Adolf Count of Nassau

born: ca. 1255

died: 02.07.1298 at the Battle of Hasenbühl near Göllheim (Palatinate)

Adolf zu Nassau, son of Count Walram II zu Nassau, had been reigning count since around 1274. When King Rudolf of Habsburg died in July 1291, Cologne Archbishop Siegfried II of Westerburg put forward the supposedly weak Adolf of Nassau as the candidate for king against Rudolf's son Albrecht. In the electoral capitulation of Andernach, Siegfried had secured extensive restitutions for the archbishopric, which had been weakened after the Battle of Worringen (1288), in the event of Adolf of Nassau winning the election.

However, Adolf zu Nassau, who was elected on May 5, 1292 and crowned in Aachen on June 24, 1292, did not keep his promises but attempted to acquire new royal lands by purchasing land in Thuringia and by means of the Mark Meissen. The immediate vicinity of the Archbishopric of Mainz virtually ruled out any expansion of his power on the Middle Rhine, which only included Weilburg in addition to the area around Wiesbaden, Sonnenberg and Idstein. However, Adolf zu Nassau came into conflict with King Wenceslas II of Bohemia over the Margraviate of Meissen. The conflict with the Archbishop of Mainz also came to a head because Adolf zu Nassau did not meet his payment obligations and also threatened old Mainz rights in Thuringia.

Excommunicated by Pope Boniface VIII, Archbishop of Mainz Gerhard von Eppstein reacted to Adolf's military actions by pushing for his deposition, which he achieved on April 26, 1298. Albrecht of Habsburg, who was fighting for his possessions and had already been chosen as successor to the king in a legally questionable election before the battle, met the Nassau king on July 2, 1298 in a battle of knights near Göllheim. Adolf of Nassau fell in battle.

The assessment of Adolf's reign was already controversial among his contemporaries and remains so in research to this day. His bravery and his concern for the empire are emphasized positively, while his venality and his impetuous military actions are viewed negatively. Adolf zu Nassau is regarded as a representative of the "little kings". In the year of his death, he founded Klarenthal Abbey, where his wife Imagina von Isenburg-Limburg was also buried in 1318. He was initially buried in Rosenthal Abbey and was laid to rest in Speyer Cathedral from 1309.