Conrad faced an end in prison, but avoided this fate when Henry II died in 1123 at the age of twenty, presumably poisoned.
Furious Conrad forged an alliance with the Saxon duke Lothair of Supplinburg and with the support of several local nobles expelled Wiprecht.
Obtaining the status of an Imperial Prince, Margrave Conrad had the Polabian territories colonised by Flemish settlers in the course of the Ostsiedlung migration and laid the foundations for the development of the Wettin dominions in Upper Saxony.
He eased the tensions with the neighbouring Kingdom of Poland by marrying his son Theodoric to Dobroniega Ludgarda, a daughter of the Polish duke Bolesław III Wrymouth.
He also married his eldest son Otto II to Hedwig of Brandenburg, a daughter of Margrave Albert the Bear.
[2] In his later years, Conrad founded the Lauterberg monastery (later Petersberg Abbey) north of Halle, to which he retired after he had officially renounced all secular rights in favour of his son Otto II on 30 November 1156.