ABSTRACT

Writing a life has always been a challenge, in the past as well as in the present. 1 Take, for example, the biography of a millionaire born to a poor family, who seemingly overnight makes it from a shoeshine-boy to one of Henry Ford’s competitors. At first glance, Conrad II’s life seems to have been a street-child’s success story, for which his contemporaries had an easy explanation: his friends saw his success as being caused by divine grace and miracles, 2 his enemies by the devil’s cunning and magic power. 3 Born probably on 12 July 990 to an ancient noble family who had not yet started calling themselves the Salians, he was named after his great-grandfather. This Conrad the Red was a war-hero who fell in action in the pitched battle his father-in-law, King Otto I, won against the Hungarians on the banks of the Lech river on August 10 955.