page_title: War of the Lüneburg Succession
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: War of the Lüneburg Succession / Background
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Kaiser Karl IV. belehnt die askanischen Herzöge von Wittenberg mit dem Fürstentum Lüneburg.
context_page_description: The War of the Lüneburg Succession was a conflict over the succession to the Principality of Lüneburg that broke out in 1370 in north Germany and lasted, with interruptions, for 18 years. After William II of Lüneburg died without male heirs in 1369, the "Older House of Lüneburg" was extinguished. According to the inheritance rules of the House of Welf to which William belonged, the Duke of Brunswick, Magnus II Torquatus, was entitled to succeed. However, Charles IV ruled that this Imperial Fief should be returned to the Empire and enfeoffed Albert of Saxe-Wittenberg and his uncle, Wenceslas with the Principality, thereby triggering the war.
  The town of Lüneburg supported the Wittenbergs, taking the opportunity to escape from the immediate lordship of the Duke, and destroyed the ducal castle on the Kalkberg on 1 February 1371. This forced the Duke to relocate his residence to Celle. An attempt on 21 October 1371, Saint Ursula's day, to defeat Lüneburg militarily and reinstate the old ducal rights failed.
context_section_description: In 1355, the Duke of Lüneburg married his daughter Mechtild to her cousin Louis, the heir to the throne in the Principality of Brunswick, and appointed him as his heir and successor in Lüneburg. In the event that Louis predeceased him, William retained the right to choose a successor from his brothers. In the same year, however, Emperor Charles IV guaranteed the succession of Lüneburg on the death of William, who had no sons, to the Ascanian dukes of Wittenberg in the form of an Eventualbelehnung, a fief contingent on the death of William. Charles IV rejected the female inheritance law and regarded the fief, on the death of William, as returning to the Empire. The official appointment of William to the dukedom in 1235, in which the cognatic succession had been assured, led to further negotiations between the Duke and the Emperor, but these did not reach a conclusion. The assessment of earlier research that assumed William had originally supported the contingent enfeoffment of Albert of Saxe-Wittenberg, is regarded as unfounded in more recent research. When Louis died in 1367, William appointed his brother Magnus II as his successor and made him his co-regent in the same year. When William died two years later, the Wittenbergs reaffirmed their claims to the Principality and Emperor Charles IV enfeoffed Duke Albert, his uncle Rudolf, who died shortly thereafter, and Wenceslas with Lüneburg.
caption: Emperor Charles IV enfeoffed Albert of Saxe-Wittenberg with the Principality of Lüneburg. 1442 illustration from the Lüneburg Sachsenspiegelhandschrift
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