Margraviate Burgau

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Coat of arms of the margraviate of Burgau

The margraviate of Burgau was a territory of the Holy Roman Empire .

history

The area was part of the Duchy of Swabia . This orphaned with the execution of the Hohenstaufen Konradin in 1268. At the imperial level, the interregnum phase existed until October 1, 1273 . The then elected King Rudolf I of Habsburg planned to secure the vacant Swabian territories for his ruling house, but triggered resistance from the local aristocratic families with his acquisition policy. It was not possible to unite the acquired Habsburg possessions in Swabia into one territory.

Around 1301, Heinrich III. , the last Burgau margrave from the Berg family, passed the margraviate to the Habsburgs and went to the monastery as a lay brother, which cannot be precisely dated. In the necrology of the monastery of St. Katharina (Augsburg) he is noted on his death on December 12th as Frater Heinrich. The reason for the handover was probably the difficult economic situation of Heinrich III. King Albrecht I transferred the imperial fiefdom to his sons, the dukes of Austria. The Habsburgs bought their own property ( allodies ) from Heinrich's wife . Within the area of ​​the Margraviate of Burgau, in turn, various legal titles had been assigned: Allod, Reichslehen , Grundherrschaft and Vogtei .

The geographical location of the Burgau possessions created latent tensions, resulting from the Wittelsbachers' efforts to expand in Bavaria, who wanted to win the Margraviate Burgau over to round off their possessions in Swabia. Ludwig the Bavarian broke off a siege of Burgau at the end of 1324 in January 1325 without success. The imperial city of Augsburg, together with Ulm and other Swabian cities, prevented a sale to Bavaria in 1418 .

Even in later times, Burgau could always count on the readiness of the imperial cities of Augsburg and Ulm, the Bishop of Augsburg and the House of Fugger when it came to keeping the Bavarian dukes' desire for land west of the Lech in check (see also Swabian Federation ).

From the middle of the 14th century, the Habsburgs' financial difficulties led to the margraviate or individual parts of it being pledged several times . The last pledge (to the Augsburg bishopric ) ended in 1559.

Front Austria fell to Emperor Ferdinand I in 1522 . After his death, his son Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol took over this property. When the Archduke died in 1595, rule passed to Emperor Rudolf II . In 1605 he entrusted the Archduke Karl of Austria-Burgau , who had emerged from his marriage to the Augsburg bourgeois daughter Philippine Welser , with the Margraviate of Burgau. From 1609 to 1618 Karl was the last to hold the title of margrave.

With his death, the rule went back to the Habsburg rulers in Tyrol. When this line of the ruling family died out in 1665, the court in Vienna was responsible for the fortunes of the Margraviate of Burgau. The bailiff resided in Günzburg .

The county was later incorporated into the Oberamt Günzburg . In the Peace of Pressburg (1805), the Austrian Empire , which was defeated against Napoléon Bonaparte and his allies, had to accept that the territory became part of the new Kingdom of Bavaria . The coat of arms of the Margraviate of Burgau was part of the Bavarian coat of arms from 1835 to 1923 .

Manorial rule

Administrative division

  • Oberamt Günzburg
    • Bailiwick of Ellzee
    • Burgau bailiwick district
    • Bailiwick of Biburg
    • Bailiwick of Buttenwiesen
    • Bailiwick district of Holzheim

Margraves of Burgau

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Constantin von Wurzbach : Karl, Margrave of Burgau (born 1560, died October 30, 1618) .  No. 134. In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 6th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1860, p. 364 ( digitized version ).