Rudolf II. Habsburg, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Rome, Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, Margrave of Moravia, Archduke of Austria
Rudolf II. Habsburg was born on July 18, 1552 in Vienna as the son of Emperor Maximilian II. Habsburg and Maria of Spain. While the television viewer associates his personality with the unforgettable character of the king in the double film Cisárov Pekár and Pekárov Cisár performed by Jan Werich, history really remembers him as a monarch with a sense of knowledge, progress and art. He spent part of his childhood at the Spanish royal court with his mother's brother, King Philip II. It was here that he acquired a relationship with the natural sciences, but also with alchemy, not to mention advanced general education. As a relatively young man, he took over the Hungarian crown from his father. His coronation took place on September 25, 1572 in the Cathedral of St. Martin in Bratislava. After his father Maximilian II and mother Maria of Spain, he was the third crowned in Bratislava and at the same time one of the most famous monarchs in our history. Almost exactly three years later, in August 1575, he was elected King of Rome, and on September 22 of the same year, he was crowned with the crown of St. Wenceslas as King of Bohemia. It was Rudolf II who moved the imperial residence to Prague. This happened in 1583. The relocation of the royal court and the necessary rebuilding of Prague Castle did not only include the accommodation of courtiers, but also the storage of valuable art collections, which were Rudolf II known. He gathered scholars, alchemists, important chemists, and important astronomers, such as Tycho de Brahe and Johannes Kepler, or the scholar Giordano Bruno, at the court. His life and the end of his reign were marked by deepening manic-depressive psychosis and a lack of interest in politics during the difficult period when the Turks invaded the territory of today's Slovakia. In 1608, his younger brother Matej Habsburg took over the government of Austria, Hungary and Moravia, and in 1611 he also received the Czech crown. After Rudolf's death in 1612, Matej also acquired the crown of the Roman Empire. No historian allows themselves to conclude the period of Rudolph's reign with a brief assessment. He was a complicated personality, highly educated with a feeling for art, development and esoteric sciences, yet indecisive in politics. The period is thus characterized and abbreviated as the "Rudolphian period". To this day, it is considered one of the top stages of Czech and also our history. He is buried in the royal tomb at Prague Castle.
On September 25, 2022, we commemorate the 450th anniversary of the Bratislava coronation of Rudolph as the Hungarian king.
