Henry II, Count of Nassau

He was charitable and made great donations to the church, so that the monasteries and prayer houses in the area of present-day Nassau experienced the most significant bloom in his time.

However, between 1209 and 1211, he backed the rival Otto IV of Brunswick as emperor, before reverting sides to support Frederick II.

[1] Later, however, Henry transferred to the papal camp, so that Frederick's son Conrad IV issued an execution order against him in 1241, about the success of which nothing is known.

[6][7] The Nassau possessions in this area were expanded around 1214 when Henry received the Imperial Vogtship (Reichsvogtei) over Wiesbaden and the surrounding Königssondergau, which he held as fiefdoms.

[4] About the year 1200, Henry, together with his brother Rupert, began building Sonnenberg on a spur of Spitzkippel peak in the Taunus above Wiesbaden.

This was intended for protection against the Archbishop of Mainz and its vassals, the Lords of Eppstein, who held the lands bordering Wiesbaden.

To settle the dispute, Nassau paid 30 Marks to the cathedral chapter in 1221 to acquire the land of Sonnenberg Castle.

Unaffected by this division of rule, however, Nassau retained its sovereign rights in Siegerland (the region surrounding Siegen), where the important High Jurisdiction (hohe Gerichtsbarkeit) and Hunting Ban (Wildbann) explicitly survived to 1259.

In 1239 he transferred, at the request of his vassal Friedrich vom Hain, the income of the Netphen parishes to the Premonstratensian Keppel Abbey near Hilchenbach.

The necrology of Arnstein Abbey documented the death of ‘Henrici comitis de Nassauwe, qui contulit nobis ecclesiam in Diffenbach inferiori ...’ on 26 April.