Rudolf II of Werdenberg-Rheineck

Count Rudolf II of Werdenberg-Rheineck (* around 1370 , † around 1420 ) was a count who descended from the Count Palatine of Tübingen through the Counts of Montfort . When he was harassed, he temporarily joined the Appenzell people in their fight against Duke Friedrich IV of Tyrol and the nobility in his vicinity and was therefore undeservedly declared a freedom hero above prejudice of class.

Live and act

Rudolf II. Was the son of Heinrich III. von Werdenberg-Rheineck († 1391/92), the third of the four grandchildren of Albrecht I of Werdenberg-Heiligenberg . His father died early when Rudolf, the eldest of three brothers, had barely outgrown his youth. Through the grandchildren of Albrecht I, the whole estate of the Werdenberg-Heiligenberg family was through repeated divisions into the four lordships of Werdenberg , Rheineck , Bludenz and Heiligenbergbeen dismembered. In the meantime, the last Count of Montfort-Feldkirch sold his entire rule to the House of Austria during his lifetime, and the House of Werdenberg-Sargans, which is also closely linked to Austria, had adopted an increasingly hostile attitude towards Werdenberg-Heiligenberg.

When the youthful Rudolf II assumed the rule of Werdenberg and Hugo V, who was a few years his junior, assumed the rule of Rheineck (the third brother Heinrich was obviously not yet of age at the time), the moment seemed to the lurking enemies to attack Werdenberg-Heiligenberg . On November 3, 1393, Count Johann I von Sargans , Count Heinrich I von Sargans-Vaduz , his brother Bishop Hartmann von Chur and Abbot Burkhart von Pfävers entered into a formal alliance against the two brothers von Werdenberg-Rheineck and their uncle Albrecht III . to Bludenz and Albrecht IV. to Heiligenberg together.

But it did not kick off until Duke Leopold IV of Habsburg headed this alliance and took over its leadership. As early as 1390, with the death of the last Count of Montfort-Feldkirch, this Vorarlberg rule fell to him. On May 23, 1393, by buying Sax and Gams, he had driven a wedge between the Werdenberg holdings in the lower and upper Rhine valley, and in April 1394 Count Albrecht III. von Bludenz had been induced to get himself to safety from the impending storm by selling his entire rule to Austria - as Count Rudolf IV. von Montfort-Feldkirch had done before - in anticipation of his approaching death.

Thereupon Duke Leopold IV of Habsburg united with the Bund in 1393 to formally divide the remaining Werdenberg landscapes above Lake Constance. Austria claimed the lion's share for itself: what from the walnut tree to the Räfis ob Werdenberg on both sides of the Rhine down to Lake Constance, what is in the St. Johann valley and this valley down to the Thurgau . On June 30, 1395, the expanded alliance in Freiburg im Breisgau was concluded; in the last week of August the disaster struck the Werdenbergs.

The bailiwick of the Rhine Valley and the town and castle of Rheineck, where Hugo V and Albrecht IV of Heiligenberg had waited for the attack, fell into the hands of the duke after a brief resistance. Rudolf was able to hold out against all attacks at Werdenberg Castle; but in January 1396 he felt compelled to pledge the St. Johanner or upper Thur valley with the Starkenstein fortress to Austria and commit to keeping the other Werdenberg castles open. In November 1397 he even had to give the permanent places in Werdenberg, Freudenberg and Hohentrins as a pledge to his uncle zu Bludenz, who was already half dependent on Austria .

His marriage to Beatrix von Fürstenberg , a widowed Countess von Mömpelgard, brought him a dowry of 4,000 pounds of Hellern and thus enabled him to redeem those festivals. But in 1401 a new armed conflict between the Werdenbergs and Austria seems to have turned out unhappy for them, so that they were forced to pledge the castles and dominions of Wartau and Freudenberg to Leopold IV and Werdenberg to Count Heinrich von Montfort-Tettnang, to whom they Later, in August 1404, Duke Friedrich IV of Austria was suddenly attacked.

In the fight against Werdenberg Austria had achieved what it had strived for from the beginning, and even more than that. Rudolf II, however, was already completely detached from his home country when he joined Landammann and common peasants of Appenzell on October 28, 1404 swore to come back to his own with her help; in return he was supposed to help the Appenzellers against all with the exception of the Roman king and the upper part in Kurwalchen , and all of his castles and cities that he now owns or still wins should be their open houses. It is known that Rudolf von Werdenberg then fought with the Appenzellern on June 17th 1405 against the Austrians and their allies. As far as one can see, the unnatural alliance brought him only Zwingenstein Castle in the Rhineland ; there was no question of any further restitution of his lost lands, although the city of St. Gallen intervened several times in his favor with the country people of Appenzell, allied with it.

Deceived in his hopes, Rudolf went back to the Swabian aristocratic comrades and seems to have sent the Appenzell people his letter of rejection in December 1407, when they were before Bregenz . If this assumption is correct, he would probably have been there when the besieged Bregenz was appalled by the Swabian knighthood on January 23, 1408 and the miners' lust for battle was so thoroughly dampened by a severe defeat that they completely surrendered their great union over the lake . Once again we find the brothers Rudolf and Hugo von Werdenberg in dispute with Austria over a demand for 8,000 pounds of Hellern; in September 1410 they were rejected by an arbitration award. From then on, Rudolf only appears now and then in documents pertaining to the St. Gallen Oberland and which lead to the conclusion with certainty that he and his wife retired to the castle and rule of Hohentrin, which he still had as free property was. There was no longer any question of redeeming the other pledged areas; The fortress of Wartau and its accessories were sold by Count Rudolf to the last Count of Toggenburg in 1414 after Uncle Albrecht auf Heiligenberg had sold his castle and county to Duke Friedrich of Austria the year before. Three or four years later Albrecht IV died childless as well as probably Rudolf in 1420 and his brother Hugo in 1428 (both also without descendants). And with that, the Werdenberg-Heiligenberg line, the oldest in the entire building, went out.

literature

• Hermann Wartmann:  Werdenberg, Count of . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 41, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1896, pp. 749-759.