How the habsburgs got their Chin

“The Habsburgs ruled half of Europe with a chin that entered the room five minutes before they did,” is one of those witticisms that made the 19^th century so amusing. But by then the Habsburg jaw had long receded.

It had its heyday in the 16^th and 17^th century when people in Spain called out to the future emperor Charles V: “Your majesty, shut your mouth! The flies of this country are very insolent.” And when they looked at his later descendant, king Charles II who was probably the worst affected, they said, he was “more Habsburg than human”.

But where is the Habsburg Jaw from? The view repeated again and again in history books is that it came from Cymburga of Masovia, the wife of duke Ernst the Iron, but was she really responsible? Or was it something quite different that caused that deformation, and what has it to do with the prostration of duke Friedrich IV before emperor Sigismund in 1415?

That is what we are looking at in this episode.

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Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 207 – Of Land and Lip – How the Habsburgs got their chin, which is also episode 5 of Season 11: The Fall and Rise of the House of Habsburg.

“The Habsburgs ruled half of Europe with a chin that entered the room five minutes before they did,” is one of those witticisms that made the 19^th century so amusing. But by then the Habsburg jaw had long receded.

It had its heyday in the 16^th and 17^th century when people in Spain called out to the future emperor Charles V: “Your majesty, shut your mouth! The flies of this country are very insolent.” And when they looked at his later descendant, king Charles II who was probably the worst affected, they said, he was “more Habsburg than human”.

But where is the Habsburg Jaw from? The view repeated again and again in history books is that it came from Cymburga of Masovia, the wife of duke Ernst the Iron, but was she really responsible? Or was it something quite different that caused that deformation, and what has it to do with the prostration of duke Friedrich IV before emperor Sigismund in 1415?

That is what we are looking at in this episode.

But before we start just the usual handing round of the begging bowl. I guess you know the drill by now, but if you are still listening, maybe you feel it is time to make a contribution to the continued existence of the show, free of advertising. And if you do, go to historyofthegermans.com/support and choose one of the various options. Just do not get confused when the software asks you for your account details, even if you get here for the first time. Do not worry, all it is trying to do is to get you to open an account by providing an email and password, so that you can access the bonus episodes and the forum.

And special thanks go to Morera, Edward B., Derrick C, Derek Edmundson, Barry J. R., Joachim B., Lonhyn J., Steve and Stephen C. who have already signed up.  

And with that, back to the show.

Last week we ended with archduke Friedrich IV, count of Tyrol kneeling before emperor Sigismund and begging to be readmitted to his grace.

The kneeling was certainly humiliating, but the other conditions of his pardon were threatening the viability of the whole Habsburg project. Friedrich had to surrender all of his lands to the crown, keeping only those that Sigismund chose to return to him as a fief. And that return of the lands Sigismund had made dependent upon Friedrich standing trial in Constance for his treason and any other claims anyone else might be bringing.

In other words, the chance that Friedrich would be stripped of all his lands for good was pretty high. It is in this period that Friedrich IV gained his nickname, Friedel mit der leeren Tasche, Friedrich with the empty pockets.

A loss of his lands, in particular of the Tyrol, would have significantly altered the Habsburg trajectory; because of the silver mines of Schwaz. This “mother of all mines” grew to be the largest industrial complex in Europe, where 10,000 miners dug up silver ore, ore that acted as collateral for the immense loans granted by Jakob Fugger and others, which in turn funded the Burgundian wars of Maximilian and the election of Charles V as emperor. In other words, without the Tyrol, no loans, no Spanish Netherlands and hence no Habsburg empire.

The fate of the Habsburg family hung in the balance.

The one who put his considerable weight on to the scales was Ernst, the Iron, duke of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola and brother of Friedrich IV. Upon news of Friedrich’s surrender, he popped up in Meran and began organizing the resistance, and maybe his own takeover of the county.

Friedrich now had to decide. He could stay in Constance and bet on Sigismund’s mercy, or he could flee to Tyrol bringing the wrath of the emperor, an excommunication by the council and an invading army of princes down on him.

William Coxe described Friedrich’s situation in Constance as follows, quote: “Meanwhile Friedrich was detained at Constance, where he was treated like a culprit, and watched like a prisoner. He was brought into the courts of justice, to answer all the complaints which were preferred against him ; he was repeatedly excommunicated by the bishop of Trent, for not restoring the dominions of that see, and threatened with still severer punishments by the council; he was deserted by all, avoided as a heretic and a traitor, reduced to want, and deprived of all necessities of life. Malicious reports were industriously circulated that he was engaged in plots to assassinate Sigismund, and menaces were not withheld that he was destined to become a sacrifice to public justice.” End quote.

OK, so the imperial mercy option looks distinctly unpromising. Friedrich had to go for option 2. On March 1^st, 1416, he fled from Constance and returned to Tyrol via Feldkirch and the Arlberg pass.

When he arrived in Tyrol, he was warmly greeted by the estates of the county. Which must have been a great relief for Friedrich. Friend of the Podcast Enea Silvio Piccolomini in his gossipy biography reports that Friedrich was popular with the common people because; quote: “he would often change his dress and visit taverns and farmers unrecognised. There, he enquired, as if a stranger, what they thought about the country’s government and asked much about the dukes, the barons, and the prince. When he heard them praise the prince and criticise the barons, he was glad that he enjoyed the people’s favour”. End quote.

Hence his subjects preferred him to the emperor Sigismund, they preferred him to a Bavarian duke, they preferred him to his brother Ernst, the only thing they did not prefer him to, was death.

So, despite his jubilant reception in Meran, and Ernst subsequent withdrawal back to Styria, Friedrich was by no means out of the woods yet. If Sigismund could muster an army and go down to Tyrol, his vassals may not be as supportive as they appeared right now. His barons may rise up after all. Sigismund tried to encourage them to do exactly that. He even kept dangling the carrot of imperial immediacy before them, if only they would help him toppling the obstinate count of Tyrol and deliver him to Constance.

Throughout 1416, 17 and 18, Sigismund was trying to put together a force that could make an attempt at the topographically challenging Tyrol. He called on the Swiss Confederation, the German cities, the dukes of Bavaria, the Counts Palatine, even his friend and protégé, Friedrich of Hohenzollern, who he had just made margrave of Brandenburg.

But they all turned him down. The Swiss had already got what they wanted when they took the Aargau, the German cities had lost confidence in the constantly cash-strapped emperor, duke Ludwig the Bearded of Bavaria was disappointed when Sigismund first denied him satisfaction against his cousin who had tried to smash his head in, and then passed him over when it came to awarding the margraviate of Brandenburg (all that is in episode 172).

The imperial princes finally did not see much benefit in helping Sigismund expanding his empire through the acquisition of Tyrol. And on top of that, Sigismund had dozens of other matters to attend to, the two remaining renegade popes, the fallout from Teutonic Knights’ defeat at Tannenberg, issues in Hungary, a marital crisis, money problems etc., etc. pp. Sigismund was always frazzled, but never more so than during this period.

And so, in 1418, at the behest of the newly elected pope Martin V and under pressure of the mounting tensions in Bohemia following the trial and execution of Jan Hus (Episode 174) Sigismund made peace with Friedrich IV. They met in Merseburg on lake Constance and hashed out a deal.

And as always with Sigismund, when he realised his political options were exhausted, he sold out. So for the trifling sum of 50,000 florins, Friedrich was re-enfeoffed with the Tyrol. And he was given permission to pay out any of the other princes who had taken over his other lands in 1415.

Despite the vast amounts of silver coming out of Schwaz, It took Friedrich a decade plus to get all his former possessions back. Except for one, the Aargau, the ancient homeland of his family was not for sale. The Swiss Confederation could not be bought. The Castle of the Hawk would never return into the family possessions, all they kept was the name.

Friedrich IV ruled for another 21 years, and whilst he could not shake his nickname as Friedrich of the empty pocket, he became again one of the richest princes in the empire. That wealth came in part from the mines, but also from the fundamental changes he implemented in his lands.

Piccolomini had noted that when Friedrich took charge of Tyrol, the county was ruled by the barons and he had quote “no power by himself. And “he grew tired of it and wanted to change things.”

Before Friedrich IV moved to Meran in 1410, there had not been a continued presence of the Habsburgs in Tyrol. As so often, the constant shortage of cash compelled the princely rulers to mortgage their rights and lands to the local aristocrats and ultimately left the management of the county entirely to them.

In his first year as count, Friedrich established a register of ducal rights in the Tyrol. He hired administrators who began collecting on these rights, whilst his accountants kept track of money coming in and money going out. Friedrich moved the centre of the princely administration from Meran to Innsbruck where he established the Neuer Hof, which became the residence for the duke and the permanent seat of the government.

Innsbruck was a strategically better location, in particular because it was at the intersection of the East-West route between Austria and the ancestral lands on the upper Rhine and on the North-South Route across the Brenner Pass. And most importantly, Innsbruck is just 30 km from the silver mines of Schwaz.

Friedrich did not limit his activities to just enforcing or buying back of his existing rights, he also tried to actively expand them. And for that he used the Privililegium Maius, the forged list of ancient rights and titles his uncle Rudolph the Founder had bestowed on the family. And these rights were far reaching and in many ways unprecedented. They included, amongst other, a ban on any man within the geographic boundaries of the county to hold immediacy, aka report directly to the emperor. Further, all temporal courts, authority over the forests and game, waters and woods are subordinate to the duke. And, whatever the Duke shall ordain  or command in his lands and regions may not be changed in any manner, in any way, or at any future time, by the Emperor or any other authority. And best of all, these provisions were supposed to apply not just in Austria, but in any territory the house of Austria had already or would in the future acquire.

Sure, this is all made up, but then Friedrich IV made it reality.

The people must upset about these policies were the Tyrolean barons. They formed noble societies intended to oppose these changes. Friedrich neutralised these societies by asking to become a member himself, a demand the aristocrats could hardly refuse.

But the most powerful of these barons, Heinrich von Rottenburg, whose inherited title of Hofmeister had made his family the de facto rulers of Tyrol, kept the feud going. He called upon duke Stephan of Lower Bavaria and the bishop of Trient/Trento to help him put Friedrich back into his box.

This lord of Rottenburg was a tough nut and a famous duelist who had killed “many men” and according to Piccolomini “had a coffin with lighted candles carried with him” at all times as a courtesy to his victims.

Still the duke prevailed, mainly because he could rely on the support of the estates, specifically the cities and the gentry who were tired of the abuse by the constantly feuding barons. Rottenburg surrendered in 1410 and six months later he was dead. Whether he was put in his travel coffin, we will never know.

This success did much for the reputation of Friedrich which may explain why he was so enthusiastically received when he returned from his ill-fated adventure in Constance.

In 1419, the most serious of these baronial revolts kicked off. The lords of Starkenberg, of Spaur, the family of Oswald von Wolkenstein, ably supported by the bishop of Trient and the condottiere Pandolfo Malatesta, attacked Friedrich’s castles. Friedrich managed to withstand this first wave of attack. And then through a combination of diplomacy, legal action and occasional warfare, he managed to break the alliance of the barons.

The last of the barons to surrender was Oswald von Wolkenstein, the knight and poet. His life is such a riveting tale. He had started out as knight errand, travelling to Prussia, Russia, Tartary, Turkey, the near east, the Holy Land, Italy, France, the Black Sea and Aragon. He had gone to Konstanz with Friedrich IV but then changed sides and entered service with the emperor Sigismund. He was sent to England on a diplomatic mission, he was in Perpignan helping to bring the antipope Pedro da Luna to resign, he went on crusade in North Africa. Back home he feuded with his peers. One of these feuds went horribly wrong. He was captured by his opponent and extensively tortured, before ending up in one of Friedrich IV’s prisons.

His poetry ranges from tales of his travels, much self-deprecation, a heavy dose of sex, mixed with a religious poetry and just pure joie de vivre.

And he used his gift to have a go at Friedrich. Here is one of his complaints:

“I complain of the day,
that I first gave my faith
to a lord who keeps empty hands.
Though I served him long and well,
I find no thanks, no reward,
only sorrow, hunger, and grief.
He calls himself Duke,
yet leaves his men in want —
truly he is poor in purse and poorer in heart.”

This is also the oldest reference to Friedrich IV as being penniless.

I thought about creating a whole episode on Oswald von Wolkenstein, but I think we need to press on now. Maybe we can do it as a bonus episode, if you guys want me to.

Back to Friedrich IV. Our friend Silvio Aeneas Piccolomini summarised his other feats and qualities as follows: quote: “He took a wife from the House of Braunschweig. She bore him a son whom she wanted to be named Sigismund. .Friedrich was a man of great sexual appetites and had affairs both with married women and married men but mostly with maidservants. He loved money, and therefore he never wanted to fight the Venetians since they assisted him financially.” End quote.

We will get back to Friedrich IV in a moment. First we need to talk about his elder brother, Ernst, his wife Cymburga and the reason you probably pressed play on this episode, the famous Habsburg Jaw.

The reason we talk about this now is that the eldest son of Ernst was the first of the Habsburg who is confirmed to have presented that famous feature, the Habsburg lip. Just have a look at the episode artwork. And based on a long tradition, last repeated by Andrew Wheatcroft in 1995, this son had quote “inherited his most striking characteristic, a fat and ponderous lower lip” from his mother, .

His mother, Cymburga of Masovia could probably take it. She was by most accounts a strong woman, as in strong enough to bend horseshoes and drive nails into walls with her bare hands. A most suitable companion for a duke who went by the name Ernst, the iron, or as others called him, the  “little robber with the giant beard”.

But did she really bring this world renowned trait into the family?  

Before we go there, let’s just define what exactly is the Habsburg Jaw? It is a hereditary deformation whereby the lower jaw outgrows the upper jaw, resulting in an extended chin and a crossbite. This Mandibular Prognathism is the result, not of just one genetic mutation, but multiple genes that add up together to create a particular trait. To get all these genes in the right order requires a seriously intense level of inbreeding, which is why these conditions are very rare. And in the case of the Habsburgs, there are some additional features like the pointy nose, thick lips and droopy eyes, all of similar provenance, aka requiring multiple genes acting in concert.

These features vary in degree and become ever more pronounced throughout the 16^th and 17^th century until we hit Charles II of Spain who was so deeply affected, he could neither speak nor chew normally.

So, let’s take a look at the alleged culprit, Cymburga. First up, we have no contemporary portrait of her. Polish and Austrian chroniclers who knew her, did not mention a protruding jaw.

Now let’s look at her genetic inheritance.

She was the daughter of the duke of Masovia, a cadet branch of the Piast family, the kings of Poland. Her mother was the sister of Jogaila, the grand duke of Lithuania and king of Poland who had defeated the Teutonic Knights at Tannenberg. There is little chance that her parents had much blood in common, given her mother’s family had only recently converted to Christianity and had hence not been suitable marriage material for European royalty.

Her father’s family had one ancestor with a jawline deformation, Boleslaw Wrymouth, the king of Poland who was born in 1086, aka 300 years before Cymburga. It is also not clear whether Wrymouth’s impairment had been genetic or had been caused by an injury.

The Poles are currently undertaking a broad analysis of the DNA of their Piast kings and dukes, none of which had noticed an anomaly linked to Mandibular Prognathism, though admittedly that is not what they were looking for. These studies are published in Polish, which is why I had to rely on Chat GPT to see whether there was anything in it, a notoriously unreliable source. So, if any of you can read Polish and can have a look, it would be much appreciated.

Let’s add all this together, (i) Cymberga’s parents were not closely related, (ii) there is no record of her having the feature and (iii) there is no record of anyone in her family having a Habsburg jaw, except for an ancestor who lived 300 years earlier. So simply on the basis of probability, Cymberga should not be on the top of the list. There were many more likely candidates amongst the Habsburg spouses of the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th century, all of which came from the closely interrelated community of the imperial princes.

So, why would anyone single out Cymburga?

I spent a solid day trying to trace where the first mention of Cymburga as the origin of the Habsburg jaw came from. And this turned into a truly epic and pointless goose chase. I started with Andrew Wheatcroft who quoted a book by Friedrich Heer, which does not contain the claim that Cymburga was the source. Then I looked at William Coxe who made the same allegation. He just referenced “authorities” with no further detail.

Wikipedia then directed me to Robert Burtons, Anatomy of Melancholy of 1621.

I have not read the book, but Coleridge, Wordsworth, Herman Melville, Milton, Samuel Johnson, Laurence Sterne, John Keats and Philip Pullman clearly loved what medical researchers described as “that omniumgatherum of anecdotes of insanity whose burden was that mankind — including the author himself — was quite out of its mind”.

Not very reliable, but even stranger, at no point does Robert Burton even mention Cymburga. That did not stop Chat GPT and its ilk to hallucinate a detailed quote from Burton, which again, could not be found at the reference they give, nor anywhere else.

Then Wikipedia directed me to the history of Vienna by Wolfgang Lazius from the middle of the 16^th century. Again nothing at all. A run through the digitalised content of the Bavarian state library then brought up stories about Cymburga, just not ones about the Habsburg lip.

Instead the story goes that duke Ernst had met Cymburga at some event at the court of emperor Sigismund. And he was so struck by her extraordinary beauty, he travelled to Krakov in disguise to woo her. In one retelling he saved her from an attack by a brown bear, which is depicted in a 19^th century picture, today in the Belvedere. So unless Ernst had a strange penchant for chinful women, Cymburga was unlikely to be afflicted by a deformation of the jaw.

There is however a conceivable reason in this story that may explain why Cymburga was blamed.

Cymburga and Ernst were both members the high aristocracy, unmarried and a link between Habsburg and Poland was politically opportune. So why the cloak and dagger story and the bear thing.

The problem was that Cymberga’s existence reminded the family of another humiliation. Ernst’s older brother Wilhelm had been engaged to Hedwig, the daughter of king Louis of Hungary and Poland. Hedwig is better known to posterity as Jadwiga, the girl that was made king of Poland in 1384. Wilhelm and Jadwiga were apparently quite close and she had lived in Austria as a child. But in the complex negotiations following her father’s death, the Polish estates decided that the engagement to Wilhelm should be set aside and that Jadwiga should marry Jogaila, the grand duke of Lithuania instead. Jogaila, who was Cymburga’s uncle, leveraged this marriage into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that dominated much of central Europe. We covered this tumultuous process in episode 169.

Whilst the marriage to Jogaila made sense for the Poles, it was a massive snub to the Habsburgs. Breaking engagements was something a king or emperor could do to a burgrave of Nurnberg or a margrave of Baden, but not to an archduke of Austria. Well the Poles had done it and the Habsburgs had to face the fact that they had dropped back into second tier.

Cymburga’s presence in Vienna was a constant reminder that Habsburg power was much diminished, making her extremely unpopular with the family. So, if you look for a reason why she was singled out as the source of the Habsburg Jaw, that may be it. But then again nobody seems to have mentioned it until William Coxe in 1847, and god knows where he got it from.

So, if it definitely was not Cymburga, where did Habsburg Jaw come from then?

Well, there is one figure close to the house of Habsburg that had a confirmed deformation of the jaw, and that was the emperor Sigismund himself. In all his portraits you can see he could not fully close his mouth any more, something people remarked on at the time.

But there is no link between Sigismund and the surviving branches of the House of Habsburg, neither downstream from him, nor two or three generations before.

Then, maybe it was running in the family already for some time.

We have two depictions of early members of the house of Habsburg that are believed to be genuine portraits. And these are the tomb of King Rudolf I from about 1295, and an oil portrait of Rudolf IV, the founder from the mid-14^th century.

I am not sure I can detect anything on Rudolf I, whilst Rudolf IV does look as if he was a mouth breather. But I am not sure what that is worth.

Maybe the explanation is much simpler. The European high aristocracy had settled sometime in the 13^th century. Very few new families were able to enter the close circle of intermarried princes. Sure, there were the Italians, the Visconti of Milan, the Medici of Florence and then the Lithuanians and Russians, but most of the rest was basically the same set of cousins twice removed that made up the rather limited gene pool.

What tightened the pool further and may have given rise to their most prominent feature was the constant intermarriage between the Spanish and the Austrian branches during the 16^th and 17^th century. And why did they constantly intermarry? Did they not know about the impact of inbreeding. Oh sure they knew about this. This is an agricultural society where everyone understands what happens if a herd is left without fresh blood. Leaving aside the strict rules of the church about consanguinity.

But these marriages between often first cousins were a political necessity. Charles V had divided the Habsburg empire into two parts, the Austrian and the Spanish line. To keep the two parts of the empire acting in unison, the Habsburgs needed to renew the familial link at least every second generation, leading to a truly catastrophic level of inbreeding.

Only when Spain was lost to the Bourbons, the need for these intermarriages disappeared and with it the Habsburg Jaw. Maria Theresia had no visible Prognathism, nor had her children, in particular not Marie Antoinette, though French revolutionary propaganda kept adding the feature to her depictions.

In other words, the Habsburg jaw was the result of politics, of a fear that the coherence of the family could fall apart. And that fear of a breakup of the family goes back to the times we talk about right now.

Which is what gets us back to Ernst the Iron.

Ernst the Iron was last seen taking over the Tyrol whilst his brother was literally tied up in Konstanz. And when Friedrich re-appeared in 1415, Ernst returned to Styria without making a fuss.

That is quite a remarkable change of pattern. In the years before he had fought his brother Leopold over control of the duchy of Austria proper and had later on conspired with the barons of Tyrol to oust his younger brother. But now, at a time when Friedrich was on more than shaky ground, he did not pounce.

We do not know what had happened to him. He had done a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1414 where he was knighted as a member of the order of Holy Sepulchre. As such he had to commit to  a number of religious observances, maybe even the 10 commandments which have this clause about not coveting your neighbour’s house, fields, man and maidservant, or even ass or anything else..

Though I wonder whether the shock of seeing his brother and hence his family kneeling before Sigismund had triggered his change of heart. Had the family been united, Sigismund would have never gotten away with humiliating a senior member of the Habsburgs. Friedrich and Ernst were both powerful princes, and their cousin Albrecht V was equally rich and a very close ally of Sigismund. The fact that neither protested against Friedrich’s ban and its execution, is what made this possible. And when a year later, at least Friedrich and Ernst stood together, Sigismund stood no longer any chance of invading Tyrol.

This entente between the brothers seemed to have continued once the Tyrol was stabilised. And when Ernst died in 1424, his two sons, Friedrich and Albrecht were placed under the guardianship of Friedrich IV. And in turn, when Friedrich IV died, his former ward took over the guardianship of his son 12-year old Sigismund.

So, after all, the kneeling before Sigismund, painful as it certainly was, had a silver lining in as much as it shocked the Habsburgs out of their internecine warfare into finding a way to act more coherently. We are still a long way from the point where they are sacrificing their health and appearance for the sake of family coherence, and this was not yet the last war between brothers, but the understanding had set in, that they can either rule together or be dragged under divided.

One member of the family has taken very much of a back seat in this episode, and that is Ernst and Friedrich’s second cousin, duke Albrecht V of Austria. Now he is the one who will truly restore the fortunes of the family, bringing them back to the top table, ironically courtesy of the man who had just humiliated them. And that is that we will discuss next week, I hope you will join us again. And if you find all of this worth supporting, go to historyofthegermans.com/support, where you can find various options to kee