederick and attracted a following. One of them exploited the fact that

he lived close to the volcano. Two others flourished briefly in Germany during the 1280s. A third, also in Germany, may have been a madman who actually thought he was Frederick; he held court for some time in the city of Neuss but was finally arrested and burned at the stake. Nevertheless, he was expected to rise again.
Over the years, as apocalyptic excitement receded, the image of the undying emperor grew vague and composite. At length, the motif was transferred to Frederick I, who was a more generally acceptable hero. There was a difficulty here. Whereas Arthur’s end was mysterious, Barbarossa’s was not: he was drowned in a river on his way to take part in the Third Crusade and buried at Antioch. Still, it had all happened a long time ago, and popular imagination surmounted the obstacle.
Barbarossa, it was said, lay sleeping in a cave in a mountain, the Kyffhäuser, in central Germany. Occasionally, outsiders found their way in. He was seated at a table, with his beard growing ever longer and encircling it. He would wake for a moment and ask the intruders if the ravens were still flying. Sooner or later he was going to wake permanently and go outside to restore the German people to their rightful glories.
During his reign, he had strengthened the German element in the empire, and in the later Middle Ages, its ruler’s title was enlarged and made more national: he became the “Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation.” The Empire declined, and Napoleon abolished it, but later in the nineteenth century a new reich was proclaimed and Barbarossa became symbolic of German greatness, to be reborn after centuries of decay and eclipse. Unfortunately perhaps, the crown prince, father of the future Kaiser Wilhelm II, showed his son pictures of the medieval imperial insignia and said: “We have got to bring this back. The power of the Empire must be restored and the Imperial Crown regain its glamour. Barbarossa must be brought down again out of his mountain cave.”
Hitler’s Russian campaign, which was intended to put Germany in a position of impregnable strength, was called Operation Barbarossa.