Frankfurt. The great assembly (“Diet”) of German princes elevates the thirty-year-old Duke of Swabia, Frederick, later known as Barbarossa, to the rank of King of the Romans. Frederick is the ideal candidate to end 25 years of internecine warfare between the Hohenstaufen dynasty of Swabia and the Welfan dynasty of Bavaria and Saxony, since Frederick (Friede-Rich, “rich in peace”) was the son of a father from one house and a mother from the other.
