Albrecht IV (Bavaria)

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Albrecht IV., Painting by Barthel Beham
Stained glass window “Duke Albrecht IV of Bavaria, recommended by St. Johannes ”from the Prüll Charterhouse , today in the Bavarian National Museum

Albrecht IV the Wise (born December 15, 1447 in Munich ; † March 18, 1508 ibid) from the House of Wittelsbach was co-regent and Duke of Bavaria-Munich from September 10, 1465 and ruled there alone from September 3, 1467. After the end of the Landshut War of Succession , he became Duke of all of Bavaria on July 30, 1505 through the Cologne arbitration award from King Maximilian I. He passed the Primogeniturgesetz , which ended the age of the Bavarian state division . Completely educated, he was the first to be nicknamed “the wise”Humanist on the Bavarian throne.

Early years and road to sole rule

Albrecht was a son of Duke Albrecht III. of the pious of Bavaria-Munich with Anna von Braunschweig-Grubenhagen. Originally it was intended for a spiritual career. On August 15, 1461 he was registered as "illustris et Magnificus Princeps dominus Albertus Dux Bavariae de Moenchem" at the old University of Cologne ( Universitas Studii Coloniensis ).

After the father's death in 1460, as determined by the latter, the two eldest sons Johann IV and Siegmund took over the government together. But when Johann died in 1463, Albrecht returned from Pavia , where he was studying, to Munich and finally defied his brother on September 10, 1465, from co-government. Duke Siegmund then resigned the government on September 3, 1467, only kept Dachau as his domain and withdrew into his castles and Albrecht ruled alone from then on. Due to ongoing financial mismanagement, Siegmund had been asked by his brother and the estates to renounce his reign, and the pious and art-loving duke had already grown tired of governing.

But the two youngest brothers, Christoph and Wolfgang , wanted to take part in the government. Christoph found support in the knighthood of the Straubing Lands and the Bavarian Forest . Albrecht, however, now refused the younger brothers any participation in government or division of the country, which resulted in years of fratricidal wars, combined with aristocratic revolts. Albrecht was able to overthrow the knights in the Böckler War in 1468/69 , whereupon Christoph, who was interned in the Neuveste in 1470 , initially renounced co-rule for five years and later, like Wolfgang, for good. In 1489 the conflict between the ruling Duke Albrecht and his brothers escalated again. Wolfgang and Christoph learned that Albrecht had appointed Georg von Bayern-Landshut as heir in the event that he should die without any sons entitled to inherit, and then they joined the Löwlerbund, which was directed against Albrecht . From 1493 Albrecht had his own sons and the passage became obsolete.

Government in Bavaria-Munich

From about 1470 Albrecht worked on the acquisition of the imperial city of Regensburg . The city was heavily indebted and due to a fine and the imperial aid against the Hungarians obliged to pay the emperor high. In 1485 there was an uproar among the citizens who had to suffer from tax payments and an economic recovery was not in sight. In 1485 Albrecht offered the city the redemption of his pledged castle counts rights and the council, influenced by ducal advocates such as cathedral dean Dr. Johannes Neuhauser or Hans von Fuchssteiner accepted the proposal. Albrecht was now the highest court lord of the city and concluded a protective alliance with the city for the following years. In 1485, when the Lords of Abensberg died out , Albrecht also gained their rule. Despite the emperor's objection, Regensburg submitted to the duke in 1486. In the following years Albrecht tried to improve the city's financial situation. This included extensive tax and financial reforms, construction work and the relocation of offices to the city. During his reforms, he also intervened in the rights of the clergy and thus violated the decision-making power of Bishop Heinrich IV von Absberg . In 1487 Albrecht organized an extensive knight tournament, which attracted many aristocrats and spectators to Regensburg.

In 1486 he married Kunigunde of Austria , the daughter of Emperor Friedrich III. without his consent, and finally he got the whole of Habsburg Swabia ( Upper Austria ) transferred from his cousin Siegmund the rich in coins , so that he gained enormous power. In June 1487 Albrecht concluded an alliance with Elector Philipp von der Pfalz and Duke Georg the Rich of Bavaria-Landshut in Ingolstadt . With the Swabian Federation founded in 1488 , Albrecht was under pressure to give in to negotiations. Through an unfamiliar tax collection, he again turned the knights of the Straubinger Lande and the Bavarian Forest against him, who joined together against Albrecht in the Löwlerbund in 1489 , while Georg reconciled with the emperor in the same year. Albrecht could overthrow the Löwler, but the bound first in Hungary campaign Kaiser, 1491 the city of Regensburg and the Bavarian Duke in the imperial ban . At Kaufering , Albrecht's army faced the numerically superior troops of the Swabian League in mid-May 1492; In 1492 Albrecht gave back the imperial county Abensberg and the city of Regensburg in the Treaty of Augsburg. Margrave Friedrich and Eitelfritz von Zollern were appointed imperial commissioners .

Albrecht finally joined the Swabian Federation in 1500, which had originally been directed against him. At the same time, the imperial circles created under King Maximilian I in 1500 became an important regulatory factor in the empire, which is how the Bavarian Imperial Circle came into being . Albrecht's brother Siegmund died in 1501, after which his domain Dachau fell to Albrecht.

Reminder of the decree of the Purity Law by Duke Albrecht IV on November 30, 1487; Viktualienmarkt in Munich.

In his conception of rulership, Albrecht could already be assigned to the modern age : he ruled effectively and almost absolutistically, which was the main reason for the many civil wars and aristocratic revolts, especially in Lower Bavaria, where the Ottonian Handfests of 1311 gave important nobility privileges. He acted the same way against the cities and took away many of their rights. In 1488, before the Reformation, state control over church property was established.

Reunification of the Duchy

The great war followed in 1504 with the Landshut War of Succession . Duke Georg the Rich of Bavaria-Landshut died at the end of 1503 and, contrary to the Wittelsbach house contract, wanted to transfer his inheritance to his daughter Elisabeth from 1496, who had married Count Palatine Ruprecht from the Palatinate line of the Wittelsbach family, who was Georg's nephew on his mother's side. Despite secrecy, Albrecht found out about this breach of contract early on. Ruprecht had the Palatinate and Bohemia behind him, Albrecht the Swabian League and King Maximilian . On February 5, 1504 there was a session of the Imperial Chamber Court in Augsburg, in which King Maximilian Albrecht enfeoffed the Lower Bavarian duchy. Ruprecht did not accept this and triggered the war with the military occupation of the royal cities of Landshut and Burghausen. On June 13th the first major battle between the troops Albrechts and Ruprechts broke out in Landshut. Albrecht won the battle and Ruprecht had to retreat to the city, where he died of dysentery on August 20 , as did his wife on September 15, 1504. After the deaths of Ruprecht and Elisabeth, the Landshut War of Succession ended with great losses and Ober- and Lower Bavaria reunited after two and a half centuries: On July 30, 1505, the war ended with Maximilian's arbitration at a Reichstag in Cologne .

The two grandsons of Duke Georg, Ottheinrich and Philipp , received the Young Palatinate , a fragmented area from the Upper Danube via Franconia to the northern Upper Palatinate . Neuburg an der Donau was chosen as the capital of the new state . Since the two heirs were not yet of legal age, Count Palatine Friedrich II ruled there as guardian. Maximilian I reserved the area around Kufstein , Kitzbühel and Rattenberg as the price of his mediation. The Wittelsbachers also lost the Zillertal and Mondseeland to the Habsburgs. The imperial city of Nuremberg gained significant areas east of the city, including the offices of Lauf , Hersbruck and Altdorf . The rest of the area went to Albrecht, the Munich branch was now the only remaining part of the Bavarian line of the Wittelsbachers.

Then the duke began to unify the country. The coin reform of 1506 now introduced a uniform coin system for the now united Bavaria with the main mint in Munich. The Vitztumsämter were in 1507 as part of a major administrative reform after the Landshut War of Succession in Rent offices converted who were responsible in Bavaria in addition to the tax authorities then legal, administrative and military tasks. This reorganization then lasted for centuries.

In order to preserve the unity of Bavaria in the future, Albrecht issued the Primogeniture Act in 1506 , according to which in future the land should be indivisible and the male firstborn should be the future heir. His father Albrecht III. had, however, still decreed that only the two eldest sons should rule, which Albrecht had once referred to himself before taking office. Albrecht's second son Ludwig X. was also able to assert his participation in the government for the last time against the firstborn Wilhelm IV , arguing that he was born before the new succession regulation was introduced. Only after Ludwig's death did the Primogeniture Act finally come into effect.

After Albrecht's death, Wolfgang, as the last living brother, was given guardianship over Albrecht's sons, who were still underage at the time, after Wolfgang finally renounced the Duchy of Bavaria in favor of Albrecht and his descendants in the course of the Primogeniture Act. The funeral feast for Albrecht von Bayern was the first of several later legendary court festivals in the 16th century, among other things, marzipan appeared for the first time in the records as a food of the German high nobility.

Cultural policy and art funding

Under Albrecht IV there was a bloom of the late Gothic period , which was mainly promoted by his brother Siegmund. However, thanks to Albrecht's favor of painters, poets and historians such as Ulrich Füetrer and the musician Conrad Paumann , the first signs of the Renaissance began to arrive in Bavaria. On the occasion of his wedding, Grünwald Castle was expanded. The construction work was carried out in 1486/87 under the direction of foreman Jörg von Weikertshausen.

Marriage and offspring

Duke Albrecht IV married the Archduchess Kunigunde of Austria (1465–1520), daughter of Emperor Friedrich III, in Innsbruck on January 3, 1487 . and his wife Infanta Eleanor of Portugal . The wedding took place against the will of the emperor at the time, as Albrecht had occupied Regensburg shortly before. There are eight children from the marriage

  • Sidonie (1488–1505), died as the bride of the future Elector Ludwig V of the Palatinate
  • Sibylle (1489-1519)
⚭ 1511 Elector Ludwig V of the Palatinate (1478–1544)
⚭ 1511 Duke Ulrich I of Württemberg (1487–1550)
⚭ 1522 Margravine Maria Jakobäa of Baden (1507–1580)
  • Ludwig X. (1495–1545), Duke of Bavaria-Landshut
  • Susanne (1499–1500)
  • Ernst (1500–1560), administrator in the Diocese of Passau and Archdiocese of Salzburg, pledge of the then Bohemian County of Glatz
  • Susanne (1502–1543)
⚭ 1. 1518 Margrave Casimir von Brandenburg-Kulmbach (1481–1527)
⚭ 2. 1529 Count Palatine Ottheinrich of Pfalz-Neuburg (1502–1559)

literature

Lexicons
Overview works
  • Helga Czerny: The death of the Bavarian dukes in the late Middle Ages and in the early modern period 1347–1579. Preparations - dying - funeral ceremonies - burial - memoria (= series of publications on Bavarian national history. Volume 146). CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-10742-7 , pp. 232-264 (also dissertation, University of Munich 2004).
  • Andreas Kraus : Collection of forces and upswing (1450–1508). In: Max Spindler , Andreas Kraus (Ed.): Das Alte Bayern. The territorial state from the end of the 12th century to the end of the 18th century (= Handbook of Bavarian History, Volume II). 2nd Edition. CH Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-32320-0 , pp. 289-321.
Domestic politics
  • Thomas Feuerer: The monastery policy Duke Albrecht IV of Bavaria. Statistical and prosopographical studies on the pre-Reformation sovereign church regiment in the Duchy of Bavaria from 1465 to 1508 (= series of publications on Bavarian regional history. Volume 158). CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-10772-6 ( review ).
  • Hans-Josef Krey: Dominance crises and national unity. The Straubing and Munich estates under Duke Albrecht IV of Bavaria-Munich. Shaker, Aachen 2005, ISBN 3-8322-3937-5 (also dissertation, University of Eichstätt 2000).
Foreign policy
  • Katrin Nina Marth: "To the laudable Hawss Beirn to pesserung, Aufnemung and enlargement ...". The dynastic politics of the House of Bavaria at the turn of the late Middle Ages to the modern age. Dissertation, University of Regensburg 2009 ( online ).
  • Christof Paulus: fields of power. Duke Albrecht IV of Bavaria (1447 / 1465–1508) between dynasty, territory and empire (= research on the imperial and papal history of the Middle Ages. Volume 39). Böhlau, Vienna et al. 2015, ISBN 978-3-412-50138-9 ( online )
  • Alois Schmid : “Better a duke than an emperor!” Albrecht IV of Upper Bavaria and the imperial city of Regensburg 1486 to 1492. In: Regensburger Almanach 1987. Regensburg 1987, pp. 36–47.
Cultural policy
  • Andreas M. Dahlem: The Wittelsbach Court in Munich. History and Authority in the Visual Arts (1460-1508). Dissertation, University of Glasgow 2009 ( online ).
  • Maren Gottschalk : Historiography in the vicinity of Frederick I the Victorious of the Palatinate and Albrecht IV the Wise of Bavaria-Munich. Dissertation, University of Munich 1989.

Web links

Commons : Albrecht IV. (Bavaria)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Alois Schmid: “Better a duke than an emperor!” Albrecht IV of Upper Bavaria and the imperial city of Regensburg 1486 to 1492. In: Regensburger Almanach 1987. Regensburg 1987, pp. 38–44.
  2. ↑ manfred-hiebl.de: albrecht 4 duke of bayern muenchen
predecessor Office successor
Johann IV and Siegmund Duke of Bavaria-Munich
1465–1505 		united to the Duchy of Bavaria
George Duke of Bavaria-Landshut
1505 		united to the Duchy of Bavaria
–– Duke of Bavaria
1505–1508 		William IV
personal data
SURNAME Albrecht IV.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Albrecht the Wise
SHORT DESCRIPTION Duke of Bavaria
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1447
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 1508
PLACE OF DEATH Munich