Margarethe von Österreich

Margaret of Austria was born in Vienna in 1346, the daughter of Duke Albert II of Austria and his wife, Joan of Pfirt. She belonged to the House of Habsburg and, through her two marriages, played a role in the dynastic and political relationships linking the Habsburgs, the Wittelsbachs, and the Bohemian-Moravian princely houses. She first became Countess of Tyrol and later Margravine of Moravia. She died at only about nineteen years of age. Her first marriage was arranged as part of a political rapprochement between the Habsburgs and the House of Wittelsbach. On 10 August 1352, Margaret and Meinhard III of Bavaria had exchanged a marriage promise at Baden in Aargau. Born in 1344, Meinhard was Duke of Bavaria and Count of Tyrol. Margaret’s father, Albert II, sought to improve relations with Meinhard’s family through the union. Meinhard’s parents, Louis V of Bavaria and Margaret of Carinthia, likewise aimed to restore peaceful relations with the Habsburgs. The marriage was celebrated in Munich around 3 September 1359. It was accompanied by extensive financial arrangements. Margaret’s dowry was set at 30,000 florins. In addition, Louis V paid a counter-dowry of 45,000 florins and a morning gift of 12,500 florins. Meinhard secured several properties for his wife as her widow’s settlement. These had previously formed part of the widow’s estate of his mother, Margaret of Carinthia: Landsberg, Weilheim, Pähl, and Bad Aibling. The marriage also required ecclesiastical authorization because Margaret and Meinhard were related. They were related in the third and fourth degrees. On the orders of Pope Innocent VI, Bishop Paul of Gurk granted the necessary dispensation on 3 September 1359. The pope had ordered the authorization as early as April 1358, explicitly citing the goal of promoting peace between the families involved. The arrangement was unusually comprehensive. The Church first recognized retrospectively the marriage of Meinhard’s parents, Louis V and Margaret of Carinthia, then legitimized Meinhard, and finally granted the dispensation for his marriage to Margaret. Albert II of Austria had exerted considerable pressure in support of this decision. Margaret’s marriage to Meinhard lasted only a few years. Meinhard III died on 13 January 1363, leaving Margaret a widow. She married again around 26 February 1364 in Vienna, this time to John Henry of Moravia, Margrave of Moravia and Prince of Bohemia. John Henry, who lived from 1322 to 1375, had already been married three times; Margaret became his fourth wife. The second marriage was arranged by Margaret’s brother, Rudolf IV of Austria. It formed part of Habsburg family policy aimed at securing and expanding the family’s influence in Carinthia and Tyrol. In return for a new dowry of 10,000 Prague groschen, Margaret officially renounced all claims to the Habsburg inheritance. She also relinquished rights to the March of Brandenburg that had come to her through her first marriage. This union likewise required an ecclesiastical dispensation. Pope Urban V granted it retroactively at Avignon on 30 May 1364 because Margaret and John Henry were related in the third degree. At the same time, there appears to have been another obstacle under canon law: John Henry was related to Margaret’s first husband, Meinhard III, so remarriage to a relative of a former spouse was generally considered problematic. The papal curia, however, seems not to have taken this impediment into account. Neither of Margaret’s marriages produced children. She died in Brno on 14 January 1366 and was buried there in the Church of St. Thomas. A later claim that she had also been married to Otto V of Bavaria, the Margrave of Brandenburg, resulted from an error by the historian Johann Jakob Fugger. Margaret’s short life was shaped above all by dynastic marriage plans intended to reconcile political families and expand Habsburg interests in late medieval Central Europe.