Saxe-Wittenberg
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The Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg (German: Herzogtum Sachsen-Wittenberg) was a medieval duchy of the Holy Roman Empire, which emerged after the dissolution of the stem duchy of Saxony. It is the precursor of the Saxon Electorate.
Count Otto of Ballenstedt, ancestor of the House of Ascania, had already held the title of a Duke of Saxony in 1122. In 1134 his son Albert the Bear at first received the Saxon Northern March from Emperor Lothair III of Supplinburg. When in 1138 Lothair's successor Conrad III of Germany had deprived his Welf rival Henry the Proud of the Saxonian Duchy in 1138 he gave it to Albert, who however could not prevail against the local nobility and in 1142 finally had to renounce in favour of Henry the Proud's son Henry the Lion. Albert later took part in the Wendish Crusade of 1147 and in 1157 established the Margraviate of Brandenburg. He died in 1170.
In 1180 Henry the Lion was deposed as Saxon Duke by Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and his allies. The duchy was partitioned among the allies into more than a dozen territories of imperial immediacy. Among the allies Philip von Heinsberg, Prince-Archbishop-Elector of Cologne, received the newly created Duchy of Westphalia. Small, mostly Eastphalian fringes of the old duchy continued under the old name under one of Albert's sons, Bernard of Anhalt.
Bernard died in 1212 and his sons again divided the heritage: Henry took the old Ascanian allodial possessions around Ballenstedt where he established the County of Anhalt, while his brother Albert I, still calling himself Duke of Saxony, retained three territorially unconnected eastern estates on the Elbe river around the towns of Wittenberg and Belzig as well as the lordship of Lauenburg upon Elbe castle in the north with the Land of Hadeln at the Elbe estuary.
After Albert I's death in 1260 his heirs, Albert II and John I first ruled jointly, but finally divided their possessions into Saxe-Wittenberg and Saxe-Lauenburg, respectively.
After the partition both the dukes of Saxe-Wittenberg and of Saxe-Lauenburg rivallingly claimed the electoral right of the former Saxon stem duchy. In 1292 Albert II of Saxe-Wittenberg elected Adolph of Nassau as King of the Romans, while in 1314 both duchies participated in elections of the German kings, the Habsburgian Frederick III, the Fair and his Wittelsbachian cousin Louis IV, the Bavarian.
Louis received five of the seven votes, to wit Archbishop-Elector Baldwin of Trier, the legitimate King-Elector John of Bohemia, Duke John II of Saxe-Lauenburg, rivallingly claiming the Saxon prince-electoral power, Archbishop-Elector Peter of Mainz, and Prince-Elector Waldemar of Brandenburg.
Frederick the Fair received in the same election four of the seven votes, with the deposed King-Elector Henry of Bohemia, illegitimately assuming electoral power, Archbishop-Elector Henry II of Cologne, Louis's brother Prince-Elector Rudolph I of the Electoral Palatinate, and Duke Rudolph I of Saxe-Wittenberg, rivallingly claiming the Saxon prince-electoral power.
However, only Louis the Bavarian, co-elected with Saxe-Lauenburg's vote, finally asserted himself as emperor by the Treaty of Trausnitz of March 13, 1325. Albert's son Rudolph II, Duke of Saxe-Wittenberg in turn supported Charles IV of Luxembourg as antiking to Louis IV and on that account received the Saxon electoral dignity with the Golden Bull of 1356, thus slighting Saxe-Lauenburg. Saxe-Wittenberg thereupon came to be known as the Electorate of Saxony. When the Ascanian line in electoral Saxony died out in 1422, the Ascanian Duke Eric V of Saxe-Lauenburg failed to assert his succession in Wittenberg. King Sigismund granted the electorate to Margrave Frederick IV of Meissen from the House of Wettin.
