Meinhard I, Count of Gorizia

The Meinhardiner noble family was of Bavarian origin; Meinhard's father Meginhard is documented as a count in the Bavarian Puster Valley in 1107. The dynasty had been able to acquire large estates in the newly established Patria del Friuli, among them the castle of Gorizia (Görz) as their new ancestral seat. In 1090 Meinhard's elder brother Engelbert I (d. 1122) succeeded their father as ruler over the Puster Valley and Gorizia possessions and in 1099 was appointed Bavarian Count palatine by Emperor Henry IV. In 1102 he also assumed the office of a Vogt of Millstatt Abbey from the Aribonid dynasty related by marriage.

In 1122, Meinhard succeeded Engelbert I as Count of Gorizia. At that time, his estates consisted of the Upper Puster Valley estates, from Innichen Abbey to below Lienz in the west, and the lands around Gorizia in Friuli, which later formed the core of the immediate County of Gorizia, as well as parts of Istria, including Pazin.

His first marriage, with Hildegard, remained childless.

From his second marriage, with Elisabeth, a daughter of Count Botho of Schwarzenburg in the Bavarian Nordgau, he had four children:

• Henry II (d. 1150), succeeded his father as Count of Gorizia, remained childless
• Engelbert II (d. 1191), married Adelaide, daughter of Count Otto I of Scheyern, succeeded his brother as Count of Gorizia, Margrave of Istria from 1188
• Meinhard (d. 1193), Margrave of Istria, married Adelaide,[1] a daughter of Count Albert of Ballenstedt, from the Saxon House of Ascania
• Beatrix, nun at the Benedictine monastery of S. Maria in Aquileia, remained unmarried

• Genealogy of Gorizia
• Meinhard and his successors ruled Pazin and some other parts of Istria