The final decade of emperor Frederick III´s rule

The aim of the project applied for is to greatly expand the basis for the evaluation of Emperor Frederick III`s rule in its final yet thoroughly active decade by using archive material from the HHStA (AUR/`General series of documents`, `Family documents` and `Document copies`) so that this additional material can be used for research purposes. In the first step, the records of the HHStA from the above-mentioned stocks are to be critically incorporated in the form of registers. This work will continue and complete the series of registers of Emperor Frederick III which has proved invaluable to scholars, in which the period up to and including 1479 has been researched in Vienna, by taking it up to his final year, 1493. Using this stock of sources, the latter period of the rule of Emperor Frederick is to be examined and describe in individual studies, including one written by Daniel Luger (Magister/Master of Arts). The key events of these years were the assemblies of the Estates of the Holy Roman Empire and the Reichstage, especially in the 1480s, at which Archduke Maximilian was elected Roman-German king, and where imperial assistance was negotiated against the Hungarians (who had attacked the invaded the Austrian patrimonial lands and occupied both Vienna and Wiener Neustadt) along with the renewal of the treaty of general peace as well as the judicial and financial reform. The archive material to be research in Vienna and the studies based on it are expected to make a significant contribution in conjunction with the systematic collection of all message directly and indirectly pertaining to Frederick - and hence to the assessment of the final years of Frederick III`s rule. Insights are to be provided into developments of constitutional and state history which, despite their special conditions in the narrow union of territories within the Holy Roman Empire, took place "in all the succession state of Carolingian-occidental Christendom (1: 1984, 330). In this connection, the extent to which the reformist laws of 1495 - the first imperial constitution - had been substantially practised beforehand. Evaluation of the specific Viennese material will also enable for example the following questions on the particularly interested dividing line between regional sovereignty and the empire to be asked: What power-political, personnel or financial contributions did Frederick III take for (self-) liberation from the occupied patrimonial lands? How did the `ranks` of the occupied patrimonial lands behave towards him as their `natural` ruler - and what form did his contact with them take? Last but not least, each additional regional volume of regional and local historical research contains a wealth of previously neglected sources.

The project concludes a series of a total of five FWF-projects started in 1997, analyzing in chronological order all charters and letters of Frederick III (1440-1493) from the stocks of the Allgemeine Urkundenreihe, Familienurkunden and Abschriftensammlungen of the Austrian State Archives, department Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv. Together with other historiographical and documentary sources, the charters and letters of Frederick III constitute the indispensable basis for research on the Holy Roman Empire during the second half of the 15th century. In these projects a total of 9 volumes/manuscripts with about 2,800 comprehensive Regesta (= abstracts) with accompanying scientific apparatus (information on tradition, literature, cross references, commentaries, etc.) were compiled. Work on about 1,000 of these was done as part of the project P21397. This scientific work represents the largest part of the Austrian contribution to the international editing venture Regesten Kaiser Friedrichs III (1440-1493), which have been published in regional papers geordnet nach Archiven und Bibliotheken. With Frederick III (1440-1493), the one prince who would prepare the ground for linking the regality of the Holy Roman Empire to the Habsburg dynasty for more than 400 years and its ascension to a European great power, moved to the top of the empire. The charters examined in project P21397 display the increasing conflict between Frederick III and Matthias, King of Hungary, the impending danger of a Turkish invasion, Frederick's III defense of the Crown Lands, his securing of the West as well as the begin of joint rule of Frederick III with his son Maximilian I. In addition, the charters serve as a mirror on Frederick's activities as territorial prince in Inner Austria, for example his ecclesiastical and monastic policies. The charters furthermore, offer manifold possibilities for researching structure and disposition of the empire at the end of the Late Middle Ages and provide an important contribution for researching regional and communal history.