Elisabeth of Bohemia
Elisabeth of Bohemia ( Eliška Přemyslovna in Czech ; * January 20, 1292 in Prague ; † September 28, 1330 ibid) from the Přemyslid dynasty was the wife of John of Luxembourg, Queen of Bohemia and mother of Emperor Charles IV .
Life
Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia was the daughter of the Bohemian and Polish King Wenceslaus II and Guta von Habsburg . She lost her mother when she was five. Her stepmother Elisabeth Richza of Poland , who was only six years older than her, never accepted her. After the long and painful death of her father and the murder of her brother Wenceslaus III. she went to her aunt, the abbess Kunigunde , in the monastery of St. George at Prague Castle for a while . The heavy youth affected their psyche. In addition, she possessed all the characteristics of the last generations of the Přemyslids: she had extraordinarily strong ambitions, excessive self-confidence, was moody and hot-headed. She was ready to accept that her older sister Anna , wife of Duke Heinrich of Carinthia , would take over the paternal inheritance. She just didn't understand his escape from the Austrian Duke Rudolf , who married her stepmother. After Rudolf's death and Heinrich's return, she recognized his weaknesses and accepted an offer from part of the Bohemian nobility and clergy to marry her to another supposed ruler.
In 1309 she fled from the royal court and the wedding planned by her brother-in-law to Otto von Bergow . From then on, she was the head of the opponents of the crown, who were now looking for a man abroad for her. In 1310 she took part in the national assembly at which the Luxembourg candidacy should be decided. After some deliberation, the eighteen-year-old agreed to the offer of several Bohemian representatives to offer her hand and her father's inheritance to the four-year-old son of the Roman-German King Heinrich of the Luxembourg family. In mid-August she set out for Speyer , where she was married on September 1, 1310, to Johann von Luxemburg , who was just fourteen years old . She and her husband returned to Prague in December of the same year and drove her sister and her husband into lifelong exile.
They were crowned on February 7, 1311 and a new dynasty came to power on the Bohemian throne. Elisabeth still had the image of her father's rule in mind that she herself tried to follow. Dealing tough with the opposition was just as much a part of it, as was the task that fell to her mother Guta von Habsburg . However, by the middle of the second half of the 14th century the nobility had other means of forcing the rulers to compromise. The conflicting views on the exercise of power ultimately led not only to the marital crisis, but also to civil war in the country.
At Elisabeth's pressure, her husband Johann imprisoned the spokesman for the now self-confident Bohemian nobility Heinrich von Lipá ( Jindřich z Lipé in Czech ), which led to the war that almost cost him the throne. It was not until the Peace of Domažlice in 1318 that the country came to rest and Johann recognized the position of the nobility. However, Elisabeth did not agree with this and turned against her husband. This punished her by having her eldest son Wenzel (later Emperor Charles IV ) brought to the French court for education; but this was also entirely in keeping with the Luxembourg tradition.
The relationship between Elisabeth and Johann was difficult, characters and goals were different. In 1323 Elisabeth gave birth to twins, the last of her seven children; However, these two were born in exile in Bavaria , where the queen had to flee. She was only allowed to return to Bohemia in the spring of 1325, and two years later she took part in the last political action - the Silesian dukes' feudal devotion to the Bohemian king. But then she was already living in complete solitude, separated from the man who performed his duties in Europe and also from the children who lived in various royal and ducal houses. In addition to the loneliness, there was the increasingly worsening financial situation, which neither allowed her to hold a court nor - as was common at the time - to found monasteries. All the more she tried to immortalize the memory of the Přemyslids. However, her wish to have her great-aunt Agnes of Bohemia canonized was not realized until 1989.
Elisabeth Přemyslovna died at the age of thirty-eight on Vyšehrad and was buried next to her father in the Zbraslav monastery .
progeny
Elisabeth of Böhmen married Johann von Luxemburg (1296–1346) in Speyer in 1310 and had these children with him:
- Margarete (* July 8, 1313; † July 11, 1341) ⚭ 1328 Heinrich XIV. , Duke of Lower Bavaria (1305-1339)
- Jutta (* May 20, 1315; † September 11, 1349) ⚭ 1332 John II (1319–1364), Duke of Normandy, from 1350 King of France
- Charles IV (14 May 1316 - 29 November 1378), Holy Roman Emperor
- Ottokar (born November 22, 1318 - † April 20, 1320)
- Johann Heinrich (* February 12, 1322; † November 12, 1375), Margrave of Moravia, ⚭ Margarete , Countess of Tyrol
- Anna (March 27, 1323; † September 3, 1338) 1335 ⚭ Otto the Happy , Duke of Austria
- Elisabeth (March 27, 1323; † 1324) - twin of Anna
literature
- Michel Pauly (ed.): The heir, the foreign prince and the country. The marriage of John the Blind and Elizabeth of Bohemia in a comparative European perspective. CLUDEM, Luxembourg 2013.
- Jiří Spěváček: Král diplomat (Jan Lucemburský 1296–1346) . Prague 1982
- Božena Kopičková: Eliška Přemyslovna . Prague 2003, ISBN 80-7021-656-5
Web links
| predecessor | Office | Successor |
|---|---|---|
| Anna Přemyslovna | Queen of Bohemia 1311–1330 |
Beatrice of Bourbon |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Elisabeth |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Eliška Přemyslovna |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Queen of Bohemia |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 20, 1292 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Prague , Kingdom of Bohemia , Holy Roman Empire |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 28, 1330 |
| Place of death | Prague , Kingdom of Bohemia , Holy Roman Empire |