Babenberg

Originally from Bamberg in Franconia, now northern Bavaria, the Babenbergs or Babenberger ruled Austria as counts of the march and dukes from 976 - 1248, before the rise of the house of Habsburg.

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The earliest known ancestor of the Babenbergs was one Poppo, who early in the 9th century was count in Grapfeld, in the area between modern Hesse and Thuringia. One of his sons, Henry, sometimes called margrave and duke in Franconia, fell fighting against the Normans in 886; another, Poppo, was margrave in Thuringia from 880 to 892, when he was deposed by the German Carolingian king Arnulf of Carinthia. The family had been favoured by Emperor Charles the Fat, but Arnulf reversed this policy in favour of the rival family of the Conradines.

Bamberg: Bamberg is a town in Bavaria, Germany. It is located in Upper Franconia on the Regnitz River, close to its confluence with the Main River....

Franconia: :For other places named Franconia, see Franconia (disambiguation)....

Bavaria: The Free State of Bavaria (German: Bayern or Freistaat Bayern), with an area of 70,553 km? (27,241 square miles) and 12.4 million inhabitants, forms the southernmost of the 16 states of Germany. Its capital is Munich....