Henry the Fowler

Born into the Saxon Liudolfing line around 876, Henry inherited the duchy in 912 and immediately launched a rebellion against King Conrad I over Thuringian lands. They reconciled in 915, and Conrad - dying three years later - named Henry his successor, seeing him as the only man who could hold the fracturing kingdom together. Elected king in 919, Henry subdued rebellious dukes in Bavaria and Swabia, then took Lotharingia as a vassal in 925. He built fortifications and mobile cavalry across Germany, routed the Magyars at the Battle of Riade in 933, crushed the Slavs at Lenzen in 929, forced Bohemia's duke into submission that same year, and conquered Danish territory in Schleswig by 934. By 935 the kings of West Francia and Upper Burgundy both accepted subordinate alliances. He planned to go to Rome for an imperial coronation but died on 2 July 936, leaving his son Otto a kingdom that hadn't collapsed like the Frankish west.