Seal of Albert I, inscribed in Latin: ALBERTUS DEI GRACIA ROMANORUM REX SEMPER AUGUSTUS ("Albert by the grace of God King of the Romans, ever majestic")
Albert I of Habsburg (German: Albrecht I.) (July 1255 – 1 May 1308) was a Duke of Austria and Styria from 1282 and King of Germany from 1298 until his assassination. He was the eldest son of King Rudolf I of Germany[1] and his first wife Gertrude of Hohenberg. Sometimes referred to as 'Albert the One-eyed' because of a battle injury that left him with a hollow eye socket and a permanent snarl.[2]
Biography
Seal of Albert I of Habsburg; his shield displays the arms of Habsburg (modern) (Babenberg: Gules, a fess argent, here shown decorated with diaper-work) whilst his banner and the shields on his horse's caparison displays Habsburg (ancient) Or, a lion rampant gules crowned armed and langued azure. Latin inscription (abbreviated): ALBERTUS DEI GRATIA GRANDIS DUX AUSTRIAE ET STYRIAE DE HABSBURG ET KIBURG COMES LANTGRAVUS ALSACIAE ("Albert by grace of God Grand Duke of Austria and Styria, Count of Habsburg and Kyburg, Landgrave of Alsace"). Atop his helm he displays a crest of A plume of peacock feathers
From 1273 Albert ruled as a landgrave over his father's Swabian (Further Austrian) possessions in Alsace. In 1282 his father, the first German monarch from the House of Habsburg, invested him and his younger brother Rudolf II with the duchies of Austria and Styria,[3] which he had seized from late King Ottokar II of Bohemia and defended in the 1278 Battle on the Marchfeld. By the 1283 Treaty of Rheinfelden his father entrusted Albert with their sole government, while Rudolf II ought to be compensated by the Further Austrian Habsburg home territories – which, however, never happened until his death in 1290. Albert and his Swabian ministeriales appear to have ruled the Austrian and Styrian duchies with conspicuous success, overcoming the resistance by local nobles.
King Rudolf I was unable to secure the succession to the German throne for his son, especially due to the objections raised by Ottokar's son King Wenceslaus II of Bohemia, and the plans to install Albert as successor of the assassinated King Ladislaus IV of Hungary in 1290 also failed. Upon Rudolf's death in 1291, the Prince-electors, fearing Albert's power and the implementation of a hereditary monarchy, chose Count Adolf of Nassau-Weilburg as King of the Romans. An uprising among his Styrian dependents compelled Albert to recognize the sovereignty of his rival and to confine himself for a time to the government of the Habsburg lands at Vienna.[3]
AlbrechtI
He did not abandon his hopes of the throne, however, which were eventually realised: In 1298, he was chosen German king by some of the princes, who were bothered about Adolf's attempts to gain his own power bases in the lands of Thuringia and Meissen, again led by the Bohemian king Wenceslaus II. The armies of the rival kings met at the Battle of Göllheim near Worms, where Adolf was defeated and slain.[4]
Submitting to a new election but securing the support of several influential princes by making extensive promises, he was chosen at the Imperial City of Frankfurt on 27 July 1298, and crowned at Aachen Cathedral on 24 August.[5]
Although a hard, stern man, Albert had a keen sense of justice when his own interests were not involved, and few of the German kings possessed so practical an intelligence. He encouraged the cities, and not content with issuing proclamations against private war, formed alliances with the princes in order to enforce his decrees. The serfs, whose wrongs seldom attracted notice in an age indifferent to the claims of common humanity, found a friend in this severe monarch, and he protected even the despised and persecuted Jews. Stories of his cruelty and oppression in the Swiss cantons (cf. William Tell) did not appear until the 16th century, and are now regarded as legendary. [3]
Albert sought to play an important part in European affairs. He seemed at first inclined to press a quarrel with the Kingdom of France over the Burgundian frontier, but the refusal of Pope Boniface VIII to recognize his election led him to change his policy, and, in 1299, he made a treaty with King Philip IV, by which his son Rudolph was to marry Blanche, the King's half-sister. He afterwards became estranged from Philip, but in 1303, Boniface recognized him as German king and future emperor; in return, Albert recognized the authority of the pope alone to bestow the Imperial crown, and promised that none of his sons should be elected German king without papal consent.[3]
Albert had failed in his attempt to seize the counties of Holland and Zeeland, as vacant fiefs of the Holy Roman Empire, on the death of Count John I in 1299, but in 1306 he secured the crown of Bohemia for his son Rudolph III on the death of King Wenceslaus III. He also renewed the claim made by his predecessor, Adolf, on Thuringia, and interfered in a quarrel over the succession to the Hungarian throne. The Thuringian attack ended in Albert's defeat at the Battle of Lucka in 1307 and, in the same year, the death of his son Rudolph weakened his position in eastern Europe. His action in abolishing all tolls established on the Rhine since 1250 led the Rhenish prince-archbishops and the Elector of the Palatinate to form a league against him. Aided by the Imperial cities, however, he soon crushed the rising.[3]
He was on the way to suppress a revolt in Swabia when he was murdered on 1 May 1308, at Windisch on the Reuss, by his nephew Duke John, afterwards called "the Parricide" or "John Parricida".[6]
In 1274, Albert had married Elizabeth,[7] daughter of Count Meinhard II of Tyrol, who was a descendant of the Babenberg margraves of Austria who predated the Habsburgs' rule. The baptismal name Leopold, patron saint margrave of Austria, was given to one of their sons. Queen Elizabeth was in fact better connected to mighty German rulers than her husband: she was a descendant of earlier German kings, including Emperor Henry IV; she was also a niece of the Wittelsbach dukes of Bavaria, Austria's important neighbor.
Albert and Elizabeth had twelve children:
Anna (1275, Vienna – 19 March 1327, Breslau),[1] married:
^On the election and coronation see Andreas Büttner,: Rituale der Herrschererhebung im spätmittelalterlichen Reich (Mittelalter-Forschung 35,1). Band 1. Ostfildern 2012, S. 237–264 (online).
^The medieval sources on the murder are examined by Manuel Kamenzin, Die Tode der römisch-deutschen Könige und Kaiser (1150–1349) (Mittelalter-Forschungen 64), Ostfildern 2020, S. 278–308 (online).
The poem A Monarch's Death-bed., by Felicia Hemans recalls the scene of Albert's death, where he was supposedly comforted by a passing peasant woman. From Friendship's Offering annual, 1826.
Sources
George, Hereford Brooke (1875). Genealogical Tables Illustrative of Modern History. Oxford at the Clarendon Press.
Previté-Orton, Charles William (1960). The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History. Vol. 2. Cambridge University Press.
