– DIEZ –

(continued)

Original path of inheritance: The first Gerlach emerges in 993, shortly after the death of the Konradiner Heribert, who no doubt had held Lower Lahngau. Most of Heribert’s honors were easily preserved for his minor sons simply by passing them temporarily to his elder brother, Duke Konrad of Swabia. Gerlach for his part was only a younger son of the Stromburg family, whose initial participation in the Konradiner inheritance began less than thirty years previously. There must have been good reasons for detaching a county in Gerlach’s favor.

One must consider the identities of the wives of Heribert and Gerlach. Heribert’s wife was Imiza, daughter of Meingaud, who can be established as the eldest son of Eberhard (II). Early in Otto I’s reign Meingaud was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate the king and forfeited all right to public status. His son Godfrey, however, was permitted to inherit jurisdiction in Avelgau and Zürichgau. The latter county arrived to him when Burkhard, a younger son of Eberhard (II), took up a position as margrave of the Bavarian Ostmark, evidently in 966. In Avelgau, Godfrey clearly succeeded at the death of Eberhard (III), and in all likelihood he accepted Lower Lahngau in the same situation. He died in 975, and Lower Lahngau would have arrived to Heribert, who first emerges in the following year (as count of Kinziggau). As an Eberhardine Konradiner (thus a great-nephew of Konrad Kurzbold) and as husband of Godfrey’s sister, Heribert was the obvious heir.

Gerlach, as nephew of both Godfrey and Heribert’s wife, was well positioned to inherit Lower Lahngau, except that Heribert had sons, though they were minors. Passage of the burgravate of Mainz for a time among Gerlach’s inferable descendants suggests that his wife was of the family of Count Reginhard of Königssundern, clear ascendant of a number of burgraves of Mainz, whose comital predecessor Drutwin (II) clearly descended from a Count Drutwin (I, † 959). That person in turn appears to marry a sister of Duke Konrad I of Alsace, the senior Eberhardine Konradiner of his generation. With Gerlach’s wife affiliated as sister of Reginhard, and Reginhard as grandson of Drutwin (I), a vital claim to the county once held by Konrad I’s uncle Konrad Kurzbold is noted.

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