Duke of Merania
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Duke of Merania was a feudal line of princes who held northernmost seacoast of Dalmatia in 12th and 13th century.
The family was originally from bavarian Andechs. Wittelsbach-related counts of Dießen-Andechs (1135 to 1180) obtained territiories in Northern Dalmatia, Adriatic seacoast, became Margraves of Istria and ultimately Dukes with a country name Merania which derives from Latin mer (sea).
They held the duchy from 1180 to 1248.
Otto II of Andechs was bishop of Bamberg in 1177–1196. In 1208, when Philip of Swabia, King of the Germans, was assassinated at Bamberg by Otto 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 Heinrich became Margrave of Istria. Of her three sisters, Gertrude of Andechs-Merania (1185–September 24, 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.
The dukes of Merania went extinct in the direct male line in 1248. A history of the house of Andechs was written by Joseph Hormayr Freiherr zu Hortenburg, the historian-statesman, and published in 1796.
