Wiprecht of Groitzsch

Wiprecht (or Wigbert) of Groitzsch (died 22 May 1124) was the Margrave of Meissen and the Saxon Ostmark from 1123 until his death. He was born to a noble family of the Altmark, the son of Wiprecht of Balsamgau and Sigena of Leinungen. After his father's death in 1060, he was raised at the court of Lothair Udo II, Margrave of the Nordmark, in Stade. Lothair Udo granted him the castle of Tangermünde in the Balsamgau as a fief and later transferred him to the castle of Groitzsch in the Osterland, between the Pleisse, the Mulde, and the Elster, from which he took his name. Sometime between 1075 and 1080, he was forcibly exiled from Groitzsch by the regional nobility, who opposed his colonisation movements. He fled to the court of Vratislaus II of Bohemia in Prague. Under Vratislaus he rose to a position of influence at court and, as a favourite of the Emperor Henry IV, he supported Vratislaus for a crown in 1080. In 1085, he married the king's daughter Judith, daughter of his third wife, Swiętoslawa (Svatana), a Pole. She brought him Budissin, that is, Upper Lusatia around Bautzen, and Nisani, the region around Dresden, as a dowry. Judith gave birth to his first son, Wiprecht, in 1087. In 1080, he fought with the Emperor against the anti-king Rudolf of Rheinfelden. In 1084, he was with Henry at Rome fighting against Pope Gregory VII. Because he had murdered an enemy in the church of Saint James in Zeitz in 1089, Wiprecht undertook a pilgrimage to Rome and Santiago de Compostela in 1090. After his sojourn in Bohemia, he returned to the March of Meissen and retook Groitzsch by force of arms. He immediately began settling the region with Germans from Franconia in villages between the Mulde and Wyhra rivers. According to James Westfall Thompson, the "real Germanisation of Meissen begins with Wiprecht von Groitzsch." In 1091 he founded the monastery of Pegau, whose annals, the Annales Pegavienses, are the primary source for his life. He founded another monastery, Lausigk, in 1104. In 1106, he first appears with the title of count and campaigned with the new king Henry V.