Rudolf III. (Habsburg-Laufenburg)

Rudolf III. (Habsburg-Laufenburg) (* July 15, 1270 ; † December 22, 1314 in Montpellier ) was Count of Habsburg-Laufenburg , a branch of the Dukes of Austria. In the wake of King Henry VII , he took part in the campaign against Lombardy.

Life

Rudolf was the son of Gottfried I. Graf Habsburg-Laufenburg and Adelheid von Freiburg, daughter of Egino (Egon) V. Graf von Urach zu Freiburg and sister of Konrad. He was still a minor when his father returned home from Ottokar Přemysl's campaign against Hungary in 1271 and soon succumbed to his injuries. The younger brother Gottfried died shortly after the father, in the same year. Initially his two uncles Rudolf II and Eberhard I were his guardians, with Rudolf, provost in Basel and then in 1274 Bishop of Constance , campaigning for his ward, while Eberhard took care of the Kyburg possessions he had acquired through marriage from 1273 onwards . In 1288 he took up his reign.

Rudolf liked to stay at Rapperswil Castle , but showed himself more often in Laufenburg. In 1310 he was given the bailiwick in the Urserental (Gotthard).

Soon afterwards, the imperial bailiwick slipped from him over the Waldstätte in central Switzerland, over Zurich and Constance, and the attempt to gain bailiff's rule over the St. Blasien monastery failed him.

He was a supporter of the Nassauer King Adolf - at the time the Laufenburgs were mostly bitter opponents of the Austrian Habsburg line - and moved to Frankfurt in autumn 1297. In the Battle of Göllheim he fought for King Adolf against his cousin Duke Albrecht , but there he was taken prisoner. He had to pay homage to the new king and was released back home, where he held the title of landgrave in Zurichgau in 1305. After Albrecht's death, he joined King Henry VII. This appointed him in the spring of 1310 as Reichslandvogt in Thurgau and Zürichgau . At the end of 1310 or beginning of 1311 he joined Henry's army in Lombardy , but returned home in the summer of 1311 and was now, like the king himself, on friendly terms with the dukes of Austria. If Duke Leopold was in the upper lands , he was often near it. Two letters written by Rudolf in 1313 and addressed to King John of Bohemia and Poland and his councilor, Count Bertold von Henneberg, are among the oldest German-language letters. After the double election of Frederick the Fair and Ludwig of Bavaria in October 1314, Count Rudolf was hardly at home any more. To recover from an illness he went to southern France in 1314. He died on January 22, 1315 in Montpellier .

family

Rudolf III. was a son of Gottfried I , through his marriage in 1296 with Elisabeth von Rapperswil († 1309), from the house of Count Rapperswil , the widow of Count Ludwig von Homberg († April 27, 1289), he became the holder of the Laufenburg line the Habsburgs. In his second marriage he married Maria von Oettingen († 1369).

Rudolf and Maria had a son:

• Johann († September 21, 1337 near Grynau on the upper Lake Zurich ), was Landgrave in Klettgau, governor of Austria in Thurgau, Aargau and the Black Forest

literature

• Georg von Wyß , Karl Bartsch:  Habsburg-Laufenburg . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, p. 286. (Family article, p. 284–288)

Remarks

1. ^ Fridolin Jehle: History of the city of Laufenburg . Volume 1 The Common City , 1979, p. 27.
2. ^ JR Dietrich: German letters from Count Rudolf von Habsburg-Laufenburg from the year 1314. In: Mitteilungen aus dem Germanisches Nationalmuseum. 1891, pp. 70-79.
3. ^ Gerhard Eis : Supplements to the author's lexicon : Rudolf von Habsburg-Laufenburg. In: Studia neophilologica. Volume 43, No. 2, 1971, p. 419.

predecessor	Office	successor
Gottfried I.	Landgrave in Klettgau 1271–1314 Rudolf II (until 1288) and Eberhard I (until 1284) guardian	Johann I.