Henry III, Margrave of Meissen

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Henry III, der Erlauchte or Henry the Illustrious (ca. 1215, probably in Meissen–15 February 1288, Dresden), Margrave of Meissen and Landgrave of Thuringia, son of Dietrich, Margrave of Meissen and Jutta of Thuringia.

[edit] Life

Henry was the youngest son of Dietrich of Meissen and Jutta of Thuringia. In 1221 he succeeded his father, as Margrave of Meissen of the Wettin dynasty, under guardianship of his maternal uncle, Ludwig the Saint, and after his death in 1227, under that of Duke Albrecht II of Brandenburg.

In 1230 he was legally proclaimed an adult and in 1234 married with Constantia, the daughter of Duke Leopold VI of Austria.

He experienced his first armed combat in 1237 in the crusade against the Prussians. In 1245 after many years of conflict he was forced to cede Köpenick and Teltow in Brandenburg but won the area of Schiedlo where he founded Fürstenberg.

In the struggle between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope Henry took the side of the Emperor. In consideration, the Emperor Friedrich II in 1242 gave him Thuringia and the Palatinate of Saxony and in 1243 betrothed his daughter Margaretha to Henry's son Albrecht.

Only after the departure of Conrad IV from Germany Henry recognized the opposing king William of Holland. After the death of Heinrich Raspe in 1247 he could maintain his rights on Thuringia by the sword against his cousin Sophie of Brabant, the daughter of Ludwig the Saint, and Count Siegfried of Anhalt. After the long-drawned war he ceded Hessen to Henry I of Hesse but kept Thuringia, which he granted to his son Albrecht with the Palatinate of Saxony. These acquisitions significantly increased the Wettin territorial possessions, which now reached from the Oder up to the Werra, and from the Erzgebirge up to the Harz.

From 1273 Heinrich was an important support to king Rudolf I. Against Bohemia he won, among other places, Sayda and Purschenstein, and was known throughout the whole empire as a glittering prince, famous as a patron of the arts and a model knight, and as a significant Minnesinger , poet and composer. He was patron of many tournaments and singing competitions, in which he also took part himself, and commissioned the famous Christherre-Chronik. He set to music religious hymns to be sung in the churches, by express permission of the pope.

As early as 1265 he granted Pleissnerland, which he had acquired in 1243, the county of Thuringia and Landsberg to his sons Albert II, Margrave of Meissen, otherwise Albrecht the Degenerate, and Dietrich, Margrave of Landsberg, keeping for himself only Meissen and a formal power of oversight. Only domestic disorders, caused by the unworthiness of his son Albrecht, clouded the later years of his reign and indeed, long after his death in 1288, were to bring his house to ruin.

After the death of Constantia in 1243 he took as his second wife Agnes of Bohemia, and in his third marriage the daughter of a ministerialis, or serving knight, Elisabeth von Maltitz, who bore him Friedrich Clem and Hermann the Long.

[edit] See also

Preceded by Heinrich Raspe	Count Palatine of Saxony 1242–1288	Succeeded by Albrecht II
	Landgraf of Thuringia 1242–1288
Preceded by Dietrich	Margrave of Meissen 1221–1288