Henry III. (Anhalt)

Joint seal of Princes Otto I and Heinrich III. from Anhalt

Henry III. von Anhalt († November 11, 1307 in Schönebeck on the Elbe ) was Prince of Anhalt-Aschersleben and, under the name of Heinrich II. from 1305 to 1307, Archbishop of Magdeburg.

Life

Heinrich was the son of Heinrich II and his wife Mechtild (also called Mathilde) a born Prince of Anhalt. Together with his brother Otto I von Anhalt , he was the official co-regent of Anhalt- Aschersleben from 1266 . In 1283 he devoted himself to the clergy and became canon in Magdeburg and provost of the Blasiusstift in Braunschweig . After the death of Burchard II von Blankenburg , he was elected Archbishop of Magdeburg in 1305 . He went to Rome with the pallium to obtain the papal confirmation . The Magdeburg Chronicle reports that he did not understand Latin ; therefore he was unable to answer Pope Clement V's questions in Latin , whether he knew the “prayer of the Lord” (“orationem Dominicam”).

His court master is said to have apologized for not knowing this, as the expression “Lord's Prayer” is not in use in Magdeburg, but is called here “ Our Father (“ Pater noster ”) ”.

In view of Burchard's studies at the University of Bologna, where he matriculated as “prepositus de Brunswic”, this news appears more than dubious.

The only thing that is certain is that Heinrich received the papal confirmation in office on January 21, 1306 and had to pay 1,000 Stendaler silver for it. In order to raise this, the cathedral chapter had to transfer the castle and the city of Grabau to the Bishop of Brandenburg Friedrich von Plötzke .

Returning to Magdeburg, Heinrich raised an army in 1307 and captured the town of Schönebeck on the Elbe from the Counts of Barby on May 6, 1307 . His general Otto von Welschleben used a ruse: he had soldiers camouflaged on grain wagons and secretly brought them into town. When they reached the city gate, the soldiers jumped from the car and secured the gate so that subsequent units could take the city without resistance.

Back in Magdeburg, he got into a dispute over the Herrenpforte with the guarantee. This was a gate on the south side of the cathedral , the key of which was held by a porter employed by the city. The canons had taken the key from him, probably to make it easier for the archbishop's troops to get to the city. The mayor of Magdeburg, Hans von Hohnstein, went with the councilmen to the chapter house, where the archbishop held a meeting with the canons and asked for the key to be handed over. The archbishop is said to have rejected this with the words "The gate is ours, because it is called the master gate".

The mayor replied that the gate was called the Herrenpforte, but the masters of the gate were the citizens of Magdeburg. If the archbishop did not return the key, it would not go away. The mayor then ordered his town servants to ring the bells for St. John's. When the archbishop heard this, he had returned the key without using the Herrenpforte. .

In the year of his death, he gave the monastery of Our Lady in Magdeburg the right of patronage over the churches in Burg and Schartau and in return received the right of patronage in Pretzien , along with the property there and the mill. According to ancient tradition, although he was not particularly learned, he was said to have had a penetrating mind. However, due to his short reign, there are no indications of this.

Heinrich's grave is unknown.

literature

• Ferdinand Albrecht Wolter: History of the city of Magdeburg from its origins to the present. Faberische Buchdruckerei, Magdeburg, 1901, 3rd edition, p. 45 ff.
• Heinrich Rathmann: History of the city of Magdeburg from its first formation to the present day. Verlag Johann Adam Creutz, Magdeburg 1806, vol. 2, p. 212 ff. ( Online )
• Friedrich Wilhelm Ebeling: The German bishops until the end of the sixteenth century. Verlag Otto Wiegand, Leipzig, 1858, 2nd volume, p. 38 ( online )

Web links

Henry III. (Anhalt) at genealogie-mittelalter.de

swell

1. ↑ Thomas Gehrlein: The House of Anhalt. Over 900 years of total history with ancestral sequences. Börde-Verlag, Werl, 2011, ISBN 978-3-981 4458-1-7 , p. 8
2. ^ Ferdinand Albrecht Wolter: History of the city of Magdeburg from its origins to the present. Faberische Buchdruckerei, Magdeburg, 1901, 3rd edition, p. 46
3. ↑ Heinrich Rathmann: History of the City of Magdeburg from its first emergence to the present day. Verlag Johann Adam Creutz, Magdeburg 1806, Vol. 2, p. 214

predecessor	Office	successor
Henry II	Prince of Anhalt-Aschersleben (co-regent) 1266–1283	Otto I.

predecessor	Office	successor
Burchard II of Blankenburg	Archbishop of Magdeburg 1305–1307	Burchard III. from Schraplau