Henry the Meek

Ideal portrait of Henry the Meek from a manuscript around 1560 (BSB cod.icon. 330)

St. Paul Abbey in Lavanttal , access to the crypt of the early Habsburgs

Heinrich the Meek or the Friendly (* May 15, 1299 - † February 3, 1327 in Bruck an der Mur ), Duke of Austria, was the son of King Albrecht I and his wife Elisabeth of Carinthia, Gorizia and Tyrol .

Life

In 1314 Heinrich married Countess Elisabeth von Virneburg . The marriage remained childless. On behalf of his brother, the anti-king Friedrich , he moved to Rome in 1316 with 2000 horsemen and even more foot soldiers to meet Pope Johannes XXII. to come to the rescue who supported Friedrich in the dispute with Ludwig the Bavarian about the royal crown. But before he reached Rome, his brother called him back.

At the battle of Mühldorf on September 28, 1322, Heinrich, as well as his brother Friedrich and 1,300 other members of the Austrian and Salzburg nobility, were captured. Heinrich was imprisoned in the Bohemian castle Bürglitz for several years before he was released for a ransom of 3000 ducats and the assignment of his rights in Znojmo, Castell, Laa and Weitra.

Marked by the harsh and difficult conditions in prison, Heinrich died at the age of 28 in Bruck an der Mur. His widow had him buried in the Habsburg crypt in the Königsfelden monastery . In 1770 he came through the solemn translation of the imperial-royal-also-ducal-Austrian highest corpses first in the St. Blasien Cathedral and after the abolition of the St. Blasien monastery in 1806 in the Abbey Spital am Pyhrn , then in 1809 in the collegiate church crypt of the monastery Sankt Paul im Lavanttal in Carinthia.

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Habsburg, Heinrich the Meek . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 6th part. Imperial-Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1860, p. 276 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Alfons Huber:  Heinrich, Duke of Austria and Styria . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1880, p. 557 f.

Web links

Commons : Heinrich the Meek  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Entry on Heinrich the Meek in the database of the state's memory of the history of Lower Austria ( Museum Niederösterreich )