Originally from Bamberg in Franconia, now northern Bavaria, an apparent branch of the Babenbergs or Babenberger went on to rule Austria as counts of the march and dukes from 976–1248, before the rise of the house of Habsburg.

The Babenberg family can be broken down into two distinct groups: 1) The Franconian Babenbergs, the so called Elder House of Babenberg, or Popponids out of which came the Hennebergs and the Counts of Schweinfurt. 2) Austrian Babenbergs which ruled Austria. The second group claimed to have originated from the first but scholars have not been able to verify that claim.

Like the French royal Capetian dynasty, the Elder Babenbergs descended from the Robertians. The earliest known Babenberg was one Poppo, maybe a descendant of the Frankish count Cancor. In the early 9th century he appeared as a count in the Grabfeld, a historic region in northeastern Franconia bordering on Thuringia. One of his sons, Henry, sometimes called margrave and duke in Franconia under King Charles the Fat of East Francia, fell fighting against the Normans in 886; another, Poppo, was margrave in Thuringia from 880 to 892, when he was deposed by King Charles successor Arnulf of Carinthia. The Popponids had been favoured by Charles the Fat, but Arnulf reversed this policy in favour of the rival family of the Conradines from the Lahngau in Rhenish Franconia.