Frederick II, Duke of Austria

Frederick II, known as the Quarrelsome ( born June 15, 1211 Wiener Neustadt, † June 15, 1246 in the Battle of the Leitha ), from the House of Babenberg, was 1230-1246 Duke of Austria and Styria.

Life

Frederick was the only surviving son of his father, Duke Leopold VI. and Theodora Angels, a Byzantine princess.

He was married in first marriage of childless Sophia of Hungary, in second with Agnes of Meranien. By his marriage (1229-1243) with Agnes of Meranien, the huge areas in Carniola and of the Wendish Mark and Allode Neuburg had introduced at the lower Inn as a dowry, he felt entitled to call himself Dominus 1232 Carniolae ( Lord of Krain ). 1243 he had divorced her and kept the goods at the Inn.

His nickname of the Quarrelsome was not given to him wrongly - it was time his government is constantly involved in fights with all its neighbors - especially with Hungary, Bavaria and Bohemia. Also, the previously loyal to the Duke House devoted Kuenringer rose at the beginning of his reign against him. But the most dangerous were his disputes with Emperor Frederick II, who in 1236 even ostracized him. Vienna was a free imperial city during his ban for a few years. But he could keep in Wiener Neustadt. However, in 1239 there was a spectacular twist in the imperial policy - Friedrich became an important ally of the emperor. He negotiated with him about the collection of Vienna to a diocese, and even on the increase in Austria ( with Styria ) to a kingdom. One condition would be a marriage of his niece Gertrud with the then almost fifty years emperor was what the girl but refused. He fell in 1246 in the Battle of the Leitha against the Hungarian King Béla IV; with him the Babenberg became extinct in the male line.

Frederick the Quarrelsome forms as the last Babenberg an epochal change in the history of Austria. In his high-flying plans his eventual successor Rudolf IV not dissimilar, he was repeatedly a victim of its unstable character.

Were entitled to inherit after him (because the privilege minus the female succession foresaw ) his sister Margaret and his niece Gertrude of Austria. Gertrude married in 1246 first Vladislav of Moravia, a son of King Wenceslas I of Bohemia. The marriage lasted only a few months since Vladislav died soon. In his second marriage in 1248 she married Hermann von Baden, located in Austria, however, could not enforce properly and also died young. 1252 she went her third marriage with novel Halicz, a relative of the Hungarian King, a. This was, as the duchies of Margarete were awarded divorced. Margaret was married to the more than twenty years younger Ottokar Přemysl. Thereupon Austria became a field of conflict between Přemyslids and Arpad, this conflict Ottokar was able to prevail for the time being.

Reception

By the imperial resolution of Franz Joseph I of February 28, 1863, Frederick II was " the most famous, to the everlasting emulation worthy warlords and generals of Austria" in the list of added, in whose honor and remembrance also a life-size statue in the Feldherrenhalle of the then newly constructed kk Hofwaffenmuseums (now the Military History Museum Vienna) was built. The statue was created in 1870 by sculptor Josef Gasser Carrara marble, it was dedicated by Emperor Franz Joseph himself