The Altenburg division ( German: Altenburger Teilung ) is a plan for the division of the Vettins , which was proposed by the Saxon estates on September 10, 1445 in Altenburg .
After the death of Frederick IV the Peace-loving, his nephews, Elector Frederick II and Duke William III , became heirs. But they rejected the partition plan and their dispute over the Vettins territories led to the Saxon fraternal war ( 1446 - 1451 ), which ended only five years later, in 1451, by the Naumburg world .
The situation in the Vettin family
The Saxon branch of the Vettins gradually concentrated in their hands a large number of possessions, including Thuringia , Margrave Meissen , the Duchy of Saxony and the Elector of Saxony . At the beginning of the 15th century, Frederick I , the elector of Saxony and the Margrave of Meissen began to rule almost all of these possessions - with the exception of Thuringia, where his cousin Frederick IV Mirny ruled.
Frederick I had seven children, of whom four were sons (Frederick, Wilhelm, Henry and Sigismund), to whom control was transferred to the lands after the death of his father in 1428. Henry died in 1435, and Sigismund was forced to abandon his claims, and in 1440 he became bishop of Würzburg . The eldest of the remaining two brothers, Frederick II , took control of the Elector of Saxony and the lands around Wittenberg , and managed the rest together with Wilhelm . Everything went peacefully until Frederick IV died childless in 1440, and the brothers did not inherit his possessions in Thuringia, as well as the title of Landgrave of Thuringia.
Section
The brothers could not come to an agreement on Thuringia, and on July 16, 1445 in Altenburg decided to divide the lands. However, when September 16, 1445 in Leipzig, Frederick II chose the western part, rather than the Meissen Margrave, then Wilhelm did not agree with this. On December 11 of the same year, they tried to reconcile at a meeting in the Noyverk monastery in Halle , where the judges were the Magdeburg Archbishop Frederick III, the Brandenburg Elector Frederick II and the Landgrass of Lower Hesse Ludwig II, but they could not find a peaceful solution to the issue. As a result, in 1446, the Saxon fraternal war began , which ended with the Naumburg world only on January 27, 1451.
After the death of Frederick II in 1464, his lands were inherited by the sons Ernst and Albrecht . When William III died in 1482, Ernst annexed Thuringia. In 1485, Ernst and Albrecht redistributed the ancestral lands . This section led to the weakening of the Saxon elector.
Links
- www.dresden-und-sachsen.de (German)