Luitpold, Margrave of Bavaria

Who was Luitpold, Margrave of Bavaria?

Luitpold, perhaps of the Huosi family or related to the Carolingian dynasty by Liutswind, mother of Emperor Arnulf of Carinthia, was the ancestor of the Luitpolding dynasty which ruled Bavaria and Carinthia until the mid-tenth century.

In 893, he was appointed margrave in the March of Carinthia and Upper Pannonia by Arnulf of Carinthia, then King of East Francia. Luitpold succeeded the deposed Margrave Engelschalk II of the Wilhelminer family; unlike his predecessors he could extend his power unimpeded by the mighty Margrave Aribo, acquiring numerous counties in Carinthia as well as on the Danube and in the Nordgau around Regensburg from 895 on, and setting himself up as the most prominent of Bavaria's aristocracy. Though he thereby laid the foundations of the renewed stem duchy, it was his son Arnulf the Bad who, based on his father's acquisitions, first assumed the title of a Bavarian duke.

As Luitpold remained a loyal supporter of the Carolingian monarch Arnulf of Carinthia and his son Louis the Child, he enjoyed their support and was entrusted with the defence at the Hungarian and Moravian borders.