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Albert III of Austria, known as Albert with the Braid (Pigtail) (German: Albrecht mit dem Zopf), a member of the House of Habsburg, was Duke of Austria from 1365 until his death.
Albert III was born in the ducal residence of Vienna, the third son of the Habsburg duke Albert II of Austria and his wife Joanna of Pfirt. Even though his father had determined a house law, whereby the four sons were obliged to rule jointly and equally, the eldest brother Rudolf IV assumed the reins of government after his father's death in 1358. He reaffirmed his supremacy issuing the Privilegium Maius. However, as his marriage remained childless he again had to share his power with his younger brothers. In 1365 Rudolf IV, Albert III, and Leopold III together signed the foundation certificate of the Vienna University (Alma Mater Rudolphina Vindobonensis); Rudolf died a few months later at the age of 25.
Albert III was married twice. The first marriage, after 19 March 1366, was with Elisabeth of Bohemia, a daughter of the Luxembourg emperor Charles IV. This marriage was childless; his wife died at age fifteen. Afterwards, he married Beatrix of Nuremberg, a daughter of the Hohenzollern burgrave Frederick V of Nuremberg and his wife Elisabeth of Meissen, a member of the House of Wettin and a descendant of the extinct Babenberg dukes of Austria.
Beatrix gave him his only son, Albert IV, who succeeded him but soon had to cede the rule over the Inner Austrian, Tyrolean and Further Austrian possessions to his Leopoldian cousins William and Leopold IV. The Albertinian line became extinct with the death of Ladislaus the Posthumous in 1457. |
