PHILIP (c. 1177-1208), German king and duke of Swabia, the rival of the emperor Otto IV., was the fifth and youngest son of the emperor Frederick I. and Beatrix, daughter of Renaud III., count of Upper Burgundy, and brother of the emperor Henry VI. He entered the church, was made provost of Aix-la-Chapelle, and in I190 or 1191 was chosen bishop of Wiirzburg. Philip forsook his ecclesiastical calling and was made duke of Tuscany in 1195 re ceiving an extensive grant of lands. In 1196 he became duke of Swabia, on the death of his brother Conrad; and in May 1197 he married Irene, daughter of the eastern emperor, Isaac Angelus, and widow of Roger II., king of Sicily. Philip appears to have been designated as guardian of the young Frederick, afterwards the emperor Frederick II., in case of his father's early death. In 1197 he had set out to fetch Frederick from Sicily for his corona tion when he heard of the emperor's death and returned at once to Germany. He found growing hostility to the kingship of a child, and the absence of the two Welf claimants, Otto and Henry, the sons of Henry the Lion, made possible Philip's own election as German king at Miihlhausen on March 8, 1198. He was crowned at Mainz on Sept. 8.
Meanwhile a number of princes hostile to Philip, under the leadership of Adolph, the archbishop of Cologne, had elected an anti-king in the person of Otto, second son of Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony. War followed, in which Philip drew his principal support from south Germany. In 1199 he received further acces sions to his party and carried the war into his opponent's territory.
In March 1201 Innocent III. placed Philip and his associates under the ban, and began to work for Otto. Otto, aided by Ottakar I., king of Bohemia, and Hermann I., landgrave of Thuringia, drove him from north Germany, and compelled him to seek, in vain, reconciliation with Innocent. The submission of Hermann of Thuringia in 1204 marks the turning-point of Philip's fortunes, and he was soon joined by Adolph of Cologne and Henry I., duke of Brabant. On Jan. 6, 1205, he was crowned again by Adolph at Aix-la-Chapelle, though it was not till 1207 that his entry into Cologne practically brought the war to a close. Philip was then loosed from the papal ban. He was preparing to crush the last flicker of the rebellion in Brunswick when he was murdered at Bamberg, on June 21, 1208, by Otto of Wittelsbach, count pala tine in Bavaria, to whom he had refused the hand of one of his daughters. He left four daughters, one of whom, Beatrix, after wards married his rival, the emperor Otto IV. Philip was a brave and handsome man, and contemporary writers, among whom was Walther von der Vogelweide, praise his mildness and generosity.
See 0. Abel, Konig Philipp der Hohenstaufen (1852) ; E. Winkel mana, Philipp von Schwaben and Otto IV. von Braunschweig (Leipzig, 1873-78) ; Regesta imperii. V., ed. J. Ficker (Innsbruck, i881) ; R. Schwemer, Innocenz III. and die deutsche Kirche weihrend des Thron streites von 1198-1208 (Strasbourg, 1882).