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Margarete Maultasch (born 1318; died October 3, 1369 in Vienna) was the last Countess of Tyrol from the Meinhardiner dynasty.
She was the daughter of Henry, Duke of Carinthia and Count of Tyrol, whom she succeeded in Tyrol in 1335, while Carinthia was obtained by the Habsburg Albert II of Austria.
As a child, in 1330, she had been first married to John Henry of Bohemia, the brother of the future Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV of Luxemburg. In 1341 she expelled her husband with the help of the Tyrolean aristocracy. She then married Louis of Bavaria, the son of the Emperor Louis the Bavarian, without having been divorced from her previous husband.
William of Ockham and Marsilius of Padua defended this first "civil marriage" in the Middle Ages. The Pope, however, excommunicated her and the scandal was known across Europe. In 1359 Margarete and Ludwig were absolved from the excommunication. The annals and historians in Germany and Italy (Florence, Milan, Padova, Monza) referred these incidents. In ecclesiastical propaganda she received the nickname Maultasch (litterally "Mouth Bag") - this means "whore" or "ugly woman".
After the death of her husband, her son Meinhard III joined her as count of the Tyrol. However, he died in 1363, which induced her to give the county of Tyrol to duke Rudolf IV of Austria, who united it with the "dominion of Austria".
In 1816 Jacob Grimm collected the Legends of Margarete in his book "German sagas".
Reference
- Wilhelm Baum: Margarete Maultasch. Erbin zwischen den Mächten, Graz-Wien-Köln 1994.
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