Rudolf I
Roman-German king from 1273
Born at Burg Limburg near Sasbach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany on 1 May 1218
Died in Speyer, Germany on 15 July 1291
Motto: ‘Utrum lubet – Whichever you please’
Count Rudolf of Habsburg was the first Habsburg on the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. With him, the Habsburgs moved from their ancestral domains in Switzerland to the Danube regions which were to form the centre of their dominion for so many centuries. After Rudolf had defeated his greatest adversary, the Bohemian king Ottokar II Přemysl, he enfeoffed his sons with the duchies of Austria, Styria and Carniola together with the Wendish March in 1282.
