Mieszko II. Lambert
Mieszko II. Lambert (* 990 - 10 May 1034 ) was King of Poland from 1025 . He came from the noble family of the Piasts .
Life
Mieszko II was born in 990 as the second son of King Bolesław I in his third marriage to Emnilda , the daughter of the Duke of the Sorbs , Dobromir . Mieszko was chosen as heir to the throne after the older half-brother Bezprym was disinherited. He took part in his father's wars against Emperor Heinrich II and was sent to the peace negotiations in Merseburg in 1013 as a representative of the Polish crown . In order to consolidate the peace, he married Richeza , daughter of the Lorraine Count Palatine Ehrenfried Ezzo . In 1014, after renewed tension between the emperor and his father, Mieszko was first captured, then acted as a mediator, but could not prevent the outbreak of new fighting in 1015. In this phase of the war he participated mainly with looting in Bohemia .
In 1025, after the death of his father, Mieszko II was crowned King of Poland. The older Polish historiography gave him the nickname “the lazy one”, since under his government the rapid process of disintegration of the great Polish empire that his father and grandfather had built began. Already at the beginning of Mieszko's reign, the German Emperor Konrad II demanded the surrender of the Polish coronation insignia , since his coronation took place without his consent. When Mieszko refused, his older half-brother Bezprym, his brother Otto and the family of his father's stepmother, Oda von Haldensleben , joined the emperor. Konrad led a first (unsuccessful) campaign against Poland in 1029, which led him to Lausitz . Mieszko tried to forestall the union of his opponents in 1028 and 1030 with preventive blows against the eastern parts of the empire , Saxony and Thuringia , but achieved little success. A second attack by Konrad, on the other hand, ended the Polish rule in Lusatia in September 1031. The collapse of Mieszko's rule was only triggered by the simultaneous attack by the Kiev Grand Duke Yaroslav , in whose wake Bezprym returned to the country. Poland was caught in a pincer, Mieszko fled to Duke Udalrich of Bohemia, who was enemies with the imperial family. In the same year, the future Bohemian heir to the throne Břetislav I was able to expel the Polish occupation from his duchy in Moravia and finally connect this province with the crown of Bohemia . Bezprym became the new ruler of Poland in November 1031 and handed over the coronation insignia to the emperor.
After a few months, Bezprym was murdered in the spring of 1032 and Mieszko II was able to return home. The return of the slain king worried the imperial environment, thereupon Emperor Konrad moved again (without result) against Poland in September 1032. In order to relax the situation in the West, Mieszko sought a compromise with the emperor. Konrad recognized him as ruler in Poland, but refused him any royal honors on the Merseburg Court Day on July 7, 1033 and appointed co-regents: Dietrich from the Haldensleben family , a relative of his father's stepmother, and Otto, Mieszko's youngest brother. When both died shortly afterwards (either removed from power or murdered), Mieszko was temporarily able to rule alone again until he died on May 10, 1034. Richeza and her son, successor to their father, Kasimir Karl , later called "the renewer", could not assert themselves in the hostile environment and had to flee in 1037 (possibly as early as 1034) from the country shaken by religious and social unrest.
After his death, Mieszko II left a war-torn country behind. With the renunciation of the royal dignity, Poland was again dependent on the Roman-German Empire for decades from 1033.
literature
- Gerard Labuda : Mieszko II król Polski (1025-1034). Czasy przełomu w dziejach państwa polskiego (= Polska Akademia Umiejętności. Rozprawy Wydziału Historyczno-Filozoficznego. 73). Sesescja, Kraków 1992, ISBN 83-85483-46-2 .
- Eduard Mühle : The Piasts. Poland in the Middle Ages (= Beck series. 2709). CH Beck, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-61137-7 .
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ To the Emperor Konrad II at the court conference in Merseburg in 1032, he renounced himself to be called King of Poland in order to buy himself peace.
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Boleslaw I. |
King of Poland 1025-1032 |
Bezprym |
| Bezprym |
Duke of Poland 1032-1034 |
Casimir I. Karl |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mieszko II. Lambert |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Mieszko the Lazy; Mieszko Lambert |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | King, later Duke of Poland |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 990 |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 10, 1034 |