Ursula (Waldburg House)

Truchsess Ursula von Waldburg (* before / around 1400 ; † after January 17, 1449 ) was a daughter of Truchsess Johannes II von Waldburg († 1424) and therefore belonged to an influential family of the lower nobility who owned it in the 15th century successfully managed to maintain and expand their position. As the wife of the knight Ulrich von Starkenberg from one of the most powerful noble families in the County of Tyrol , she was involved in the Starkenberg feud , a dispute with Duke Friedrich IV of Austria (as the Tyrolean sovereign). She became known for her (ultimately unsuccessful) defense of Schenna Castle in the winter of 1422/23.

family

The Waldburg Truchsesse has been documented since the middle of the 12th century. Originally Ministeriale (probably only in the late Middle Ages) they rose to the rank of lower Swabian nobility and, through skillful economic and marriage policies, later also rose to the nobility.

Ursula probably came from her father's fourth marriage to Ursula von Abensberg († 1422). She was a (half?) Sister of the Truchsess Jakob I von Trauchburg (called the Golden Knight ), Eberhard I zu Scheer and Friedberg (the later Count of Sonnenberg (1424–1479)) and of Georg von Waldburg-Zeil . Her (half?) Sister Verena von Waldburg married the well-known feud entrepreneur Hans von Rechberg . Through the marriages of her brothers and other sisters, she was related by marriage to some other important Swabian aristocratic families (Counts of Werdenberg and Montfort , lords of Gundelfingen and Klingenberg ).

Around 1413 Ursula von Waldburg married the knight Ulrich von Starkenberg , son of the then deceased knight Sigmund von Starkenberg from his marriage to Osanna von Ems . Two children are documented from this marriage:

• Ulrich (* around / after 1413 and before 1424; † died in the 1420s), with his death the family died out in the male line.
• Veronika (* around / after 1413 and before 1424; † around / after 1489) ∞ (1449) Freiherr Bernhard Gradner von Windisch-Grätz († 1489 in Eglisau ), no descendants

Life

Ursula after her marriage

Ulrich von Starkenberg († after 1424; declared dead in 1430) and his younger brother Wilhelm († around 1452) were among the most powerful, respected and influential noblemen in Tyrol. Among them, the Starkenbergs reached their greatest expansion with their own castles and lordships, which under their father Sigmund von Starkenberg and their grandfather came into the possession or under the rule of the family partly through inheritance, partly through purchase and partly as pledges: Alt -Starkenberg, Gebratstein , Ehrenberg (from 1293), Naturns , Schenna (from 1370), Kronburg (from 1380), Turm zu Ried (from 1381), Goien (from 1384), Greifenstein (from 1386), Jufal (from 1388) , Klamm (from 1398/99), Forst (from 1405), Hocheppan (from 1400) and the courts of Schlanders and Ulten .

Ursula and Ulrich were married to Ursula's father, Johannes II von Waldburg, and Ulrich's already widowed mother, Osanna von Ems († after 1418). Through them an alliance was concluded between two powerful noble families in Tyrol and the imperial landscape of Swabia . Ursula and Ulrich married around 1413. In that year she was on a trip through Tyrol in the entourage of Duchess Anna of Austria, who married Duke Friedrich IV. In 1410, so she was already in Tyrol. In addition, Ulrich assured her on May 27, 1413 3,000 Rhenish gulden home tax and 2,000 gulden morning gift on the vessel at Obermays and numerous slopes in the Adige Valley. She in turn bequeathed her home tax and morning gift to her husband and his heirs in the event of her death on June 24, 1414, after renouncing her father's heir at the regional court in Swabia on June 6, 1413, which was common at that time among the nobility Method. With that she was de jure , but also, as was customary at the time with a marriage, withdrawn from the association of her family, Truchsesse von Waldburg, which meant that she was completely destitute after the fall of the Starkenberger. Around 1423 (shortly before the death of her father) her morning gift was increased.

After her marriage, Ursula was one of the richest women of the Tyrolean nobility for many years. She managed her own property (and that of her husband in his absence) and kept her own seal. That she acted very cautiously, for example, shows her cautious approach when her family got involved in the conflict between Martin Jäger, who managed Forst Castle for the Starkenberger, and Oswald von Wolkenstein over Hauenstein Castle .

The Starkenberg feud

In 1421, Duke Friedrich demanded from the Starkenbergers the surrender of the Schlander pledge or wanted to trigger it, which Ulrich initially tried to prevent through a delaying tactic. (The source situation, even when reduced to contemporary sources, is very opaque and contradictory.) As a result, the Duke demanded the surrender of further pledges. When Duke Friedrich occupied the court in Silandro in November of this year, while Ulrich and his brother Wilhelm were participating in a campaign against the Hussites for Duke Albrecht V of Austria , the situation came to a head.

On December 3, 1422, Count Wilhelm von Matsch († 1429), governor of Tyrol since 1417 , declared the feud against the Starkenburgern. As part of this feud, which went down in the history of Tyrol as the Starkenberg feud , the castles of Schenna, Greifenstein and another castle were besieged. Further castles and palaces of the Starkenbergs, where a targeted defense was not attempted or not ultimately not possible, were taken possession of by the duke as a further consequence. Between December 1422 and February 1423 Ursula personally organized the defense of Schenna Castle, but on January 15, 1423 she was forced to agree to an armistice that was agreed by February 22, 1423. Since there was no help, she was forced to hand over the castle for free withdrawal.

The official uprising of some other Tyrolean aristocrats in June of the same year, which is now known as the aristocratic revolt and in which King Sigmund played a key role, who even enfeoffed Ulrich in a document with the County of Tyrol, failed due to resistance from the Tyrolean estates and one lack of support from other imperial estates. In the same year the aristocratic revolt was dissolved by the provincial estates in a state parliament with reference to the Tyrolean provincial interests, with most of the aristocrats involved being granted a pardon. The Starkenbergers were expressly excluded from this.

The end of the Starkenberg feud

After the fall of Schenna, Ursula probably went to Ravensburg with her children , where her father was based at the time and where Ulrich is also proven for some time. It was finally possible to set an arbitration day for the summer of 1424, on which Ulrich and Wilhelm had high hopes. It was probably in this context that they had the Starkenburger Rotulus , a collection of documents, put together, which is now considered the most important contemporary source on the Starkenberg feud (with the caveat that it is a partisan source). The sudden death of the (Arch) Duke Ernst I of Austria in May 1424, who was designated as one of the three arbitrators, meant that the arbitration day could no longer take place. The conclusion of the Treaty of Hornstein in 1425, which was concluded between Duke Friedrich IV and King Sigmund through the mediation of Duke Albrecht V of Austria, should have finally sealed the defeat of the Starkenburger. At the end of 1426 or in 1427 their castle Greifenstein, which had been besieged since the beginning of the Starkenburger feud , came about .

Since the spring of 1424, the family interests are only represented by Wilhelm von Starkenberg, who had meanwhile also left Tyrol. From this point onwards, Ulrich von Starkenberg can no longer be identified as an active actor. His further fate is unclear. In 1430 Ulrich was declared dead by the imperial court in Rottweil after Ursula had taken an oath in this regard.

The last years of life

After the fall of Greifenstein Castle, Ursula returned to Tyrol in 1427, after having received permission from Duke Friedrich to pick up her movable property or parts of it. She had to leave them there in 1423 after Schenna was handed over. However, she had to take an oath to give him all letters, land registers or registers that belonged to her husband or his brother and were still in her possession.

There are only a few certain facts about the further fate of Ursula. She should have settled in Ravensburg . In the years up to Duke Friedrich's death, even after her son Ulrich had died, she waged a bitter struggle to get back at least part of the Starkenberger's fortune. In addition, she demanded compensation from those who at the time had taken on the guarantee for her home tax and morning gift, whereby she did not hesitate to prosecute those who did not want to come to an amicable agreement with her before the court court in Rottweil . The judgments were mostly in their favor, but could not always be carried out.

In 1435 she and her brother-in-law Wilhelm and her daughter Veronika brought another lawsuit against the duke at the emperor, who on January 15, 1435 commissioned his son-in-law, Duke Albrecht, to make the judicial verdict. In 1437 Duke Albrecht V issued several "letters of judgment" by which Duke Friedrich IV was instructed to recognize Ursula's morning gift and home tax on the former starkberg estates and to give her her treasures. Since Ursula subsequently took further legal steps, these "letters of judgment" should have brought nothing.

After Duke Sigmund of Austria took control of Tyrol in 1446, an agreement was finally reached. Wilhelm von Starkenberg received back the castle and the court of Schenna and some other possessions that had once belonged to his family and in return renounced all other goods and castles that had been taken from the Starkenberg family. The agreement might have been brokered by Baron Bernhard Gradner, a follower and at the time a close confidante of Duke Sigmund. Bernhard Gradner married Wilhelm's niece Veronika on January 21, 1449, and after Wilhelm's death (around 1452) he inherited him. A few days before her daughter's wedding on January 17, 1449, Ursula also renounced all outstanding claims in return for an annual personal asset that her Duke Sigmund had put out. Ursula's year of death is unknown, but she should have died soon after;

literature

• Karin Kranich-Hofbauer: Der Starkenbergische Rotulus: handwriting, edition, interpretation (Innsbruck contributions to cultural studies. Germanistic series 51). Innsbruck: Institute for German Studies, 1994, ISBN 3-901064-12-5 (main source of this article)
• David von Schönherr : Schenna Castle, its history and its owners. Pötzelberger, Meran 1886 ( digitized version ).
• Ute Monika Schwob: "Mistresses" in Tyrolean sources. On the legal and social position of noble women in the Middle Ages , in: Egon Kühebacher (Hrsg.): Literature and fine arts in the Tyrolean Middle Ages. The Iwein frescos by Rodenegg and other evidence of the interaction between literature and the fine arts (= Innsbruck contributions to cultural studies. Germanistic series 15), Innsbruck 1982, pp. 111–121
• Joseph Vochezer: History of the Princely House of Waldburg in Swabia , 1888, Vol. 1, pp. 379–496

Remarks

1. ↑ A good summary of this in Karin Kranich-Hofbauer: About it I answer ulrich von Starckenbergk . Parts of the conversation and dialogical minutes of conversations in Tyrolean files from the 1st half of the 15th century, in: Gebhardt, Michael - Siller Max (Ed.): Literature and Language in Tyrol. From the beginning to the 16th century. Files from the 3rd Symposium of the Sterzing Easter Games (April 10-12, 1995) (= Schlern-Schriften 301), Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner 1996, p. 407f.
2. ↑ Since she was married around 1413, she could also have been from his second or third marriage.
3. ↑ Ute Monika Schwob: 'Mistresses' in Tiroler Quellen , 1982, p. 165
4. ↑ Information on Osanna von Starkenberg can be found in Ute Monika Schwob: 'Mistresses' in Tiroler Quellen , 1982, pp. 171f.
5. ↑ Ute Monika Schwob: 'Mistresses' in Tiroler Quellen , 1982, p. 165
6. ↑ Ute Monika Schwob: 'Mistresses' in Tiroler Quellen , 1982, p. 165
7. ↑ Ute Monika Schwob: 'Mistresses' in Tiroler Quellen , 1982, p. 165
8. ↑ Karin Kranich-Hofbauer: The Starkenberg Rotulus. Handschrift - Edition - Interpretation, 1994, p. 333
9. ↑ Ute Monika Schwob: 'Herrinnen' in Tiroler Quellen , 1982, p. 171. Schwob assumes that he was still alive at the time and that this declaration of death was a strategic measure by Ursula, at least remnants of Starkenberg's To be able to save assets through litigation by invoking their rights as a widow.
10. ↑ Ute Monika Schwob: 'Mistresses' in Tiroler Quellen , 1982, p. 165
11. ↑ Karin Kranich-Hofbauer: The Starkenberg Rotulus. Handschrift - Edition - Interpretation, 1994, p. 333