Rudolf I, also called Rudolf of Habsburg (born May 1, 1218, Limburg-im-Breisgau [Germany]—died July 15, 1291, Speyer), first German king of the Habsburg dynasty.
A son of Albert IV, Count of Habsburg, Rudolf on the occasion of his father’s death (c. 1239) inherited lands in upper Alsace, the Aargau, and Breisgau. A partisan of the Hohenstaufen Holy Roman emperor Frederick II and his son Conrad IV, he increased his territories largely at the expense of his uncle, Count Hartmann of Kyburg, and his cousin, Count Hartmann the Younger, who supported the papal cause against the Hohenstaufens. Rudolf’s first marriage (c. 1245), to Gertrude of Zollern-Hohenberg-Haigerloch, also added considerable property to his domains. In 1254 he assisted the Knights of the Teutonic Order by participating in a crusade in Prussia.
Rudolf ’s election as German king at Frankfurt was hastened by the desire of the electors to exclude an increasingly powerful rival candidate of non-German birth, Otakar II of Bohemia. Crowned at Aachen on Oct. 24, 1273, Rudolf was recognized by Pope Gregory X in September 1274 on the condition that he would renounce all imperial rights in Rome, in the papal territories, and in Italy and to lead a new crusade. In 1275 the pope managed to persuade Alfonso X of Castile (whom some of the German electors had chosen king in April 1257) to abandon his claim to the German crown.
Meanwhile Otakar II of Bohemia had been gaining control of Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola. When in 1274 Otakar refused to appear before an imperial diet to show cause for his actions, Rudolf placed him under the ban of the empire and led an army into Austria, where he defeated Otakar in 1276. In 1278 Otakar, attempting to reconquer the territories he had lost to Rudolf, invaded Austria; he was again defeated and killed at the Battle of Dürnkrut (August 26).
In 1282 Rudolf received permission from the German princes to grant to his sons the territories recovered from Otakar, and in December of that year he granted Austria and Styria to his sons Albert and Rudolf, thus constituting the territorial nucleus of the future Habsburg power.
Rudolf combated the expansionist policy of France on his western frontier by marrying (his first wife having died in 1281) Isabella, daughter of Hugh IV, Duke of Burgundy, and by compelling Otto IV, Count Palatine of Franche-Comté, to pay homage (1289). French influence at the papal court, however, prevented Rudolf from being crowned Holy Roman emperor by the pope.
Rudolf made great efforts, in concert with the territorial princes, to enforce the public peace (Landfriede) in Germany, and in 1274 he reasserted the right of the monarchy to impose taxation on the cities. He was, however, unsuccessful in his efforts, between 1287 and 1291, to secure the election of his elder son Albert as German king or king of the Romans. The German electors were determined that the crown should not become a hereditary possession of the House of Habsburg, and thus the electors’ freedom of action remained intact at the time of Rudolf’s death.