Death
Rudolph died in Speyer on 15 July 1291, and was buried in the Speyer Cathedral. Although he had a large family, he was survived by only one son, Albert, afterwards the German king Albert I. Most of his daughters outlived him, apart from Katharina who had died in 1282 during childbirth and Hedwig who had died in 1285/6.
Rudolph's reign is most memorable for his establishment of the House of Habsburg as a powerful dynasty in the southeastern parts of the realm. In the other territories, the centuries-long decline of the Imperial authority since the days of the Investiture Controversy continued, and the princes were largely left to their own devices.
In the Divine Comedy, Dante finds Rudolph sitting outside the gates of Purgatory with his contemporaries, and berates him as "he who neglected that which he ought to have done".
Read more about this topic: Rudolph I Of Germany
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