Julius d'Austria

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Don Julius Caesar d'Austria (* around 1586 in Prague ; † June 25, 1609 in Krumau, today Český Krumlov ) was the illegitimate eldest son of Emperor Rudolf II and his lover Katharina Strada.

Life

The psychological imbalance of the father was shown in an exponentiated form in Don Julius. The emperor assigned him Krumau Castle as his residence, which he had acquired in 1601 from Peter Wok , the last Rosenberg . Don Julius first came to Krumau in 1605 and quickly made a name for himself as a womanizer. The 16-year-old Markéta (Margarete) Pichler, daughter of the BaderZikmund (Sigmund) Pichler and his wife Lucia became his lover in 1607. In a fit of rage, he severely injured Markéta with knife wounds and threw the woman believed dead out of a castle window. She survived, after her recovery Don Julius asked her to return to his castle. When her parents refused, he had Markéta's father locked up for five weeks and threatened to let him hang. The frightened mother took Don Julius' oath not to harm her daughter before handing her over to him on Shrove Sunday . The following day, Mardi Gras Monday , February 18, 1608, he brutally murdered her and "cut off her ears, tore one eye out of its sockets, smashed teeth and skull so that the brain came out, dismantled her body and spread it around the room." Then his imperial father, plagued by attacks of madness himself, had him imprisoned in Krumau Castle. Don Julius d'Austria stopped taking care of himself, went wild and raced against his surroundings. In 1609 he died of an ulcer in his throat and was buried in the Minorite Monastery of Krumlov .

literature

  • Anton Blaschka: The fate of Don Julios de Austria. Files and registers from the last years of his life. In: Communications from the Association for the History of Germans in Bohemia. 70th year, Prague 1932, pp. 220–255.
  • HC Erik Midelfort: Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville / London 1994 - German edition: Wahn und Kummer in German ruling houses. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1996.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Behringer : Melancholy and witch hunt. In: Rainer Jehl, Wolfgang EJ Weber (Ed.): Melancholie. Epoch mood - illness - art of living. Kohlhammer-Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, pp. 35-44. ISBN 3-17-016388-4 , online at uni-saarland.de .
personal data
SURNAME Julius d'Austria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Don Julius Caesar d'Austria; Julius de Austria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION illegitimate son of Emperor Rudolf II.
DATE OF BIRTH around 1585
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH June 25, 1609
Place of death Český Krumlov