Another milestone of this period was the completion of the colonization of the Austrian territories. New settlements were established by clearing the woods and advancing to more remote mountain areas. Several old and new settlements grew into market centres and towns and were eventually granted charters. The colonization movement also affected the ratio of the German to non-German population. Except for some places in the Alpine regions, the Slavs were gradually assimilated, and the same held true of the remnants of the Roman population in Salzburg and northern Tirol.
The intellectual life of the period deserves mention. The Babenberg court was famous enough to attract some of the leading German poets. At the beginning of the 13th century, the saga known as the Nibelungenlied" class="md-crosslink">Nibelungenlied was written down by an unknown Austrian. Historical writing flourished in the monasteries. The era also produced first-rate Romanesque and early Gothic architecture. Late Middle Ages Contest for the Babenberg heritage
Upon the death of Frederick the Warlike, the Babenberg domains became the political objects of aspiring neighbours. The emperor and the pope also tried to intervene. Two female descendants of the Babenbergs, Frederick’s niece Gertrude and his sister Margaret, were considered to embody the claims to the heritage. Gertrude married first the Bohemian prince Vladislav and afterward the margrave Hermann of Baden, who died in 1250. After Hermann’s death, Otakar II, prince of Bohemia (from 1253 king) and a member of the house of Přemysl, married the widowed Margaret. Thereupon Hungarian forces intervened. Under the Treaty of Ofen (1254) Otakar was to rule Austria, while King Béla IV of Hungary received Steiermark. Troubles in Salzburg, stemming from a conflict between Bohemia and Hungary, inspired a rising among Steiermark’s nobles. Otakar intervened and in the Treaty of Vienna (1260) took over Steiermark as well. The state of anarchy that prevailed in Germany during this period proved advantageous to Otakar, who was granted Austria and Steiermark in fief from Richard, earl of Cornwall, the titular German king. The grant, however, was only by writ and was invalid according to German law. During the following years, Otakar’s energetic rule met with growing opposition among the Austrian nobility. He introduced foreigners into important official positions, broke fortresses that had been erected without his consent, and dissolved his childless marriage with Margaret. Otakar had two of the opposition leaders, Otto of Meissau and Seifried of Mahrenberg, executed. The gentry and the inhabitants of the cities, on the other hand, generally favoured Otakar, who supported the churches and monasteries. To complete his success, Otakar gained Kärnten and Carniola, which Ulrich of Spanheim, duke of Kärnten, willed to him in 1269.
Reverses came only when Count Rudolf IV of the house of Habsburg was elected German king as Rudolf I on September 29, 1273. Cautiously but nevertheless energetically, Rudolf set out to undermine the powerful position Otakar had created for himself. He challenged the legitimacy of Otakar’s acquisitions and finally placed the Bohemian king under the ban of the empire. In 1276 Rudolf and his allies invaded Austria, forcing Otakar to do homage and to renounce his claims to Austria. Two years later, while trying to recover what he had lost, Otakar was defeated by the united forces of Rudolf and the Hungarians and was killed on the battlefield near Dürnkrut (August 26, 1278). Accession of the Habsburgs
As the German princes had not cared to give Rudolf adequate support against Otakar, he did not feel bound to them and set out to acquire the former Babenberg lands for his own house. In 1281 he made his eldest son, Albert (later Albert I, king of Germany), governor of Austria and Steiermark; on Christmas, 1282, he invested his two sons, Albert and Rudolf II, with Austria, Steiermark, and Carniola, which they were to rule jointly and undivided. As the Austrians were not used to being governed by two sovereigns at the same time, the Treaty of Rheinfelden (June 1, 1283) provided that Duke Albert should be the sole ruler. In 1282 Carniola had already been pawned to Meinhard II of Tirol (of the counts of Gorizia), one of the most reliable allies of Rudolf who, in 1286, was also invested with Kärnten.
At first the Habsburg rulers were far from popular in Austria. Albert’s energetic and relentless rule aroused bad feeling, and the Swabian entourage that had arrived with the new dynasty to occupy key positions was despised by native nobles. There were conflicts with Bavaria, Salzburg, and Hungarian nobles who violated the Austrian frontier. After the death of King Rudolf (1291), all the neighbours and rivals of the Habsburgs and the counts of Gorizia united. Albert, however, succeeded in negotiating a peace with his most dangerous foes, the Hungarians and the Bohemians, and he broke the fortresses of the rebel nobility. Meanwhile, Meinhard II had stifled the uprising in Kärnten.
In 1292 Albert was passed over in the German election, and Adolf of Nassau was called to the throne. When Adolf fell out with the electoral princes, however, they went over to Albert, who had just subdued another rebellion in Austria. After Adolf was defeated and killed near Göllheim (1298), Albert had himself elected a second time. In his Austrian lands Albert’s main concern was to provide for an effective administration, in which he was assisted by his privy councillors, most of whom were foreign. Records were set up to codify the prerogatives and returns of the ducal property. Eventually Albert did not spare the church, either. When the Přemysl family died out in 1306, Albert aspired to the Bohemian throne. He had his eldest son, Rudolf III, elected Bohemian king, but Rudolf died the following year. Albert was preparing for a new campaign when he was murdered by his nephew John and some accomplices in 1308.
On Albert’s death the anti-Habsburg movement flared up again in Austria, but his sons, Frederick I (the Fair) and Leopold I, managed to maintain control. Frederick stood for election as German king (as Frederick III), and for the next several years the Habsburg countries had to support the cost of the war with his rival, Louis IV of Bavaria, until 1322, when Frederick was defeated near Mühldorf. Earlier, another decisive battle had been lost by the Habsburgs to the Swiss at Morgarten in 1315. From that time on, the Habsburg domains in the territory south of the Rhine and Lake Constance began to crumble away. Frederick the Fair spent his last years in Austria and was buried in the Carthusian monastery of Mauerbach (1330). He seems to have been the first of the Habsburgs for whom Austria meant home. From his time on, Habsburg rule and Habsburg territories were known as the Austrian domains (dominium Austriae), a term that was replaced, in the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, by the new concept of the house of Austria.
After Frederick’s death the Habsburgs were for some time ruled out as possible candidates for the German throne; but, under the brothers Albert II and Otto, Habsburg Austria received its first important accession of territory. In 1335 Kärnten and Carniola were acquired after the death of Henry of Gorizia, while, with the help of Luxembourg troops, Henry’s daughter Margaret Maultasch managed to retain the Tirol. Albert and his brother Otto had not gotten on too well, but, when Albert came to rule on his own, he proved to be of sound judgment and keen on preserving the peace. It was a time of calamities: bad harvests, floods, earthquakes, and in 1348–49 the Black Death. This last event brought a persecution of the Jews, who were falsely accused of intentionally spreading the plague; this was suppressed, however, by the duke. Albert arranged several tours around his domains to establish contacts with the populace and to improve jurisdiction. Two campaigns against the Swiss failed to yield any spectacular results, but they helped to consolidate the weakened Habsburg position. At his death in 1358 Albert left four sons. Though in 1355 a family ordinance had decreed that all the male members of the family were to rule jointly over the undivided domains, only the eldest of them, Rudolf, was then fit to rule. Throughout his short reign (1358–65), Rudolf IV showed himself extremely energetic and ambitious. He started to rebuild St. Stephen’s Cathedral in the Gothic style, and he founded the University of Vienna (1365). With these two projects, he imitated and rivaled his father-in-law, the Holy Roman emperor Charles IV, at Prague.