Hedwig Jagiellonica (1457–1502)

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Duchess Hedwig Jagiellonica of Bavaria - the picture shows her still as an unmarried woman; recognizable by the hair worn open
Coat of arms of Duke Georg and Hedwig Jagiellonica of Bavaria in the vault of the parish church of St. Johannes in Dingolfing . Dated 1502
George the Rich and Hedwig of Poland in a window of the Landshut town hall

Hedwig Jagiellonica ( Polish Jadwiga Jagiellonka ; born September 21, 1457 in Krakow ; † February 18, 1502 in Burghausen ), also known as Hedwig von Burghausen , was the wife of Duke George the Rich from January 18, 1479 until her death Duchess of Bavaria-Landshut .

Life

origin

Hedwig was the daughter of the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania , Casimir and his wife Elisabeth von Habsburg , daughter of the Roman-German King Albrecht II . Her brother Władysław was King of Bohemia from 1471 .

wedding

Duke Louis IX. the rich man from Bavaria-Landshut planned a “royal game” for his son Georg to document his power and wealth and to raise the rank of his descendants. At first Ludwig wooed Ludmilla, a daughter of the Bohemian King George of Podebrady, in vain . There may also have been talks with Emperor Friedrich III. about a marriage between his daughter Kunigunde and Georg (contemporary sources are missing). In the autumn of 1473 Polish envoys came to Landshut to negotiate a possible marriage between Hedwig and Georg. Then the provost of Altötting, Friedrich Mauerkircher, traveled on behalf of Ludwig IX. in March 1474 to Krakow to discuss the necessary details; another Bavarian delegation followed in September under the direction of Bishop Heinrich von Regensburg. On December 30th and 31st, 1474, as well as January 1st, 1475, after lengthy negotiations in which the Polish Queen Elisabeth was also involved, the necessary documents were signed. Louis IX The aim of the game was to strengthen dynastic ties to Eastern Europe after he himself married Amalie von Sachsen, his father an Austrian and his grandfather an Italian.

Since the bridegroom, like Hedwig, was also related (through his grandmother) to the Austrian ducal house, the bride and groom needed a papal dispensation for the wedding , which was granted by Sixtus IV on May 26, 1475 . The actual wedding preparations began in August 1475, on September 14 or 16 the bridal procession set out from Krakow towards Landshut. The trip via Poznan and Berlin was delayed by about a week. The original plan was to give Hedwig a big reception in Wittenberg. The Polish side hoped that the bridegroom should also come there, although he did without the arduous journey. Because of the outbreak of the plague in Wittenberg, the stay there was shortened to three days. The original schedule for the wedding could not be kept: Instead of November 5, the bride and groom were only married on November 14, which caused considerable costs due to the large number of guests who had traveled. From Nuremberg, Count Palatine Otto II. Von Neumarkt was escort as bridal guide.

The actually not very sociable Emperor Friedrich III. personally led the bride to the altar and, despite his old age, also to the dance. The celebrations lasted six days and went down in history as one of the most glamorous weddings of the late Middle Ages. Around 9,000 guests are said to have stayed in Landshut, which had around 7,000 inhabitants at the time, including two electors ( Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg as court master and speaker, Count Palatine Philipp ) and the Archbishop of Salzburg, Bernhard von Rohr , who performed the wedding. The celebrations cost almost 61,000 guilders , according to purchasing power the equivalent of 21.5 million euros (2014), which corresponds to the Duke's annual income. Almost 200,000 eggs and 323 oxen were eaten. Twenty silk tailors worked in the castle, but none of the sumptuous robes have been preserved, there are only detailed descriptions. Since 1903, the city of Landshut has been commemorating this Landshut wedding with a historic city festival every four years . Apparently Hedwig spoke little or no German despite her Austrian mother. A translator was available for her on official occasions, and her brother, King Ladislaus of Bohemia, interpreted at the wedding . The name Jadwiga is not found in the contemporary sources, she called herself "born Queen of Poland and Duchess of Lower and Upper Bavaria". At that time, adult princesses were generally presented to the stalls as "born queens".

Life in Burghausen

The previously widespread view that Duchess Hedwig was "banished" to Burghausen immediately after her wedding, "held prisoner" and "mourned her days" there, does not correspond to the facts. According to the sources, such as accounts for the ducal kitchen, Georg and Hedwig lived together at Burghausen Castle for the first four years of their marriage, and later Georg stayed there for weeks or months. The fortress had already been expanded into a representative widow's seat around 1300; further extensive expansion work was carried out during Hedwig's lifetime. Thus, Hedwig was able to finance a classy and very luxurious court, as a more detailed analysis of the traditional accounts showed. From Landshut, she was not only supplied with horses and a monkey (as a toy), but also constantly with large quantities of expensive wines and fresh fruit such as quinces, peaches and grapes. Fish came from Mondsee Monastery , and in late summer Hedwig held elaborate hunting parties in the vicinity of Burghausen, in which her husband sometimes took part. There is evidence that a dance hall was set up in the castle, and a court jester and a “court dwarf” provide entertainment. The Duchess maintained correspondence with Poland and regularly received noble guests from there. Hedwig also participated several times in pilgrimages, for example to St. Wolfgang and Mondsee.

The ambitious and educated, but also very stingy lawyer and collector Degenhart Pfäffinger served as Truchseß for the king's daughter . Hofmeister Hedwigs was Hans Ebran von Wildenberg , a historian, judge and moralist with many interests, who came on pilgrimage to Monte Cassino in 1480 , possibly even was in the Holy Land and was made one of his executors by George the Rich. Burghausen was not on the sidelines either, but on the Salzach, which was then much traveled by the salt trade, halfway between Salzburg and Passau .

The Duchess was a pious and generous donor who gave the Landshut churches of St. Jodok and St. Martin, as well as the parish church of St. Johannes in Dingolfing , the parish church of Gollenhausen and the chapel of grace in Altötting .

Only the last years of Hedwig's life are said to have been comparatively lonely and barren, especially since her husband was mainly in the service of King Maximilian in his empire and abroad. In addition, Georg was notoriously stingy and was extremely angry that the Kingdom of Poland did not pay Hedwig's promised dowry of 32,000 ducats (an advance payment of 4,000 ducats was only made in 1536, long after George and Hedwig's death, after tough negotiations with them Grandchildren).

Offspring and death

Hedwig gave birth to at least two children: Elisabeth in 1478 , who married Count Palatine Ruprecht , and Margarete in 1480 , who first entered the Dominican convent in Altenhohenau and later became an abbess in the Benedictine convent in Neuburg an der Donau after a planned marriage to Landgrave Wilhelm III. von Hessen did not come about.

Further children cannot be identified in contemporary sources, but appear by name in later literature (after 1814). According to these extremely dubious statements, there are said to have been two or even three sons: Ludwig, who died in 1500 at the end of 1476, Ruprecht in 1477, who also only lived for a short time, and Wolfgang in 1482, who, like his brothers, died as a child.

Hedwig died on February 18, 1502, apparently after a short illness, and was buried in the church of the Cistercian monastery Raitenhaslach , the burial place of the Wittelsbachers who died in Burghausen . Her imposing high tomb made of red marble up to the point of secularization could also be seen there. With the support of private donors, a memorial inscription was embedded in the floor at this point.

On Hedwig's death, the humanist and philologist Jakob Locher gave a funeral speech, which also appeared in print in Ingolstadt in 1502. In it, Locher expressly regretted that none of her sons had survived her: "A mighty son could have emerged from her lap, but death took her away."

After the death of Duke Georg in 1504, the Landshut War of Succession started due to the lack of a male descendant .

Landshut Town Hall. On the walls of the state hall there are scenes from the prince's wedding of 1475. Here we see the car of the Polish princess Hedwig. Next to her rides the Duke's son George the Rich. The picture was created at the end of the 19th century and was painted by August Spieß, Rudolf Seitz, Ludwig Löfftz and Konrad Weigand.

literature

  • Johann Dorner: Duchess Hedwig and her court - everyday life at Burghausen Castle based on original sources from the 15th century. In: Burghauser Geschichtsblätter. No. 53
  • Hedwig, the beautiful king's daughter from Poland , Burghausen 1860.
  • Marita A. Panzer: Hedwig. The bride of the Landshut wedding . Pustet, Regensburg 2020 ISBN 978-3-7917-6186-2 .

Web links

Commons : Hedwig Jagiellonica (1457–1502)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johann Dorner: Duchess Hedwig and her court - everyday life at Burghausen Castle based on original sources from the 15th century. In: Burghauser Geschichtsblätter. No. 53, p. 29
  2. ^ Johann Dorner: Duchess Hedwig and her court - everyday life at Burghausen Castle based on original sources from the 15th century. In: Burghauser Geschichtsblätter. No. 53, p. 38
  3. Negotiations of the Historical Association for Lower Bavaria , Volumes 120–121, p. 34
  4. a b Reinhard Stauber / Gerhard Tausche / Richard Loibl (eds.): Niederbayerns Reiche Herzöge , Augsburg 2009, p. 78
  5. ^ A b Norbert Lewandowski / Gregor M. Schmidt: The family who invented Bavaria: The Wittelsbach House: Stories, Traditions, Fates of Scandals , Munich 2014. P. 72
  6. Franz Niehoff: The "Landshuter Hochzeit 1475" as "experimental Middle Ages" , p. 287, in: Franz Niehoff (Hrsg.): The Golden Century of the Rich Dukes , Landshut 2014
  7. Hedwig of Poland ( Memento from September 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  8. Hedwig, the beautiful king's daughter from Poland , Burghausen 1860, p. 63
  9. ^ Johann Dorner: Duchess Hedwig and her court - everyday life at Burghausen Castle based on original sources from the 15th century. In: Burghauser Geschichtsblätter. No. 53, p. 50
  10. ^ Johann Dorner: Duchess Hedwig and her court: everyday life at Burghausen Castle based on original sources from the 15th century , Burghausen 2002, p. 56 ff.
  11. ^ Johann Dorner: Duchess Hedwig and her court - everyday life at Burghausen Castle based on original sources from the 15th century. In: Burghauser Geschichtsblätter. No. 53, p. 101 f.
  12. Enno Bünz: Degenhart Pfeffinger's Heiltumssammlung , in: Andreas Tacke (Ed.): “I poor sundiger man”: Cult of saints and relics at the transition to the denominational age , Göttingen 2006, p. 131
  13. ^ Johann Dorner: Duchess Hedwig and her court - everyday life at Burghausen Castle based on original sources from the 15th century. In: Burghauser Geschichtsblätter. No. 53, p. 150 f.
  14. ^ Johann Dorner: Duchess Hedwig and her court - everyday life at Burghausen Castle based on original sources from the 15th century. In: Burghauser Geschichtsblätter. No. 53, SS 54 f.
  15. Christian Häutle: Genealogy of the illustrious parent company Wittelsbach: from its re-establishment in the Duchy of Bavaria up to our days , Munich 1870, p. 116
  16. Alfons Beckenbauer (Ed.): Funeral speech on the death of Duchess Hedwig of Poland, given in 1502 by Jakob Locher, called Philomusus , Landshut 1984, p. 25