Konrad II (Lausitz)

Margrave Konrad II. , Also Margrave Konrad II. Von Landsberg (* after September 13, 1159 - † May 6, 1210 ), was from 1190 Margrave of the Ostmark ( marchio Orientalis ) / Lausitz and lord of Rochlitz . After the death of his older brother Dietrich in 1207, he inherited the county of Groitzsch . As the son of Margrave Dedo III. and Countess Mechthild von Heinsberg , who came from the Lower Rhine region, was referred to as the Dedonide and, in a broader sense, belonged to the Wettin family .

Life

Konrad, who carried the title of margrave from 1185, was enfeoffed by the ruler with the Ostmark / Lausitz. After Emperor Heinrich VI. - on the death of Margrave Albrecht von Meißen in 1195 - who had withdrawn Mark Meißen as a settled fiefdom of the empire, Konrad von Landsberg remained the only Wettin in the possession of a princely fief and became the eldest of the Vogt family of the Augustinian canons of Lauterberg.

Between 1196 and 1198 Konrad was on the crusade of Emperor Heinrich VI. in the Holy Land , where in March 1198 he took part in the founding of the Teutonic Order in Acre . For the court of arbitration planned for the year 1200 through the mediation of the Mainz Metropolitan, Konrad was intended as the princely representative of King Philip's side . In 1202 the Landsberger led an embassy to Rome to advertise for Philip. He was accompanied by Provost Walter from the Augustinian canons of Lauterberg and the elected Bishop Dietrich von Merseburg, an illegitimate son of Margrave Dietrich of Ostmark / Lausitz. In 1207 he held a margravial court assembly for the Ostmark / Lausitz (Landding) in Delitzsch . After King Philip's violent death in 1208, Konrad and his Meißnian cousin Dietrich the oppressed recognized the Guelph Otto IV as the new king after receiving 22,000 marks of silver (Braunschweiger rhyme chronicle).

Expansion of the margraviate of Ostmark at the death of Margrave Konrad in 1210

In February 1210 Konrad documented in Köpenick (Copnic) at the confluence of the Spree and Dahme, after adding the Lebuser Land on the Oder to his Eastern Mark-Lusatian territory the year before . He had conquered Köpenick and the surrounding area together with his father Dedo (the fat, feisty) in the second half of the 1180s and had it actively expanded in the nineties. After his death, Konrad was buried in the Dedonid family grave in the Zschillen monastery, where his father and brother were already resting. His wife Elisabeth, who came from Poland, had already been buried in the Dobrilugk monastery the year before . Since Konrad died without a male heir, Emperor Otto IV took the Margraviate Ostmark / Lausitz in as a completed imperial fief and gave it in 1210 as a princely pledge to Konrad's Meissen relatives, Margrave Dietrich the distressed . With Konrad, the line of independent margraves of Ostmark / Lausitz that began in 1156/57 ended again. His remains were anthropologically examined at the end of the 1950s and showed the image of a strong, well-trained man who, however, suffered serious health problems at the end of his roughly fifty-year life.

Marriages and offspring

He married probably at the beginning of the 1180s, but not before 1181, Elisabeth (Elżbieta) of Poland, (* around 1152, † April 2, 1209), a daughter of the Polish Duke Mieszko III. and widow of Duke Soběslav II of Bohemia († 1180). He had three children with her.

• a son whose name has not been passed down (attested in 1207; † before May 6, 1210)
• Mechthild († 1255 in Salzwedel ), buried in Lehnin Monastery ; ⚭ August 1205 Albrecht II Margrave of Brandenburg , † February 25, 1220, buried in the Lehnin monastery ( Askanier )
• Agnes († 1266), founder of the Wienhausen monastery , also buried there; ⚭ 1211 Heinrich I the Tall One, * probably 1173/74; † April 28, 1227 in Braunschweig , 1195–1212 Count Palatine near Rhine , buried in Braunschweig Cathedral

literature

• Heinrich Theodor Flathe :  Konrad von Landsberg . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1882, p. 587 f.
• Holger Kunde: Das Cistercienserkloster Pforte - The forgery of documents and the early history up to 1236.Sources and research on the history of Saxony-Anhalt 4, Böhlau, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-412-14601-3 , p. 99.
• Michael Lindner, The Augustinian Canons of Zschillen as the burial place of the Dedonids. Margrave Konrad von der Ostmark / Lausitz (1190–1210) and his scribe Johannes, in: DM Mütze (ed.), Regular and Säkularkanonikerstifte in Mitteldeutschland, Dresden 2011, pp. 57–82.
• Michael Lindner, Dietrich, Dedo and Konrad von Landsberg - Margraves of the Ostmark (1156–1210). A political and lordly sketch from the time of the high medieval country development, in: S. Auert-Watzik / H. Mertens (ed.), Peripherien Sächsischer Geschichte, Landsberg 2011, pp. 267–290.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hans Grimm : About skeletal remains from two porphyry sarcophagi of the collegiate church in Wechselburg . In: Karl-Heinz Otto / Joachim Hermann (eds.), Siedlung, Burg und Stadt. Studies on its beginnings , German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Writings of the Section for Prehistory and Early History 25, Berlin 1969, pp. 533–542.

Web links

• Michael Lindner: Konrad (II.) Von Landsberg . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .

predecessor	Office	successor
Dedo III	Margrave of Lausitz 1190–1210	Dietrich III.