Albrecht II: heirs at last

Albrecht II: heirs at
last
The lack of surviving male heirs threatened the very
existence of the young Habsburg dynasty. Five sons
had been born to Albrecht and Joan in fifteen years of
marriage, but all had died shortly after birth. The
dynasty was on the brink of extinction, as none of
Albrecht’s five brothers had left surviving male
offspring.
As a last resort the couple undertook a pilgrimage to Aix-leChapelle, following which their first surviving son, Rudolf, was
born in autumn 1339. He was to be followed by three further
sons: Frederick III (1347–1362), who died in a hunting accident
at the age of fifteen, Albrecht III (1349 or 1350–1393) and
Leopold III (1351–1386), under whom the House of Habsburg
divided into two lines, a development that Albrecht tried to
prevent with a dynastic regulation decreed in 1355, according
to which his sons were to rule jointly. Aged fifty-one (!) at the
time, Albrecht’s wife died shortly after the birth of her last son.
As well as the three sons, two daughters, Catherine (1342–
1387) and Margaret (1346–1366), were born to the couple. The
elder girl joined the order of the Poor Clares in Vienna, later
becoming mother superior of the convent. The younger
daughter Margaret was promised in infancy as the bride of
Meinhard III, son of the heir to Tyrol, Margaret Maultasch, from
her marriage to Louis of Brandenburg from the Wittelsbach
dynasty. Despite her husband’s early death in 1363 this
marriage provided a further argument for the assumption of
power in Tyrol by the Habsburgs in 1365.
Margaret later married into the Luxembourg dynasty, the rivals
of the Habsburgs in the Empire and in Tyrol. Her husband was
John Henry, Margrave of Moravia, a brother of Emperor Charles
IV. A curious detail here was that Henry had previously been
married to Margaret Maultasch; marked by massive antipathy
between the couple, the marriage was finally dissolved on the
grounds of non-consummation following a complicated and
long-drawn-out canonical case.
Author
Martin Mutschlechner
Literature
Hamann, Brigitte (Hg.): Die Habsburger. Ein biographisches
Hamann, Brigitte (Hg.): Die Habsburger. Ein biographisches
Lexikon, Wien 1988
Niederstätter, Alois: Die Herrschaft Österreich. Fürst und Land im
Spätmittelalter (= Österreichische Geschichte 1278–1411, hg. von
Herwig Wolfram), Wien 2001
Vacha, Brigitte (Hg.): Die Habsburger. Eine europäische
Familiengeschichte, Graz 1993
Vocelka, Karl / Heller, Lynne: Die Lebenswelt der Habsburger.
Kultur- und Mentalitätsgeschichte einer Familie, Graz 1997
Vocelka, Karl / Heller, Lynn: Die private Welt der Habsburger,
Wien 1998
Wandruszka, Adam: Das Haus Habsburg. Die Geschichte einer
europäischen Dynastie (5. Aufl.), Wien u. a. 1984
Die Zeit der frühen Habsburger. Dome und Klöster 1279–1379.
Katalog der niederösterreichischen Landesaustellung in Wiener
Neustadt 1979, Wien 1979.