Margarete Maultasch

“The twelve-year-old Margarete, Princess of Carinthia and Tyrol, was travelling from her seat near Meran to Innsbruck for her wedding with the ten-year old Prince Johann of Bohemia. [..]

Still and serious she sat, in ceremonial pomp. Her bodice was so tight that she had had to be laced into it; her sleeves of heavy green satin, in the very extreme of fashion, fell to her feet ; she wore one of the new jeweled hair-nets which an express courier had had to bring from Flanders, where they had recently appeared. A heavy necklace sparkled on her bosom, and large rings on her fingers. So she sat, serious and perspiring, weighed down with magnificence, between the peevish, grumbling women.

She looked older than her twelve years. Her thick-set body with its short limbs supported a massive misshapen head. The forehead, indeed, was clear and candid, the eyes quick and shrewd, penetrating and sagacious ; but below the small flat nose an ape-like mouth thrust forward its enormous jaws and pendulous underlip. Her copper colored hair was coarse, wiry and dull, her skin patchy and of a dull greyish pallor.”

That is how the author Lion Feuchtwanger described Margarete, the countess of Tirol who is better known as Margarete Maultasch, the ugly duchess. This historic novel that became a huge bestseller in the 1920s describes how a bright and ambitious, but monstrously ugly woman is crushed by society’s habit to judge the inside of a person by its appearance.

I still have a copy of this book from the 1980s when I first read it, and on its cover is the same image I used for this episode’s artwork. The picture was painted by Quentin Matsys in 1513 and according to the National Gallery’s catalogue is called a Grotesque Old Woman.

It is not a portrait of Margarete Maultasch who had died 150 years earlier. The identification of the sitter as Margarete Maultasch goes back the idea of a postcard seller in Meran in the 1920s. Matsys picture also made its way into the depiction of the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland.

But it is all hokum. Chroniclers who knew Margarete personally, like Johann von Viktring either do not mention her appearance at all, or call her beautiful, if not extremely beautiful. So, as much as I love Lion Feuchtwanger’s novel, which btw. is available in an English translation, it’s premise is simply false.

The truth is much more interesting. Her actions to defend her inherited county of Tyrol were the changes that tilted the complex equilibrium between the Habsburgs, the Wittelsbachs and the House of Luxemburg out of kilter with unpredictable, violent results.

So, let’s find out why and how and what…

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and Welcome to the History of the Germans, Episode 152: The not so ugly duchess Margarete Maultasch, also episode 15 of season 8 from the Interregnum to the Golden Bull, 1250-1356.

“The twelve-year-old Margarete, Princess of Carinthia and Tyrol, was travelling from her seat near Meran to Innsbruck for her wedding with the ten-year old Prince Johann of Bohemia. [..]

Still and serious she sat, in ceremonial pomp. Her bodice was so tight that she had had to be laced into it; her sleeves of heavy green satin, in the very extreme of fashion, fell to her feet ; she wore one of the new jeweled hair-nets which an express courier had had to bring from Flanders, where they had recently appeared. A heavy necklace sparkled on her bosom, and large rings on her fingers. So she sat, serious and perspiring, weighed down with magnificence, between the peevish, grumbling women.

She looked older than her twelve years. Her thick-set body with its short limbs supported a massive misshapen head. The forehead, indeed, was clear and candid, the eyes quick and shrewd, penetrating and sagacious ; but below the small flat nose an ape-like mouth thrust forward its enormous jaws and pendulous underlip. Her copper colored hair was coarse, wiry and dull, her skin patchy and of a dull greyish pallor.”

That is how the author Lion Feuchtwanger described Margarete, the countess of Tirol who is better known as Margarete Maultasch, the ugly duchess. This historic novel that became a huge bestseller in the 1920s describes how a bright and ambitious, but monstrously ugly woman is crushed by society’s habit to judge the inside of a person by its appearance.

I still have a copy of this book from the 1980s when I first read it, and on its cover is the same image I used for this episode’s artwork. The picture was painted by Quentin Matsys in 1513 and according to the National Gallery’s catalogue is called a Grotesque Old Woman.

It is not a portrait of Margarete Maultasch who had died 150 years earlier. The identification of the sitter as Margarete Maultasch goes back the idea of a postcard seller in Meran in the 1920s. Matsys picture also made its way into the depiction of the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland.

But it is all hokum. Chroniclers who knew Margarete personally, like Johann von Viktring either do not mention her appearance at all, or call her beautiful, if not extremely beautiful. So, as much as I love Lion Feuchtwanger’s novel, which btw. is available in an English translation, it’s premise is simply false.

The truth is much more interesting. Her actions to defend her inherited county of Tyrol were the changes that tilted the complex equilibrium between the Habsburgs, the Wittelsbachs and the House of Luxemburg out of kilter with unpredictable, violent results.

So, let’s find out why and how and what…

But before we start a quick reminder that the History of the Germans is still advertising free thanks to the generosity of our patrons. And you can become a patron too by signing up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans. And special thanks to Carsten D., Karen H., Matias G., Matthew G., Douglas S. and Duane S. who have already signed up.

Last week we talked about how Ludwig the Bavarian extracted the Holy Roman Empire from the overlordship of the papacy and made the election by the Prince Electors the constituent event that elevated an individual to the throne. Many things had to come together to make that happen, namely a misguided papal policy that created rifts inside the church and a group of innovative thinkers including William of Ockham and Marsilius of Padua who could provide the intellectual underpinnings of this new construct of the secular state.

But another component was needed to bring about the Kurverein zu Rhens, and that was the masterful diplomacy of Ludwig and his advisors that kept the fragile domestic politics stable.

Domestic politics in the empire were so fragile because power was split amongst three roughly equal-sized blocks. It was a three body problem, a conundrum that had baffled mathematicians since Newton and laymen since the release of the recent Netflix series. Calculating gravitational forces between two objects is apparently quite straightforward, but once you add a third one, even minor changes in the conditions drive dramatic, often violent outcomes. The competition between the Habsburgs, the Wittelsbachs and the Luxemburgers was a three-body problem.

It was a three-body problem Ludwig of Bavaria had kept in balance for 8 long years until in 1330 the 12-year old Margarete, princess of Tyrol and Carinthia, called the Maultasch married Johann-Heinrich of Luxemburg, the younger son of king John of Bohemia.

Margarete was the only surviving child of Henry duke of Carinthia. We have met Henry of Carinthia several times before, but let me just recap. Henry had inherited the county of Tyrol from his father. Carinthia you may remember had been taken by king Rudolf of Habsburg from king Ottokar of Bohemia alongside Austria and Styria. Rudolf wanted to give Carinthia to his sons, as he had done with Austria and Styria, but faced strong opposition from the princes, so he gave it to his brother-in-law, Henry the count of Tyrol who thereby became Henry of Carinthia.

Henry remained a close ally of the Habsburgs until king Wenceslaus III of Bohemia was murdered in 1306. Henry happened to be the right man in the right place, i.e., he happened to be in Prague at the time and was married to Wenceslaus III’s sister. He was made king of Bohemia, which he remained for about 3 months before the Habsburgs moved on Prague, threw Henry out and elected one of their own as king of Bohemia. This Habsburg was called king porridge by the Czechs on account of his sensitive stomach, a stomach that put an end to his reign after another couple of months, making Henry king again. This time he lasted 3 years, though that was mostly on paper. Henry was a pretty ineffective ruler, a bit sloppy and just a bit of a pushover. By 1310 the Bohemians had enough of Henry of Carinthia and petitioned emperor Henry VII to give them a new king, at which point Henry VII’s son king John of Bohemia took over.

The next couple of years things quietened down for Henry of Carinthia until 1314 when he was dug up as “king of Bohemia” to provide a vote for Frederick the Handsome. That alliance did not last long and Henry of Carinthia did what many other territorial princes did during the civil war, playing one side against the other two and -most importantly- avoiding getting sucked into the conflict.

In the 1320s he got closer to the Luxemburgs, and specifically hoped to marry the famously gorgeous sister of john of Bohemia, Marie. But, in defiance of tradition and etiquette, Marie aged 16 outright refused  to marry the duke of Carinthia who was not only older than her grandfather but had seriously got out of shape. After Marie’s refusal John offered him one of his nieces, adding in some cash to sweeten the deal, but that bride went to another, more promising lord. Things kept being stretched out until 1327 when Henry finally married Beatrice of Savoy, another distant relative of John of Bohemia. By then Henry was 62 and, as it turned out, no longer able to produce an heir. And with that Margarete became one of the most desirable heiresses of her day.

Henry of Carinthia’s lands were of enormous strategic importance. Tyrol and Carinthia controlled many of the Alpine passes, most importantly the Brenner pass, the by far the quickest and most comfortable route across the Alps, a crucial consideration for emperor Ludwig who needed to support the imperial vicars in Lombardy. Tyrol and Carinthia was of even more importance to the Habsburgs since their lands were still divided between Austria in the east and their Alsatian and Swiss domains in the west. If they could get hold of Tyrol and Carinthia, they could connect their currently still disparate land holdings into one contiguous territory. The Luxemburgs had no natural interest in Tyrol but hat did not mean they did not want it.

Tyrol was by no means the only territory the three powers coveted and clashed over. When emperor Ludwig granted Brandenburg to his son shortly after the battle of Mühldorf, the Luxemburgs were so irritated, they ended their long standing support for Ludwig’s kingship, forcing him into the alliance with the Habsburgs that resulted in Frederick the Handsome becoming co-king. That meant that again it was 2 against one, Wittelsbach and Habsburg against Luxemburg.

All parties knew that outright war was expensive and in the end, unwinnable. And it was also unnecessary as long as there were so many principalities in the empire whose current princely families may die out. So the three parties came to a tacit understanding that each should be left alone to pursue their expansion projects and that Ludwig would basically sign off on whatever the other two could gain. The only one who had to show restraint was Ludwig himself who had already picked up Brandenburg.

The biggest winners of this policy were the Luxemburgs. During the 1330s John of Bohemia expanded into Silesia, added to the county of Luxemburg and even managed to bring the duke of Lower Bavaria, Ludwig’s cousin and former godchild under his control. Meanwhile John’s uncle, the archbishop Balduin of Trier became archbishop of Mainz as well as bishop of Worms and Speyer.

This expansion of Luxemburg power was making Ludwig uncomfortable. And the Habsburgs felt seriously left behind. None of their schemes had worked out so far.

Into this already tense situation dropped the announcement that young Margaret was to marry the son of the king John of Bohemia. Which meant that if Henry of Carinthia died without a male heir, Luxemburg would gain control of another strategically important asset. And that prospect became increasingly likely as Henry of Carinthia’s health deteriorated and his marriage remained childless,

Ludwig sat down with the new head of the House of Luxemburg, duke Albrecht the Lame and they concluded a secret pact. Upon the death of Henry of Carinthia the emperor will declare the two fiefs of Carinthia and Tyrol to be forfeit and would then enfeoff Carinthia and southern Tyrol to the Habsburgs and the rest to himself.

Both parties were well aware that this meant the war that they had tried to avoid for so long would finally happen. Whether they gave any thought to Margarete and her feelings on the matter is unknown and also extremely unlikely.

Henry of Carinthia died in 1335.

Margarete is 17 at that point and her husband, Johann-Heinrich of Luxemburg just 13. The two children sent messages to all and sundry, informing them of the death of Henry of Carinthia and asked for recognition as the new duke and duchess of Carinthia and Tyrol. When they got little to no response, they got nervous. Something was not right.

They sent urgent messages to king John of Bohemia, asking him to come and protect them. The king responded that he would love to come, but unfortunately he was in Paris and had been injured during one of these hundreds of tournaments he took part in. And this was no trifle, it was the injury that would ultimately cause him to go blind.

In their desperation the young couple sent their advisor who also happened to be the main chronicler, Johann von Viktring to Vienna to ask for help from – guess who – the dukes of Habsburg. Viktring found Duke Albrecht the Lame somewhat evasive and clearly a bit embarrassed by his presence.

Soon thereafter the emperor Ludwig arrived in nearby Linz. Viktring went to see him and asked him for help on behalf of the young ducal couple. Ludwig wasn’t as cagey as his allies and laid it out to Viktring in no uncertain terms. Carinthia was going to Habsburg and the Tyrol would be divided up, the two kids would be given a nice pension and should please quietly exit stage left.

Next the court proceeded to an open field, the imperial  standard was raised and Ludwig formally enfeoffed the dukes Albrecht and Otto of Habsburg with the duchy of Carinthia and the southern part of the county of Tyrol. Meanwhile the oldest son of John of Bohemia, Charles and some other Luxemburg allies had also arrived in Linz and realized what had happened. They called the Habsburgs scammers, cheaters and swindler, but absent an army ready to strike, there was nothing to do. Charles of Bohemia and his allies left, swearing revenge. The war was on.

There is a brilliant story that Johann von Viktring tells us about the way 14^th century politicians thought. Remember, he is Margarete’s envoy representing the legal heirs of Henry of Carinthia who have just been ripped off by the Habsburgs and the emperor. Still, instead of shouting obscenities and leaving with the Luxemburg party, Viktring goes before the Habsburg dukes and begs them to treat him and his monastery kindly, meaning leaving him in post and with all his profitable sinecures. They said, sure, if you tell us a bit about how the duchy is run, who is who, what to be carful about and how to organize the administration. To the latter he responded that once upon a time the emperor Tiberius had been asked why he left all these corrupt officials in post. And Tiberius is supposed to have answered that there was once a soldier who had received a wound that refused to heal and was covered in bloodsucking insects. When a caring soul saw that and chased the flies away, the injured soldier got angry.  Why did you do that. This is only going to make it worse. You have now chased away the flies that had already become fat from sucking my blood. Now you have opened the wound for new hungry flies who will suck out even more blood.

The moral of the story, better to leave the current parasites, including himself, in place.

In the weeks that followed, Habsburg troops occupied Carinthia experiencing very little resistance. However, in Tyrol, the local lords rallied around Margarete and her husband and refused the Habsburg and Wittelsbach troops entry.  That might possibly have been due to the oath of loyalty they had sworn to Margarete’s father, but it is more likely that it was because they believed that it would be easier to enrich themselves in an administration run by minors than in one run by the competent Habsburg dukes, who may not believe the story about the flies.

And their resistance frustrated the Habsburg invasion. Tyrol straddles both sides of the Alps and is a country of deep valleys, ravines and craggy summits, of castles built into the sides of soaring mountains, a place a comparatively small but determined force could easily defend against even large invading armies.

Whilst the Tyrol held out against the Habsburg attack, king John of Bohemia raised an army to go after the Habsburgs in their homeland of Austria. At their first encounter he achieved a significant victory when duke Otto of Habsburg, called the Merry fled the battlefield before even the first arrow had been shot. The Habsburg army watched with complete confusion that their commander was making for Vienna and followed him at pace. At which point John of Bohemia should have gone after them, but for some inexplicable reason did not. The war continued into next year, this time Ludwig himself took the field alongside the Habsburgs. It nearly came to a battle near Landau, but this time John ran away. After that the king of Bohemia, as so often, became distracted by other chivalric adventures, more exciting than a long and arduous campaign taking one castle or town after another. John of Bohemia made a deal with the Habsburgs. Not a great one I must say. All he got was that the Habsburgs would pay his expenses and let the young couple to keep Tyrol, but they would retain Carinthia. Ausser Spesen nix gewesen as the Germans would say.

Margarete was incensed about her father-in-law’s betrayal. She gathered her boy husband and her senior lords and vowed never to give up Carinthia. And then added a few choice words about her useless guardian and protector. As if he cared.

Margarete was still an adolescent, but at that time people grew up quickly. Though she had managed to defend Tyrol with the help of her nobles, she had lost Carinthia, effectively more than halving the territory she should have inherited. And she also realized that her alliance with the House of Luxemburg wasn’t worth much. If the Habsburgs found a way into Tyrol, the chances were slim that the great chivalric knight John of Bohemia would come to her rescue.

And the probability that the Habsburgs would find a way to break the resistance of her vassals was increasing by the late 1330s thanks to the erratic behavior of her young husband. Johann Heinrich of Luxemburg was clashing with the local aristocracy, razing one nobleman’s castle to the ground for alleged cowardice in the defense of Carinthia. As the nobles got restless he began fearing conspiracies everywhere. He did uncover what he believed was such a conspiracy and he had the ringleaders beheaded and their lands confiscated.

Margarete needed a new supporter if she wanted to defend her lands against the Habsburgs. And using the process of elimination, that defender had to be emperor Ludwig IV, the Bavarian.

Ludwig’s stature had strengthened since his return from Italy. His thoughtful policies that broadly maintained peace in the empire, his support for the cities that increased prosperity and an unexpected gain of Lower Bavaria after the death of its last duke had maybe not completely outweighed his excommunication, but made him the recognized, legitimate ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. It was thanks to this general esteem and the perception that he wasn’t unduly greedy for land and titles that had allowed him to bring the prince electors and many of the imperial princes to sign the declaration of Rhens.

Ludwig clearly had the power to defend her, but there were a few problems with the plan. First and foremost the fact that she was married to Johann-Heinrich of Luxemburg. An alliance with Wittelsbach would require some form of marriage agreement that would provide a Wittelsbach the opportunity to ultimately inherit the Tyrol.  But Margarete had no daughter to marry off. Nor was thee much hope for offspring given the couple now despised each other. So the person who had to marry was Margarete herself. Which means she needed to be divorced first.

Divorce in the Middle Ages was possible for two reasons and two reasons only, inability to procreate, namely the husbands impotence, or consanguinity, i.e., the couple being too closely related.

So Margarete went for option one and began to complain loudly that her husband was unable or unwilling to share her bed. As for option two, being too closely related, well, that applied to literally every member of the princely houses in europe. Whether or not that led to the annulment of a marriage was entirely in the hand of the church, which in the case of Margarete meant in the hands of the pope.

Problem was that the chances of the pope granting an annulment or Margaret’s marriage to the son of the pope’s key ally in the empire in order to marry the son of an excommunicated emperor who denied the authority of the vicar of Christ was precisely 0.000000%. Still, if Margarete lets thing run as they currently were going, she would lose Tyrol to the Habsburgs. It was only a question of time.

So she decided to take it one step at a time. And the most important step was to get rid of Johann Heinrich and his murderous paranoia.  In 1341 the young duke had been out hunting near Schloss Tirol. When he returned home, he found the gates of castle closed. Angry, but not particularly concerned, did he ride to the next castle. Again, nobody opened the gate. For the next several days, the duke of Carinthia and count of Tyrol rode from castle to castle, from city to city, but nobody would let him in. Finally, he left the county and sought refuge with the patriarch of Aquilea.

That removed the imminent risk of  loss of Tyrol, but Margarete still needed the protection of the emperor, which meant she needed to marry the emperor’s son, Ludwig, the Margrave of Brandenburg.

Margarete asked the pope for an annulment on the grounds of impotence and consanguinity. The process started, but then pope Benedict died. A successor was found quite quickly, Clement VI, but he had little time for the petition from the countess of Tyrol, assuming he had any interest in support it in the first place, which he did not have.

Time was rapidly running out.

The emperor Ludwig travelled to Tyrol in 1342 together with his son. He brought with him three bishops who had been prepared to declare Margaret divorced. But one fell down a ravine on the journey and the other two got scared and refused to grant the divorce.

Plan B was to go back to the Franciscan intellectuals. Marsilius of Padua prepared a document whereby Ludwig granted Margaret her divorce declaring that the pope had no business granting divorces, this, Marsilius concluded, was the right of the emperor. That went to far, even for Ludwig IV. He went with a proposal of William of Ockham who stated that in special situations when the interest of the state demanded it, the emperor was able to grant divorces, and that this was one such case.

And so on Shrove Tuesday 1342 emperor Ludwig IV granted the first civil divorce in the empire and Margarete, countess of Tyrol married Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg.

This was a scandal of truly epic proportions. Whilst public opinion in Germany could buy into the theories about the secular state and the independence of the empire from the papacy, the idea that the emperor could override “till death us do part”, that was a step too far. And Ludwig had not done it for some lofty ambition the whole empire would share in, but solely for his dynastic benefit.

That is when the three-body problem raised its ugly head. In a system of three roughly equal powers, small changes in the conditions could elicit violent reactions. And they did.

Margaret’s divorce pushed the new pope, Clement VI over the edge. Clement VI was already fed up with the unrepentant excommunicate in Munich who kept sending negotiators but never moved an inch on his positions. Sometimes he had made proposals that included his resignation but always in such a way that it remained unacceptable to the papacy. This civil divorce thing was the last straw.

Equally the Luxemburgs were irate about the treatment of Johann-Heinrich. Even archbishop Balduin of trier who had joined the emperor at the Kurverein zu Rhens and had developed a good working relationship with him, was turned off. The Habsburgs, fearing, quite rightly that if Margarete and her new husband would have offspring they might never get hold of the Tyrol and hence would never be able to link up their territories. Even the princes who normally took only moderate interest in imperial affairs, the dukes of Saxony, of Brunswick, the counts of Holstein and the dukes of Mecklenburg kept a weary eye on their sovereign.

Ludwig doubled down and when his brother-in-law the count of Holland and Hennegau died, he incorporated that county into his possessions as well.

That last move pushed the princes over the edge. They accepted Pope Clement VI call on the Prince Electors to choose a new King of the Romans. Headed by a 20-year old prelate that pope Clement VI had just placed on the seat of the archbishopric of Mainz despite its current postholder still being alive plus some serious bribes paid to the duke of saxony and the archbishop of Cologne allowed the two Luxemburg electors, Balduin of Trier and John of Bohemia to elect John’s oldest son, Charles, margrave of Moravia as king. Charles the fourth emperor carrying the name of the great Charlemagne would become a towering figure in the history of the Holy Roman Empire.

But for the moment he was just an anti king against an emperor who had ruled more or less successfully for 32 years. Sure Ludwig had lost a lot of sympathies, but he was by no means an easy target. Charles IV and his allies decided that instead of open warfare, the best course of action was to simply wait and let nature takes its course. The emperor was 64 years old, how much longer was he going to hold on?

One campaign did Charles undertake though, not against Ludwig himself, but against Margarete in Tyrol. Margarete’s new husband, Ludwig the margrave of Brandenburg was away in Prussia. The bishops of Trient and Bozen and some of the nobles had taken against the Wittelsbach regime and had called on Charles to come down. And he did. The forces of the bishops quickly rolled up castles and towns until they reached Schloss Tirol, the great fortress above the city of Meran, the key to the county. Margarete’s advisors suggested for her to either flee or submit to the powerful force led by the eminently competent Charles. But she refused. For several weeks did her troops hold out in Schloss Tirol until Ludwig of Brandenburg arrived with a strong army and relieved his wife. Tyrol was again saved from the Luxemburgs.

But the emperor was not. On October, 11 1347 the aging but still active emperor died from a stroke during a bear hunt outside Munich.

I must admit that before is tarted this podcast I knew next to nothing about Ludwig IV, the Bavarian but the more I read about him, the more fascinating I found him. A political and military genius who, if he had been in charge of a large and consolidated kingdom like England and France would surely have been remembered in books, plays and statues. A man who despite his modest education embraced some of the most innovative ideas of his time and sheltered those who developed them.

We are not completely rid of him though, since next time we will have a look at economic developments during Ludwig’s reign, in particular the rise of the cities, specifically the city of Nurnberg.

But before we do that, we need to bring the story of Margarete Maultasch to its end.

In the years that followed, nobody challenged Margarete and Ludwig’s ownership of Tyrol.  Margarete had three children, two daughters and a son. The girls died in the black death, but her son Meinhard grew up to adulthood. Ludwig of Brandenburg died in 1361 and Meinhard succeeded him. But Margarete’s son lived only for a further 2 years. Once Meinhard had gone and Margaret now beyond child-bearing age, it was clear that the Tyrol had to go to someone else. In this contest it was the house of Habsburg that won. Margaret named Rudolf of Habsburg, son of Albrecht the Lame as her heir. Exhausted by a long life of strife, she retired to Vienna where she died in 1369. The Tyrol remained part of Austria until 1919 when the part south of the Brenner pass was annexed by Italy.

That leaves one last question, why did people believe Margarete was so famously ugly. In part this seem to have come from the nickname, Maultasch, which means something like mouth bag. This could be a reference to a physical deformity, but it was also used as a term for promiscuous women. And the latter explanation is more probable.

The church, which regarded her as a bigamist had issued propaganda branding her a harlot, unable to contain her urges. That she had married Ludwig to satisfy her unnatural desires something Johann-Heinrich was unwilling to do. These stories than mushroomed into ever more outlandish tales of unsatiable sexual appetites that rival those told about Messalina and Theodora. The twist of the story was however the idea that she was also monstrously ugly, something that – as I said before – we have no contemporary evidence for, specifically not from people who had known her personally. It was most likely a combination of her nickname Maultasch and the already brutal propaganda that created this image. And when Matsys painting of an extremely ugly person came up for auction at Christies in 1920, a smart postcard seller in Meran made copies and sold it as portraits of Margarete Maultasch. That is where Lion Feuchtwanger picked up the story to create his tale of the fight between the clever, well meaning but ugly Margarete Maultasch and the beautiful but vacuous and destructive Agnes of Flavon. I love the book for all the evocative scenes from the 14^th century, but I afraid the whole of its basic premise is fictional.

Margarete was just another one of these women whose political ambitions ran up against the social standards of the time. And since her enemies could not break her militarily and politically, they broke her memory.

So, as I said, we are still not yet done with the live and times of emperor Ludwig IV, the Bavarian. Next time we will talk about the growth of the great German trading cities, in particular about Nuremberg. And then we probably should have an episode about the blind king John of Bohemia who has been moving in and out of focus not just for these least five episodes, but also featured in season 7 on the Teutonic Knights. And as a sort of a brit I need to talk about the coat of arms the motto of the prince of Wales at some point, and that time will have to be soon.

I am however under a bit of time pressure since I will be sailing my boat over to the Baltic for the summer. That means I will have to put the podcast on a bi-weekly schedule. I hope you do not mind too much and will see you next time.