Viennese double wedding

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Václav Brožík : Tu felix Austria nube , 1896, Belvedere , Vienna - double wedding of Emperor Maximilian I (kneeling) with Anna of Hungary (with bridal veil) and Maria von Habsburg with Ludwig II of Hungary
Woodcut by Albrecht Dürer . v. l. To the right: Emperor Maximilian I, his granddaughter Maria, Ludwig II of Hungary next to his father King Vladislav II of Hungary, his daughter Anna and his brother King Sigismund I of Poland

The Viennese double wedding as part of what historians call the First Congress of Vienna or the Princely Congress of Vienna (July 17 to July 29, 1515) was celebrated on July 22, 1515.

At the double wedding in Vienna were

such as

married.

Historically, the double wedding in Vienna must be seen in the light of the threat posed by the Ottoman Empire (the "Turks"), which has spread to Hungary and Austria in the Balkans since the conquest of Constantinople (1453) . An important goal was to establish a unified policy for the Eastern European powers against the threat from the Ottoman Empire. The negotiations for this were successfully concluded on July 22, 1515 and the peace agreements were sealed by the two marriage contracts.

Habsburg power politics

Maximilian had already been able to strengthen the position of the Habsburgs as a major European power through a double marriage in 1496. At that time, his son Philip married the Spanish Infanta Joanna of Castile , while his daughter Margarete was married to the Spanish heir to the throne Juan . With this, the Habsburgs won the Spanish royal throne and, at the same time, rule over the Spanish colonial areas .

In 1504 he began to bind his eastern neighbors to himself by means of marriage contracts. He negotiated with the King of Hungary and Bohemia Vladislav II a promise of marriage for his newly born daughter Anna with one of his grandchildren. When Anna's mother became pregnant again, he arranged for his granddaughter Maria (* 1505) to be engaged to the unborn child in the event that the child would become a boy. In fact, on July 1, 1506, Maria's future husband Ludwig Jagiello, later Ludwig II. , Was born.

The double wedding in Vienna

The twelve-day festival devoured huge sums of money - around 200,000 guilders . Until shortly before the celebrations began, Emperor Maximilian fought for a loan with his Augsburg lender Jakob Fugger . Finally, the merchant still granted the emperor a loan of 54,000 guilders, as he had to fear for his mines in Upper Hungary in the event of a dispute between the Habsburgs and Jagiellonians; In return, the emperor had to cede the exploitation of the Tyrolean copper mines to him for 6 years.

After the financing of the major event was secured, the three rulers, Emperor Maximilian , Vladislav , King of Bohemia, Croatia and Hungary, and his brother Sigismund , King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, moved in on July 17, 1515 to the cheers of the Viennese population the city. Official negotiations on the marriage contracts began on July 20. Maximilian made a special gesture for the nine-year-old Prince Ludwig: on July 20 he adopted him in place of his son and appointed him vicar general of the German Empire and heir to the dignity of the emperor - a clever move with which the emperor violated current imperial law at the same time, however, formally gave the Habsburg the opportunity to interfere in Hungarian affairs if the worst came to the worst. During the actual negotiations about the marriage contracts, however, Maximilian was in the embarrassing position that he was not yet able to make a binding commitment for one of his two grandchildren. Charles was supposed to marry Mary Tudor , the sister of Henry VIII of England, and Ferdinand was in Spain with his grandfather Ferdinand II of Aragón , who probably had his own marriage plans. So Maximilian declared that he would marry Anna on behalf of his grandchildren. Should a marriage contract with one of his grandchildren fail to come about within a year, he would take Anna as his wife himself. So Anna acted as a virgin wife and political blank bride at the same time. The glamorous double wedding was celebrated on July 22, 1515 in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna . The ambassadors of all European states and the high nobility of the Holy Roman Empire were present . First of all, the 56-year-old Kaiser got married to the 12-year-old Anna and Kaiser Maximilian promised Anna:

“Although we have given your lover the word that you are to be our wife, this has happened in the name of our two absent grandchildren and in the opinion of marrying your lover to one of them, whom we hereby promise you. And because my grandson Carl has to inherit and await the kingdoms of Castile and Arragonia, his brother Ferdinand the kingdom of Naples, we hereby declare and call your lover a queen, and we want you to be crowned one! "

Then the 9-year-old Ludwig and the 9-year-old Maria were married. The wedding feast lasted until July 29th, and on August 3rd, the three rulers sealed an official friendship treaty.

The marriage contract for the marriage of Anna and Ferdinand was concluded within a year. However, the wedding did not take place in Linz until May 26, 1521, six years after the major event in Vienna. This marriage turned out to be one of the happiest in the history of the Habsburg family.

Political Consequences

Hungary was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1526 , during which Ludwig II lost his life. In Austria Ferdinand, who had married Anna, was able to withstand the siege; after the death of Ludwig II he was formally ruler of the Ottoman conquered Hungary, where the Ottomans, however, proclaimed Ludwig's uncle Johann Zápolya to be king. In this respect, these weddings laid the foundation stone of the “ Danube Monarchy”, which later developed into a major European power as Austria-Hungary.

See also

Marriage policy of the Habsburgs

literature

Web links

Commons : Maximilian I.  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Maximilian I.  - Sources and full texts

Remarks

  1. ↑ A guilder (fiorino d'or) consisted of 3.54 g of fine gold. The current (2015) gold price of 200,000 guilders is therefore approx. 25 million euros

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hermann Wiesflecker:  Maximilian I. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , pp. 458-471 ( digitized version )., Here p. 463
  2. ↑ a b Johannes Sachslehner : Schicksalsorte Österreichs, Vienna 2009, ISBN 9783222132780 , pp. 71–77.
  3. ↑ a b Stephan Vajda: The great history of Austria , Stuttgart, 1984, p. 210. ISBN 3870702133