Battle of Göllheim

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Battlefield (plan from 1879)

The Battle of Göllheim , or more rarely the Battle of the Hasenbühl , took place on July 2nd, 1298 on the Hasenbühl , a hill on the outskirts of the northern Palatinate municipality of Göllheim (in today's state of Rhineland-Palatinate ), between the troops of the Habsburg Duke Albrecht of Austria and the Roman-German King Adolf von Nassau . The cause of the armed conflict was the deposition of Adolf by the electors and the proclamation of Albrecht as the opposing king . Adolf lost his life in the battle.

prehistory

Battle of the two kings in the battle of Göllheim, historicizing illustration by Hermann Plüddemann , 1855

When Rudolf von Habsburg died in 1291, the electors, who did not want a strong kingship, did not elect his son Albrecht, who was endowed with great household power , as king of the Holy Roman Empire , but rather the insignificant Count Adolf von Nassau, after having wrested considerable concessions from him had. Because Adolf did not grant the hoped-for, and in some cases even promised, benefits, the majority of the electors dropped him in 1298 and declared him deposed in June; at the same time they proclaimed Albrecht, who had been passed over six years earlier, to be king without an election.

Albrecht had already complied with the request of the Archbishop of Mainz , who was one of the Electors , to move to the Rhine and fight Adolf militarily. This opposed Albrecht's troops with their own army. In the run-up to the decisive battle, Albrecht avoided Adolf's troops, who wanted to stop him on the march west, near Ulm and Breisach and then pushed through the Upper Rhine Plain to the north as far as the Mainz area. Albrecht's troops, who came from the Habsburg territories, Hungary and Switzerland and which also included those of Prince-Bishop Heinrich II of Constance , camped near the fortified city of Alzey and enclosed the castle there.

Here, on June 23, 1298, Albrecht received the news of Adolf's deposition. Its armed forces, consisting of contingents from the Taunus area , from which Adolf came, the Palatinate Counties near the Rhine , Franconia , Lower Bavaria , Alsace and St. Gallen , advanced from the area of ​​the imperial city of Worms , about 20 km away , to relieve Alzey Castle .

Course of the battle

Historicizing battle representation; Painting by Simon Meister , Koblenz, 1829

Albrecht initially avoided the fight, but then formed his troops on July 2, 1298 in a strategically favorable position on the Hasenbühl, a hill near Göllheim. The village is located 20 km south of Alzey in the northern Palatinate between Kaiserslautern and Worms, near the Donnersberg massif .

The battle was fought in three meetings and lasted from around 9 a.m. to just after 3 p.m. Johann Geissel describes the exact course of the battle in his monograph Die Schlacht am Hasenbühl and the Königskreuz zu Göllheim from 1835. According to this, the fight was undecided for hours and did not end immediately after Adolf's death. The decision was made at the third meeting: Adolf, who is said to have attacked impetuously, was killed - with whatever weapon - perhaps by a raider named Georg. Thereupon a large part of Adolf's army turned to flee and disbanded, others initially continued to fight until they found out about Adolf's death. On the side of the loser, according to Geissel's monograph, 3,000 horses for slaughter alone were killed, and the victors' losses were not much less.

consequences

Steel engraving after a drawing by Theodor Verhas : Kloster Rosenthal, 1840
Chapel for the protection of the King's Cross

Adolf's body was first buried near Göllheim in the Cistercian convent Rosenthal , as the victor Albrecht forbade the usual royal burial in the imperial cathedral in Speyer ; Adelheid von Sayn , the wife of the monastery founder, was probably related to the Nassau house , the Adolf family. The ruin of the monastery in the valley of the Rodenbach belongs today with the hamlet of Rosenthalerhof to the local community Kerzenheim .

The outcome of the battle was generally viewed as the judgment of God . Nevertheless, Albrecht insisted on a formal election by the electors, which took place on July 27, 1298 in Frankfurt . So the kingship passed back to the Habsburgs . However, the conflicts of interest between the electors and the respective king persisted.

Adolf's widow, Imagina von Isenburg-Limburg , saw the transfer of her husband's coffin from the Rosenthal Abbey to the Speyer Cathedral in 1309. There he was buried next to his rival Albrecht, who was murdered in 1308 by his own nephew Johann . Imagina then had a stone memorial cross built in the early Gothic style on the battlefield near Göllheim , which was soon given the name of the King's Cross . In the 19th century, a chapel was built over it, which was completed in 1853 after 17 years of construction, and it is still preserved today. The site is now within the built-up area.

Violence was used against the monument at least twice. After the first damage, the details of which are unknown, Count Ludwig von Nassau-Weilburg , a descendant of Adolf, initiated a restoration in 1611. As late 18th century French Revolution troops the left bank of German territories conquered that was Christ figure heavily damaged; the severed arms were later replaced, the left leg not. Inscription panels announce all construction work and repairs; the last was made in 1898 by Wilhelm von Nassau-Weilburg , Grand Duke of Luxembourg and the last male descendant of Adolf, on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of his ancestor's death.

Quotes

The King's Cross with the text panels

The two text panels to the left and right of the King's Cross bear the following inscriptions:

"At this point, Adolph von Nassau, German Emperor, fighting knightly but unhappily for the kingdom's crown, fell against Albrecht von Habsburg, Duke of Austria."

"On the six hundred year anniversary of the heroic death of his noble ancestor, Wilhelm von Nassau, Hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg, had the coat of arms on the royal cross restored."

literature

Web links

Commons : Schlacht bei Göllheim  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Fred Weinmann: Göllheim. King Adolph lost his crown and life on the Hasenbühl. 1975, accessed October 4, 2010 .
  2. ^ German biography: Heinrich II. Von Klingenberg, life . S. 2 .
  3. ↑ a b c Berthold Schnabel : Göllheim. The King's Cross in Göllheim. 1980, accessed October 4, 2010 .
  4. ^ S. Lippert: Göllheim. The King's Cross in Göllheim. 1885, Retrieved October 4, 2010 .
  5. ↑ Göllheim. suehnekreuz.de, accessed on October 4, 2010 (contrary to the inscription, Adolf was king and not emperor).

Coordinates: 49 ° 35 ′ 33.5 ″  N , 8 ° 2 ′ 39.5 ″  E