Knut VI.

Seal of Knuts VI.

Grave slab of Knuts VI. in the St. Bendts Church in Ringsted

Knut VI. (* 1162 / 1163 , † 1202 ) was from 1182 to 1202 King of Denmark .

He was the eldest son of Waldemar I of Denmark (1131-1182) and his wife Sophia of Minsk († 1198). On the occasion of the transfer of the bones of his grandfather Knud Lavard (1096–1131) to Ringsted , Knut VI. Crowned co-king of his father in 1170.

In 1176 he married Gertrud , a daughter of Henry the Lion († 1195). Gertrud died in 1197, the marriage had remained childless and Knut did not enter into another marriage afterwards. His sister Sophia (* 1159) married Count Siegfried III. von Weimar-Orlamünde († 1206), who was a supporter of the Hohenstaufen and stayed in Denmark for most of his life.

Knut VI. became Prince of Halland in 1182 . In 1185 his followers defeated the army of Duke Bogislaw I of Pomerania († 1187), who then became his feudal man. In 1189 Knut deposed the castellan of Stettin Wartislaw Swantiboricz († 1196) and in 1193 he captured the rebellious Bishop of Schleswig and Archbishop of Bremen Waldemar († 1236). After his vassals won the battle of Waschow in 1200 (or 1201) , he also ruled an area of ​​northern German and Slavic peoples, so that he was also referred to as the king of the Wends .

In the history of Estonia around 1196 the proselytizing to Christianity by the Danish king was noted.

On December 28, 1200, Knut VI issued. the manslaughter law, which regulates the penalties and recourse for manslaughter. This law is one of the demonstrably earliest enactments of royal legislation in Denmark.

In 1202 Knut VI died. and was buried in the Ringsteder St. Bendts Church , which served as the burial place of the Danish kings between 1182 and 1341. His grave is in the aisle in front of the choir. After the royal graves in the central aisle of St. Bendts Church had been opened and examined in the middle of the 19th century, they were closed with trapezoidal tombstones. The Latin inscription on Knut's grave slab reads: Canutus King of the Danes, son of Waldemar I.

His brother Waldemar II (1170-1241) succeeded him and continued Knut's policy.

See also

• Family table of the Danish kings

literature

• Oskar Eggert : The turning trains Waldemar I and Knuts VI. from Denmark to Mecklenburg and Pomerania.

Web links

• Peter Treichel: 800 years of Pomerania and its neighbors. The story of a province
• Ditlev Tamm, Werner Schubert, Jens Ulf Jorgensen (editor): Sources on Danish legal and constitutional history from the 12th to the 20th century
• Burkhard Werner: The position of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck in the Hanseatic League up to the Stralsund Peace in 1370
• Martin Philippson: History of Henry the Lion, Duke of Bavaria and Saxony and the Guelph and Staufer politics of his time, Volume 2
• Anti Selart: Livonia and the Rus' in the 13th century
• Carl Ferdinand Allen: History of Denmark

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Peter Koblank: Marienkirche and Gertrudskapelle in Vä (Sweden) on stauferstelen.net. Retrieved October 30, 2018.

predecessor	Office	successor
Waldemar I.	King of Denmark 1182–1202	Waldemar II.