Early Life
Rudolph was the son of Count Albert IV of Habsburg and Hedwig, daughter of Count Ulrich of Kyburg, and was born at Limburg Castle near Sasbach am Kaiserstuhl in the Breisgau region. At his father's death in 1239, he inherited large estates from his father around the ancestral seat of Habsburg Castle in the Aargau region of present-day Switzerland as well as in Alsace. In 1245 Rudolph married Gertrude, daughter of Count Burkhard III of Hohenberg. As a result, he became an important vassal in Swabia, the former Alemannic German stem duchy.
Rudolph paid frequent visits to the court of his godfather, the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II, and his loyalty to Frederick and his son, King Conrad IV of Germany, was richly rewarded by grants of land. In 1254, he was excommunicated by Pope Innocent IV as a supporter of King Conrad, due to ongoing political conflicts between the Emperor, who held the Kingdom of Sicily and wanted to reestablish his power in the Imperial Kingdom of Italy, especially in the Lombardy region, and the Papacy, whose States lay in between and feared being overpowered by the Emperor.
Read more about this topic: Rudolph I Of Germany
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“We attempt to remember our collective American childhood, the way it was, but what we often remember is a combination of real past, pieces reshaped by bitterness and love, and, of course, the video past—the portrayals of family life on such television programs as “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” and all the rest.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)