Wrong Woldemar
The false Woldemar or false Waldemar († 1356 in Dessau , Anhalt ) was an impostor who was enfeoffed from Karl IV with the Mark Brandenburg from 1348 to 1350 .
Life
Woldemar was supposedly called Jakob Rehbock and is said to have been a journeyman miller. His true identity is still unclear today.
In the summer of 1348, as an elderly pilgrim, he introduced himself to the Archbishop of Magdeburg Otto as the old Brandenburg Margrave Woldemar , who had been buried 29 years earlier. He pretended that the funeral of 1319 had only been staged and that he had meanwhile been on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land . After the Brandenburg Ascanians died out , the Wittelsbach King Ludwig the Bavarian awarded the Mark Brandenburg to his own son Ludwig in 1323 .
Woldemar quickly gained followers, especially among the princely rivals of the Wittelsbach family . He posed as a representative of the ancestral Ascanian princely house, whose lines in Saxony-Wittenberg and Anhalt supported him, because after his death they hoped to take over the Mark Brandenburg. Within a few weeks he was able to convince large parts of the mark on a homage train . Charles IV also got the wrong Woldemar at the right time to weaken the Wittelsbachers, which is why he enfeoffed the "Askanier" on October 2, 1348 with the Mark Brandenburg. Only a few cities stuck to the Wittelsbachers, so Treuenbrietzen is said to have the prefix from this time.
The false Woldemar was exposed as a fraudster in February 1350, Karl, who had in the meantime reached an agreement with the Wittelsbachers (Treaties of Eltville ), declared that he had been deceived, enfeoffed Ludwig again with the Mark Brandenburg and announced in March and April 1350 that Woldemar is not the rightful margrave. Since then, Woldemar stayed at the Ascan court in Anhalt-Dessau , where all court honors were paid to him throughout his life, until he probably died of natural causes in 1356.
Literary reception
In 1842 Willibald Alexis published his novel The False Woldemar . More recently, the novel The Last Askanier by Horst Bosetzky (Frankfurt 1999) has been devoted to the events surrounding the false Woldemar, with the author setting up his own theory regarding the identity of the alleged Askanier.
literature
- Karl Friedrich Klöden : Diplomatic history of the margrave Waldemar of Brandenburg, who was declared false, from the years 1345-1356. Presented immediately after the sources . First part. Berlin 1845, 451 pages, archive.org .
- Friedrich Wencker-Wildberg : Uncrowned kings. Attempt of a world history of the adventurer. Das Bergland-Buch, Graz 1934, pp. 92–127
- Alexander Schubert : Real power and false rule - On the influence of false rulers on the history of the empire . In: Matthias Puhle , Claus-Peter Hasse (ed.): Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation 962–1806. From Otto the Great to the end of the Middle Ages . Volume of essays on the 29th exhibition of the Council of Europe. Dresden 2006, pp. 348-357.
- Lexicon of the Middle Ages , Volume 9, Col. 301 f., Manfred-hiebl.de
- Paragraph The wrong Waldemar from: Wilhelm von Sommerfeld: Waldemar, Margrave of Brandenburg . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 40, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1896, pp. 677-687.
- Herbert Schwenk: “This is Margrave Waldemar's Ring!” The Waldemar bluff in medieval politics . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 8, 1997, ISSN 0944-5560 , p. 4–11 ( luise-berlin.de ).
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wrong Woldemar |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | False Waldemar; Jakob Rehbock (real name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German impostor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 13th century or 14th century |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1356 |
| Place of death | Dessau , Anhalt |