Siegfried I, Count of Sponheim (b. ca. 1010 at Castle Sponheim; d. 7 February 1065 at Bulgaria) is considered the patriarch of the House of Sponheim and all of its lateral branches, the Counts of Lebenau and the Counts of Ortenburg. Originally he came from Rhenish Franconia, where he was born at Castle Sponheim.
Family life
About his parents little is known. It has been noticed however, that his father was Eberhard I of Sponheim (d. 1044) and that he therefore had brothers named Friedrich of Sponheim (1022–1058) and Eberhard II of Sponheim. Likewise Siegfried had a relationship of unknown degree with Stephan I, Count of Sponheim, patriarch of the Rhenish branch of the House of Sponheim, which survives as the present-day Princes of Sayn and Wittgenstein. Siegfried was married with Richgard, the heiress of Count Engelbert IV of Pustertal from the Carinthian family of the Sieghardinger and Aribonians. From this marriage several children were born:
Engelbert I. († 1096), Margrave of Istrien, Count to Spanheim, Count im Pustertal, married with Hadwig
Siegfried († 1070) married with unknown, supposedly not of equal birth, since there is no direct relationship of the descendants to further Sponheimern.
Hartwig († 1102), Archbishop of Magdeburg
Hermann († 1118), Burggraf to Magdeburg
In the year 1064 Siegfried took part in the pilgrimage of the Archbishop Siegfried I of Mainz towards Jerusalem. On the way back, one year later, he died in Bulgaria. There he was also buried, before his widow Richgard released the corpse and let him be buried in the church St. Paul im Lavanttal he had planned and constructed.
Career
In the year 1035 Kaiser Conrad II marched against Duke Adalbero of Eppenstein towards Carinthia. In the company of Conrad was Siegfried as his close companion. He thus arrived from the Rhineland on the Southeast of the Empire of then. Through marriage with Richgard from the family of the Sieghardinger, he obtained large possessions in Tirol and also in Carinthia, for example the Lavanttal valley (in modern Austria) and probably also Laško and some other parts of modern Slovenia like the territories around Ljubljana.
In the year 1044 he documents as ruling Count to Sponheim. In 1045 Siegfried was granted the Margraviate Hungarian March in the eastern Lower Austria by Kaiser Henry III as fiefdom. He kept and managed this land until the end of his life. Thereafter the Hungarian March fell to the Babenberger.
In 1048 he documents as Gaugraf in the Pustertal and Count in the Lavanttal, Siegfried must therefore have already succeeded to his father-in-law Engelbert IV as heir to this territory by then. He overtook likewise the possessions of his father-in-law in Upper Bavaria. Besides he was soon Vogt of the Bistums Brixen and Salzburg. Siegfried received likewise possessions in Lower Carinthia and in the eastern Upper Bavaria. In the year 1909 the Siegfriedstrasse in Vienna Floridsdorf was named after him.
