The noble family originally resided in southwestern
Bavaria at the castle of
Ambras near
Innsbruck, controlling the road to the
March of Verona across the
Brenner Pass, at
Dießen am Ammersee and
Wolfratshausen. One Count
Rasso (
Rath) is documented in Dießen, who allegedly fought against the invading
Magyars in the early 10th century and established the monastery of
Grafrath. By their ancestor Count Palatine Berthold of
Reisensburg, a grandson of the Bavarian duke
Arnulf the Bad, the Andechser may be affiliated with the
Luitpolding dynasty. Berthold appears a fierce enemy of King
Otto I of Germany and was blamed as a traitor at the 955
Battle of Lechfeld against the Hungarians. He probably married a daughter of Duke
Frederick I of Upper Lorraine; his descendant Count
Berthold II (d. 1151), from about 1100 residing at
Andechs, is credited as the progenitor of the comital dynasty. Berthold II had inherited the family's Bavarian territories but also acquired possessions in the adjacent
Franconian region, where about 1135 he had the
Plassenburg built near
Bayreuth and established the town of
Kulmbach. He served as
vogt of
Benediktbeuern Abbey and by marriage with Sophie, daughter of Margrave
Poppo II, came into property of lands in the
March of Istria and
Carniola. In the year 1180, the County of Andechs acquired the town of Innsbruck. Otto II of Andechs was bishop of Bamberg from 1177 to 1196. In 1208, when
Philip of Swabia, King of the Germans, was assassinated at Bamberg by Otto VIII of
Wittelsbach, members of the House of Andechs were implicated. Saint
Hedwig of Andechs (c. 1174 – October 1243) was one of eight children born to
Berthold IV, Duke of Merania, Count of Dießen-Andechs and
Margrave of Istria. Of her four brothers, two became bishops: Ekbert of
Bamberg (1203–1231), and
Berthold,
Patriarch of Aquileia. Otto succeeded his father as Duke of Dalmatia, and Henry became Margrave of Istria. Of her three sisters,
Gertrude of Andechs-Merania (1185 – 28 September 1213) was the first wife of
Andrew II of Hungary and the mother of St
Elizabeth of Hungary; Mechtilde became Abbess of Kitzingen; while Agnes, a famous beauty, was made the illegitimate third wife of
Philip II of France in 1196, on the repudiation of his lawful wife, Ingeborg, but was dismissed in 1200, after
Pope Innocent III laid France under an interdict. A history of the House of Andechs was written by the statesman and historian
Joseph Hormayr, Baron zu Hortenburg, and published in 1796. ==References==