here - Nobility Associations

princes. The German king has become one of the weakest rulers on the Continent.
The Great Interregnum (1254-1273), as this period will be known to history, is a
stormy and confused period. It is the kaiserlose, schreckliche Zeit "the terrible time
without an emperor." Western Europe is now about to enter a new phase. The
Great Interregnum comes to an end in 1273. In that year, the imperial crown is
revived and given to the Austrian Count Rudolf of Habsburg. The Empire now has
an Austrian head.
Rudolf's ancestors — of Trojan and Merovingian descent — had built a family castle
in Switzerland in the 11th century. They had called it Habichtsburg — Castle of the
Hawk. Hence, the word Habsburg. Rudolf is the first Habsburg to ascend the
imperial throne. He will succeed in establishing some degree of order within the
Empire. The House of Habsburg will play a leading role in European affairs for
centuries to come. The ideal of universal rule — unity under a single authority — is
by no means dead.
Legacy
With Conradin's death at 16, the legitimate Hohenstaufen line became extinct. His
remains, with those of Frederick of Baden, lie in the church of the monastery of
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel at Naples, founded by his mother for the good of his soul;
and here in 1847 Maximilian, crown prince of Bavaria, erected a marble statue by
Bertel Thorvaldsen to his memory. In the 14th century Codex Manesse, a collection
of medieval German lyrics, preserved at Heidelberg, there appear two songs written
by Conradin, and his fate has formed the subject of several dramas.
His hereditary Kingdom of Jerusalem passed to the heirs of his great-greatgrandmother
Isabella I of Jerusalem, among whom a succession dispute arose. The
senior heir in primogeniture was Hugh of Brienne, a second cousin of Conradin's
father, but another second cousin Hugh III of Cyprus already held the office of
regent and managed to keep the kingdom as Hugh I of Jerusalem. Conradin's
grandmother's first cousin Mary of Antioch also staked her claim on basis of
proximity of blood, which she later sold to Conradin's executioner Charles of
Anjou.
Memorial by Thorvaldsen
The general heiress of his Kingdom of Sicily and the Duchy of Swabia was his aunt
Margaret, half-sister of his father Conrad IV (the youngest but only surviving child
of Frederick II and his third wife, Isabella of England) and married with Albert,
Landgrave of Thuringia since 1255. Their son Frederick claimed Sicily and Swabia
on her right.
The Hohenstaufen Dynasty - Page 85 of 200