Another Hapsburg

Another Hapsburg ghost I met in Innsbruck was Maximilian I, King of Germany, Emperor of Austria, and Holy Roman Emperor.

Maximilian I fought with his neighbors, especially France, losing more battles than he won. But his great success was in marriage. His first wife was Mary of Burgundy, only child and heiress to Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, whose legacy included parts of France and all of the Low Countries, now Belgium and the Netherlands.

Maximilian arranged the marriage of their son, Philip the Handsome, to Juana of Castile, heiress of Ferdinand and Isabella. His grandson, Emperor Charles V, controlled more of Europe than any ruler since the Romans – plus, thanks to Columbus, Spanish possessions in the New World.
“Let others wage war, but thou, O happy Austria, marry, for those kingdoms, which Mars gives to others, Venus gives to thee.”

In Innsbruck I took David with me to a museum devoted to Maximilian. I don’t know what David thought about it, but I found it one of the strangest museums I had seen. It was all one big room, bigger than a basketball court.

Maximilian planned a grandiose tomb for himself. (Max had lots of grandiose ideas.) Since it was never completed, parts of the intended tomb were displayed as works of art.

In the center of the room was the elaborate cenotaph, the size of a small cottage. It was incomplete, as there was no bronze casket or imperial crown.

Around the sides of the room were life-size bronze statues of royalty.. What Tilman Reimanschneider did in wood, here portraits of kings and dukes were cast in bronze. From pictures I had seen in books, I recognized the dour face of his father-in-law, Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Clothing and armor were rendered in detail, the floral designs on brocade executed so realistically that it looked like fabric.

“The best laid plans. . . .” Max died while trying to suppress a rebellion in the Low Countries, thousands of miles from Innsbruck.

On a later trip, I saw his sarcophagus, topped with his effigy in marble, in the chapel of the royal palace in Brugge. No grand tomb. Not even in a grand cathedral. Just a marble man lying next to a similar effigy of his wife, Mary of Burgundy, the kind of burial I saw in dozens of churches in English villages.