Louis V, called the Brandenburger (May 1315 – 18 September 1361), a member of the House of Wittelsbach, ruled as Margrave of Brandenburg from 1323 to 1351 and as Duke of Bavaria from 1347 until his death. From 1342 he also was co-ruling Count of Tyrol by his marriage with the Meinhardiner countess Margaret.
Family history
Louis V was the eldest son of King Louis IV of Germany and his first wife, Beatrice of Świdnica. His father, Duke of Bavaria since 1294, had been elected king in 1314, rivalled by the Habsburg anti-king Frederick the Fair. He had to defend his rights in a lengthy throne quarrel, finally defeated Frederick's forces in the 1322 Battle of Mühldorf, and in 1328 received the Imperial crown; though not by the pope but by the "Roman people" led by Sciarra Colonna.
Margrave of Brandenburg
Upon his victory at Mühldorf, the king took the occasion to seize the princeless Margraviate of Brandenburg, where the last Ascanian ruler Henry the Child had died without heirs in 1320. Ignoring the claims raised by Henry's Ascanian relative Duke Rudolf I of Saxe-Wittenberg, a supporter of his Habsburg rival anyway, he appointed his eldest son Louis margrave in 1323. Still a minor, he remained under tutelage of Count Berthold VII of Henneberg, who acted as a Brandenburg regent. Duke Rudolf I in late 1324 renounced the Brandenburg estates in turn for a compensation.
To further strengthen the rule of the Wittelsbach dynasty in Northern Germany, Margrave Louis was married to Margaret (1305–1340), the eldest daughter of King Christopher II of Denmark, in 1324. Nevertheless, the Wittelsbach rule in Brandenburg never earned much popular support. As a consequence of the murder of Provost Nikolaus von Bernau by Berlin and Cölln citizens in 1325, the twin-town was punished with a papal interdict. Subsequently, the public unrest led to a resurgence of the centuries-long Brandenburg–Pomeranian conflict from 1328 onwards. The Pomeranian dukes had to withdraw from the Uckermark region after a series of battles throughout the late 1320s and early 1330s. In 1330, they took their duchy as a papal fief to circumvent the Brandenburg claims. In 1336, Louis joined the Teutonic Knights on a crusade in Lithuania, indirectly causing the mass suicide of 4,000 Lithuanians at Pilėnai. In 1338, they finally concluded a peace with the Wittelsbach margrave, who renounced his claims on overlordship but maintained the right of succession.
Having received the Brandenburg princely territory as a fiefdom, Louis contributed to the 1338 Declaration at Rhense, emphasizing his father's rights against the interference by Pope Benedict XII. In 1340, he and Count John III of Holstein backed Valdemar IV, brother of Louis' wife Margaret, to succeed to the Danish throne. The House of Wittelsbach maintained good relations to the Danish court, even after Margaret's death in the same year.
From 1342 onwards, Margrave Louis mainly stayed in Bavaria and Tyrol. On 10 February 1342, he married the Tyrolean countess Margaret (Margarethe Maultasch), in order to acquire her estates for the Wittelsbach family; nevertheless, she was not yet divorced from her previous husband, the Luxembourg prince John Henry. The year before Margaret had expelled her husband from Tyrol. John Henry was a son of King John I of Bohemia, who had deposed Margaret's father, Henry of Gorizia-Tyrol as King of Bohemia in 1310. While Emperor Louis IV had the scholars William of Ockham and Marsilius of Padua defend this first "civil marriage" of the Middle Ages, Pope Clement VI, however, immediately excommunicated the couple and the scandal was known across Europe. Though Tyrol was punished with a papal interdict, and the Bishops of Brixen and Trent strongly objected to Louis' rule, the Wittelsbachs were able to gain the support of the local nobles by granting them numerous privileges.
Duke of Bavaria
When his father died in October 1347, Louis succeeded him as Duke of Bavaria as well as Count of Holland, Zeeland and Hainaut, together with his five brothers. On 12 September 1349, Bavaria and the Wittelsbach possessions in the Low Countries were partitioned: Margrave Louis and his younger brothers Louis VI the Roman and Otto V the Bavarian received Upper Bavaria; their brothers Stephen II, William I and Albert I received Lower Bavaria, Holland and Hainaut.