Rudolph I of Germany - Rise To Power

Rise To Power

The disorder in Germany during the interregnum after the fall of the Hohenstaufen dynasty afforded an opportunity for Count Rudolph to increase his possessions. His wife was a Hohenberg heiress; and on the death of his childless maternal uncle, Count Hartmann IV of Kyburg in 1264, he also seized his valuable estates. Successful feuds with the Bishops of Strasbourg and Basel further augmented his wealth and reputation, including rights over various tracts of land that he purchased from abbots and others.

These various sources of wealth and influence rendered Rudolph the most powerful prince and noble in southwestern Germany (where the tribal Duchy of Swabia had disintegrated, leaving room for its vassals to become quite independent) when, in the autumn of 1273, the prince-electors met to choose a king after Richard of Cornwall had died in England the year before. Rudolph's election in Frankfurt on 29 September, when he was 55 years old, was largely due to the efforts of his brother-in-law, the Hohenzollern burgrave Frederick III of Nuremberg. The support of Duke Albert II of Saxony and Elector Palatine Louis II had been purchased by betrothing them to two of Rudolph's daughters.

As a result, within the electoral college, King Ottokar II of Bohemia (1230–1278), himself a candidate for the throne and related to the late Hohenstaufen king Philip of Swabia (being the son of the eldest surviving daughter), was almost alone in opposing Rudolph. Other candidates were Prince Siegfried I of Anhalt and Margrave Frederick I of Meissen (1257–1323), a young grandson of the excommunicated Emperor Frederick II, who however did not yet even have a principality of his own as his father still lived. With the consent of the other electors, Ottokar's dissent was neglected, and by the admission of Duke Henry XIII of Lower Bavaria, Rudolph gained all seven votes.