Adolf III. (Mountain)

Siege of Damiette, 1218

Adolf III. von Berg (* 1175 at the latest; documented mention 1194-1218; † August 7, 1218 before Damiette in Egypt ) was Count von Berg from 1189 to 1218 .

Life

Adolf was a son of Engelbert I von Berg and Magarethe, daughter of Heinrich I von Geldern . His younger brother was Archbishop Engelbert I of Cologne .

By 1204 at the latest, Adolf was married to a Bertha who may have come from the Sayn family. He had a daughter with Bertha:

• Irmgard (* 1204 at the latest; † August 11, 12/13, 1248 or 1249), married Heinrich IV of Limburg at the latest in 1216 .

After Adolf's father died on the Third Crusade in 1189 , Adolf became Count von Berg. His reign fell at the time of armed conflicts between the Staufer and Guelph parties. He changed sides several times, once fighting for the Guelph Otto IV , the son of Heinrich the Lion , whom Adolf's cousin, the Archbishop of Cologne Adolf von Altena , had made king of Germany, and another time for the Staufer Philipp von Schwaben , the son of Barbarossa , finally joined the young Staufer Friedrich II , who appeared in Constance on German soil in 1212. This time he was on the right side again. The Staufer showed his appreciation for the election of his brother Engelbert as Archbishop of Cologne.

Adolf took part in the Albigensian Crusade in 1212 . Three years later, Adolf besieged and conquered the Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth , in which Otto IV. The Rhenish-Westphalian bishops, a. a. the Münster bishop Otto I of Oldenburg , held prisoner. Adolf's taking sides decided the throne dispute in favor of Emperor Friedrich II.

In 1218 Adolf set out on the Fifth Crusade to the Holy Land , where he became the commander of the Rhenish and Frisian siege troops in front of Damiette in the Nile Delta due to the successful siege of the Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth that had been carried out three years earlier . Adolf died there in a field camp on August 7, 1218 of an epidemic. Since he only left his daughter Irmgard, his brother, Archbishop Engelbert I of Cologne, took over the county of Berg. After his assassination in 1225, with which the first Bergisches Grafhaus in the male line died out, Heinrich IV. Of Limburg, the husband of Adolf's daughter Irmgard, became Count von Berg.

literature

• Alexander Berner: Crusade and regional rule. The older counts of Berg 1147–1225. Böhlau, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-412-22357-1 .
• Alexander Berner: Adolf III. from mountain. Internet portal "Rhenish History" of the Rhineland Regional Association , April 13, 2016.
• Thomas R. Kraus : The origin of the sovereignty of the counts of Berg up to the year 1225 (= Bergische researches. Vol. 16). Ph. CW Schmidt, Neustadt ad Aisch 1980, ISBN 3-87707-024-8 .

predecessor	Office	successor
Engelbert I.	Count von Berg 1189–1218	Engelbert II.