Heinrich II. (Ortenburg)

Heinrich II. († 1257 ) was the eldest son of Count Heinrich I von Ortenburg and came from the house of the Ortenburgers . Heinrich succeeded his father as Count von Ortenburg in 1241 . He also had the nickname of the donor ; He wanted with all his might to prevent his half-brothers from getting hold of his estates, so he gave most of it to the church. Heinrich II was not married and died childless.

Live and act

After the death of his mother Božislava from the Bohemian noble house Přemysl, his father married Richgard von Hohenburg. This led to the relationship between father and son becoming very disrupted. For this reason Heinrich II was not considered by his father in 1238 when he ceded the county of Murach to his sons Gebhard , Diepold and Rapoto IV and their mother.

So it was that after his father's death he fell out with his stepmother and her sons. He even tried to get Richgard and his stepbrothers into his hand by force, so that even the emperor issued them a letter of protection. Richgard soon fled to her relative, Duke Otto II of Bavaria. In 1241 he broke into the Ortenburg possessions with armed force , including the ancestral castle of Ortenburg , in order to force Heinrich to leave his stepmother and brother in peace. Otto took the city of Vilshofen , which he did not return afterwards. It remained in Bavarian ownership. The Duke did this not only out of charity for his relatives, but also wanted to weaken the power of the House of Ortenburg .

Heinrich fled from Otto II to the Bishop of Passau . This granted him accommodation. In return, Heinrich gradually gave him more and more goods from his possessions.

In 1248 Heinrich fled to Bamberg . He bequeathed all of his fiefs and possessions to the local bishop in return for an annual pension of 50 pounds Bamberg pfennigs. The Ortenburg house lost almost all of its possessions except for the castles Murach and Ortenburg, which Duke Otto had still occupied. The Ortenburg house thus had almost no property and was never to come back to the power it once had.

literature

• Friedrich Hausmann : The Counts of Ortenburg and their male ancestors, the Spanheimers in Carinthia, Saxony and Bavaria, as well as their subsidiary lines , published in: Ostbairische Grenzmarken - Passauer Jahrbuch für Geschichte, Kunst und Volkskunde, No. 36, Passau 1994 (p. 9 -62).
• Eberhard Graf zu Ortenburg-Tambach: History of the imperial, ducal and counts 'entire house of Ortenburg - Part 2: The counts' house in Bavaria. , Vilshofen 1932.
• Carl Mehrmann: History of the Evangelical Lutheran community of Ortenburg in Lower Bavaria - memorandum for the anniversary celebration of the 300th anniversary of the introduction of the Reformation there on October 17 and 18, 1863 , Landshut 1863 ( digitized version ).

Web links

• genealogy

predecessor	Office	successor
Heinrich I.	Count of Ortenburg 1241–1257	Gebhard