Henry I, Duke of Brunswick
Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Prince of Lüneburg
Henry the Middle (15 September 1468 – 9 February 1532), also known as “Heinrich der Mittlere” in German, was a member of the House of Welf and ruled as the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. His official title was Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, a principality within the Holy Roman Empire. Henry earned the nickname “the Middle” to distinguish him from other Henrys in the Welf dynasty.
Life
Henry of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the son of Otto V of Lüneburg and Anne of Nassau-Siegen, was born in 1468. In 1486, Henry took control of Lüneburg from his mother, who had been regent since the death of Henry's grandfather, Frederick II, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. Henry's reign was marked by the complications relating to the Hildesheim Prince-Bishopric Feud. Henry was on the side of the bishop, and was against the nobility of Hildesheim and the Welfs of Brunswick. In 1519, Henry was victorious in the Battle of Soltau, though the intervention of the newly elected Emperor Charles V transformed the victory achieved on the battlefield into a defeat. Henry was on the side of the French during the election, and so earned the enmity of Charles V. Henry's two eldest sons became regents of the country, and Henry went into exile at the French king's court. Henry returned in 1527 during the beginning of the Reformation in Lüneburg, and tried to regain control of the land with help from those opposed to the Reformation.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Henry I, Duke of Brunswick” is duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Prince of Lüneburg. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Henry, Duke and Brunswick, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q64595. VIAF identifies the subject as 80587181. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1468, 1532, 1486 and 1519.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henry I, Duke of Brunswick” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.