Thursday, April 25, 2019

Maxmilian I , the Holy Roman Emperor



A prepaid postcard with updated stamps and first day postmarks from Austria 🇦🇹 

Well, it’s not a secret that I love history and thanks to my good friends, I keep getting the much needed fuel to keep this hunger going :) 


500th anniversary of the death of Emperor Maximilian I
Date of issue: 11-04-2019

The postcard is a prepaid postcard issued to commomerate the 550 birthday of the Emperor 

The other stamp is a personal stamp - showing the archducal hat , kept in the monastery of Klosterneuburg. 


Maximilian I,(born March 22, 1459, Wiener Neustadt, Austria / died January 12, 1519, Wels), archduke of Austria, German king, and Holy Roman emperor (1493–1519) who made his family, the Habsburgs, dominant in 16th-century Europe.


 He added vast lands to the traditional Austrian holdings, securing the Netherlands by his own marriage, Hungary and Bohemia by treaty and military pressure, and Spain and the Spanish empire by the marriage of his son Philip. He created the Landsknechte (“Servants of the Country”), a body of well-organized mercenaries, and fought a series of wars against the French, mostly in Italy. His grandson succeeded to the vast Habsburg realm and the imperial crown as Charles V.

Marriage of Mary of burgundy with Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor 

Maximilian was the eldest son of the emperor Frederick III and Eleanor of Portugal. By his marriage in 1477 to Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, Maximilian acquired the vast Burgundian possessions in the Netherlands and along the eastern frontier of France. He successfully defended his new domains against the attacks of Louis XI of France, defeating the French at the Battle of Guinegate in 1479. After Mary’s death (1482) Maximilian was forced to allow the States General(representative assembly) of the Netherlands to act as regent for his infant son Philip (later Philip I [the Handsome] of Castile), but, having defeated the States General in war, he reacquired control of the regency in 1485.


Charles VIII of France 

Meanwhile, by the Treaty of Arras (1482), Maximilian was also forced to consent to the betrothal of his daughter Margaret of Austria to Charles VIII of France. In 1486 he was elected king of the Romans (heir to his father, the emperor). With the military help of Spain, England, and Brittany, he continued his war against France. In order to surround France, Maximilian in 1490 married Duchess Anne of Brittany by proxy but could not forestall an invasion of Brittany by the French. A dramatic setback occurred when Charles VIII sent his fiancée Margaret back to her father and required Anne to sever her marriage with Maximilian and to become the queen of France.By 1490 he had regained control of most of his family’s traditional territories in Austria, which had been seized by Hungary. He then became a candidate for the vacant Hungarian throne. When Vladislas (Ulászló) II of Bohemia was elected instead, he waged a successful campaign against Vladislas. By the Treaty of Pressburg in 1491, he arranged that the succession to Bohemia and Hungary would pass to the Habsburgs if Vladislas left no male heir.


Anne of Burgundy 

Margaret , daughter of Maximilian 

On the death of Frederick III in 1493, Maximilian became sole ruler over the German kingdom and head of the house of Habsburg. Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy (1494) upset the European balance of power. Maximilian allied himself with the pope, Spain, Venice, and Milan in the so-called Holy League (1495) to drive out the French, 

Philip the handsome, King of Castile

The marriages of his son Philip to the Spanish infanta Joan (the Mad), in the same year, and of his daughter Margaret to the Spanish crown prince, in 1497 - assured him of the succession in Spain and the control of the Spanish colonies.

In 1499 Maximilian fought an unsuccessful war against the Swiss Confederation and was forced to recognize its virtual independence by the Peace of Basel (September 22). In 1500 the imperial princes at the Reichstag in Augsburg withdrew considerable power from Maximilian and invested it in the Reichsregiment, a supreme council of 21 electors, princes, and others. They even considered deposing him, but the plan miscarried because of their own apathy and Maximilian’s effective countermeasures. He strengthened his European position by an agreement with France, and he regained prestige within the empire by victories in a dynastic war between Bavaria and the Rhenish Palatinate (1504)

Though he was the German king, he had not been crowned emperor by the pope, as was customary. Excluded from Italy by the hostile Venetians, he was unable to go to Rome for his coronation and had to content himself with the title of Roman emperor-elect that was bestowed on him with the consent of Pope Julius II on February 4, 1508.

On January 12, 1519, having spent the previous year trying to have his grandson Charles elected emperor and to raise a European coalition against the Turks, he died at Wels in Upper Austria. He was buried in Georgskirche at Wiener Neustadt. (His magnificent tomb at the Hofkirche in Innsbruck was completed later.) His plans did come to fruition when his grandson, already king of Spain, became emperor as Charles V later the same year.

Great as Maximilian’s achievements were, they did not match his ambitions; he had hoped to unite all of western Europe by reviving the empire of Charlemagne. Adhering more often to medieval patterns of thought, he was nevertheless open to new ideas, enthusiastic about promoting science as well as the arts. He not only planned a Latin autobiography but wrote two poetical allegories, Weisskunig (“White King”) and Theuerdank (both largely autobiographical), and the Geheimes Jagdbuch, a treatise on hunting, and kept a bevy of poets and artists busy with projects that glorified his reign. His military talents were considerable and led him to use war to attain his ends. He carried out meaningful administrative reforms, and his military innovations would transform Europe’s battlefields for more than a century, but he was ignorant of economics and was financially unreliable.



The stamp shows the motif from the special coin “Ritterlichkeit” (chivalry) which is to be issued by the Austrian Mint: a portrait of Maximilian with a lance and his coat of arms held by a crowned heraldic lion. The coat of arms with the colours of Austria and Burgundy on the shield is reminiscent of the illustration on the Golden Roof. In the background of the stamp an excerpt from “Theuerdank” can be seen.


Thank you Tom for this postcard showing one of the greatest emperors of Europe! I had so much fun reading through his history 


No comments:

Post a Comment